The Importance of Being Grateful

A Midwatch Conversation

Last January, I had one of the most interesting watch conversations of my life. It was the Midwatch – the 2200-0200 watch – and I was standing Officer of the Deck in port in Florida, which means absolutely nothing was happening. In order to stay awake, I struck up a conversation with my Petty Officer of the Watch.

Well, I say conversation. He started talking at 2200 and barely came up for air in the next four hours. He had a lot of grievances to air, and I was a captive audience. He was mad at God, mad at the government, mad at the Navy, mad at his supervisor, mad at his parents, mad at his in-laws, mad at the world. He told me about all the problems they were causing him, how unreasonable they were, how they didn’t understand his side of things. But the longer he talked, the more I got the impression that the main source of his problems was himself.

That isn’t to say his life had been all sunshine and roses. From what I gathered, he’d grown up in an abusive home, struggled to fit in, and his wife had miscarried about a year earlier. These are very, very difficult things. But he was also angry about less difficult things – his worklist, the fact that he hadn’t been able to fall asleep before watch, that his back hurt, that he couldn’t smoke on watch, and so forth. I can’t really think of anything he wasn’t angry about.

He spent a good deal of time explaining why he didn’t go to church anymore. God had wronged him. It wasn’t fair. What had God ever done for him? As he told me about his rampant smoking, excessive alcoholism, multiple times driving while high, and multiple suicide attempts stopped just in the nick of time, I thought it was pretty obvious his being alive required divine intervention, but he didn’t see it that way. He saw only the negatives.

I want to be free.

Besides that, he ended the conversation by telling me, there was another reason he didn’t return to God. He didn’t want to be chained down. He didn’t want to be a slave to anything. He wanted to be his own man, to be free, to run his own life – not to be at the whims of some deity.

The thing was, if you listened to him for more than five minutes, you knew that he wasn’t free at all. He was a slave, a slave to the bitterness and resentment that were eating him up inside and turning every part of his life into a black, bleak, inimical wasteland where no one understood him and everyone was supposedly out to get him. The anger had consumed his life; there was nothing else left.

Well, there was one thing. The reason he wouldn’t commit suicide, he told me, was because of his wife and child, the light of his life. They were the only thing he still believed in, the only thing that kept him going. He would never do that to them. His bitterness against God was already straining the relationship, but he wouldn’t let it hurt them.

A couple of months after this conversation, I heard a couple of chiefs talking before khaki call. This Petty Officer had left the Navy. He had also, without a word, disappeared, leaving his wife and child. She called the ship asking where he was, and they had to tell her that not only did they not know, but they no longer had any authority over him. They couldn’t bring him back, and they couldn’t take money out of his wages to help her pay the rent. The bitterness had finally won.

The Importance of Being Grateful

I share this as a cautionary tale. On Thanksgiving we always think to give thanks for the good times, but the truth is, many of us are not having good times. And we must also take time to give thanks in the bad times, as those at the first Thanksgiving did. Because when bad times come – when there is abuse, or alcoholism, or miscarriage, when there are deaths in the family, hurricanes and health problems, shootings and oil refinery explosions – there is no neutral response.* We will either learn gratitude, or we will be conquered by bitterness. There is no middle path.

It is always a struggle. It is always my natural instinct to continue dwelling on the people, institutions, and events I feel have wronged me. But in the end, the person harmed by this is me – and I’m speaking of more than metaphorical harm. It is my choice, a choice that must be remade every single time, to turn away from the resentment and focus on “those things worthy of praise.” And it is a choice that needs to be made, for my sake and the sake of those around me.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about where the path of bitterness leads. What about the path of gratitude?

It leads to beautiful places, green pastures beside still waters that restore the soul. I know people who have been through hardship after hardship and yet are some of the most joyful people I have met. What doesn’t kill them makes them stronger – stronger in love, stronger in compassion, stronger in faith, stronger in hope. Because they choose joy.

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed… For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…”

*I do not say to give thanks and do nothing. Stop the abuse and check the alcoholism, flee the hurricanes and investigate the explosions, seek out help for the health problems. Grief and even anger can be appropriate responses to these events. I do not say to be thankful for the bad times; I merely caution as to what happens when we choose to dwell on them.

“The Turkey” by Jim, the Photographer is licensed under CC BY 2.0