Thank you for the pain

Can saying these two simple words "Thank You" change our perspective about an incident?

It's easy to say 'thank you' to those who help us or give us a gift or compliment us.

And for those of us who accept the existence of a supreme being, a God, it's easy to say 'thank you God' when good things happen in our lives.

But what about saying 'thank you' when seemingly bad things happen in our lives? Do we still have the courage to say a 'thank you' for the pain? Does it even make sense?


I think it does.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:18(CEB) it says "Give thanks in every situation because this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.'
The key here is "every situation". The good and the bad situations. Good situation is easy to understand. But "bad"?
Well, when we think about saying thank you in what we might otherwise consider a bad situation, it will require us to think deeply about the situation. We would have to ask ourselves what is it about this situation that I can be thankful about. And then you might start seeing the good in that situation. You might realize it could have been far worse. You might also realize, this bad actually prevented you from being involved in what could have been an irredeemable situation. This again is the easy part. Especially since most of us generally try to rationalize the bad. 
But if you think deeper about the bad situation, you might begin to derive new learning from it. Let's look at some simple examples. 
While walking on a mucky road, if someone in a car drives by and splashes slush on you, your immediate instinct is to curse that guy. But what if you took a pause and decided to say a thank you? You could now be thankful for the rain that caused the muck, the fact that you are healthy enough to walk, the fact that you are probably living in a civilized part of the world where you can freely walk on the road, or the fact that you have good clothes to wear, and so on. 

 Or when your boss is ripping you apart, if you take a pause to figure out what you can be thankful for, it might make you look at your performance from a different perspective, and negate the resistance to the feedback you are initially likely to feel. You are now in a better frame of mind to turn the situation around. You can disarm the hotheaded boss. You emerge stronger. 

 Or when nothing seems to go right on a particular day, the chances of you letting one negative thought lead to another is very high. So are the chances of you looking at everything through a negative lens and so plunging further into depression. A thank you for the 'learning', or a thank you for the 'toes that you have to stub against the bed post' or a 'thank you for the opportunity to own a bed' or a 'thank you for the great nervous system because of which you can feel the pain', and so on... can change your outlook. 

 Easy to preach but definitely difficult to implement. But let's give it a shot and see what change this can bring about in our lives. 

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