It is easy to be thankful for your children, your spouse, your family, friends, homes, jobs, possessions, opportunities, hobbies, and good food. Aside from the mysteries of balanced basting and the debate over lumpy vs. smooth mashed potatoes, Thanksgiving is an easy holiday. Not much is required of anyone, other than ovens and casserole dishes and cable TV. Growing up in my family, it helped to have a tray of celery stuffed with spray cheese, too.

It is good to be thankful. We are told to be thankful, and we should be thankful it occurs to us to be thankful. It makes the world a much nicer place when we humble ourselves long enough to acknowledge how much we’ve been given. We try to inject meaning and reverence into the day, in between watching the Macy’s parade on TV and making the late-night leftover turkey sandwich right before bed. We tell our kids on Thanksgiving we are supposed to remember all the good things in our lives and thank God.

It’s a confirming sign to be met with “but we are supposed to be thankful everyday, mom!” Yes, we are, thank you for remembering.

After the year we’ve had, full of tremendous highs and heartbreaking lows, you would think I would be focusing my thankful energies on the good things: our new house, our general good health, hubby’s job, the kids eventual adjustment to their new school, the safe birth of our baby twin nephews, and our mommy-and-daddy-only getaway last spring. Thank God for all. But there is no challenge, no swallowing the lump, no sacrifice in being thankful for all the warm and happy moments of the past year.

The true test of a thankful heart is to be able to acknowledge the good and the growth that comes out of pain and sorrow. To many people, the mere idea of being thankful for a broken heart is ludicrous. The suggestion to thank God for the perils and trials we’ve endured is crazy talk. But if He is my God through all the good times and laughter, then He is the God of my tears and pain and sorrow. How can I pick and choose what to thank Him for? 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says to “give thanks in all circumstances…” This is one of those verses a lot of people mumble over. Give thanks in the midst of pain? No thanks! And is it even possible?

Yes, it is possible. It takes a suspension of pride, the shedding of the victim mentality, and a really big deep breath. It isn’t magic, it won’t suddenly make everything okay, smelling of golden turkeys and apple pies. Is it okay we lost two babies this year? No. Am I thankful for the losses?

Here’s where I have to cough in an attempt to empty my lungs as much as possible. I have sorrow because of the losses. I will always wonder what could have been. But I am thankful for the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met because of the losses. Many of the connections I’ve made both in real life and on the internet are directly linked to the losses. I have learned so much, I’ve been changed, I am a very different person now than I was a year ago—a little softer, a little more thoughtful, a little more sympathetic, wiser. Out of the sorrow I have been given so much. Shouldn’t I give back?

Rather than shoveling out bitterness, hatred, remorse, guilt, anger, and sadness, I must make the choice to give back an attitude of Thanksgiving. It doesn’t mean I am doing the Snoopy dance, arms extended, grin plastered on my face. It means my head is bowed, my eyes are closed, and I admit I don’t have all the answers and can’t see the big plan, but I trust. I can be thankful to God for seeing me through everything, the good and especially the bad.

C.S. Lewis wrote these words in Mere Christianity, which exemplify the point I am trying to make:

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but he is building up a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.

As I pile my plate with the dark meat and a little white meat for appearances on Thanksgiving Day, I hope I will find the ability to lay everything at God’s feet, say thank you, and mean it.