| If mourning and dancing are part of the same movement of grace, we can be grateful for every moment we have lived. — Henri Nouwen  In Our Hard Times by Henri Nouwen, from Turn my Mourning Into Dancing
 If God is found in our hard times, then all of life, no matter how apparently insignificant or difficult, can open us to God's work among us. To be grateful does not mean repressing our remembered hurts. But as we come to God with our hurts — honestly, not superficially — something life changing can begin slowly to happen. We discover how God is the One who invites us to healing. We realize that any dance of celebration must weave both the sorrows and the blessings into a joyful step. I once saw a stonecutter remove great pieces from a huge rock on which he was working. In my imagination I thought That rock must be hurting terribly. Why does this man wound the rock so much? But as I looked longer, I saw the figure of a graceful dancer emerge gradually from the stone, looking at me in my mind's eye and saying, "You foolish man, didn't you know that I had to suffer and thus enter into my glory?" The mystery of the dance is that its movements are discovered in the mourning. To heal is to let the Holy Spirit call me to dance, to believe again, even amid my pain, that God will orchestrate and guide my life. We tend, however, to divide our past into good things to remember with gratitude and painful things to accept or forget. This way of thinking, which at first glance seems quite natural, prevents us from allowing our whole past to be the source from which we live our future. It locks us into a self-involved focus on our gain or comfort. It becomes a way to categorize, and in a way, control. Such an outlook becomes another attempt to avoid facing our suffering. Once we accept this division, we develop a mentality in which we hope to collect more good memories than bad memories, more things to be glad about than things to be resentful about, more things to celebrate than to complain about. Gratitude in its deepest sense means to live life as a gift to be received thankfully. And true gratitude embraces all of life: the good and the bad, the joyful and the painful, the holy and the not-so-holy. We do this because we become aware of God's life, God's presence in the middle of all that happens. Is this possible in a society where joy and sorrow remain radically separated? Where comfort is something we not only expect, but are told to demand? Advertisements tell us that we cannot experience joy in the midst of sadness. "Buy this," they say, "do that, go there, and you will have a moment of happiness during which you will forget your sorrow." But is it not possible to embrace with gratitude all of our life and not just the good things we like to remember? If mourning and dancing are part of the same movement of grace, we can be grateful for every moment we have lived. We can claim our unique journey as God's way to mold our hearts to greater conformity to Christ. The cross, the primary symbol of our faith, invites us to see grace where there is pain; to see resurrection where there is death. The call to be grateful is a call to trust that every moment can be claimed as the way of the cross that leads to new life. When Jesus spoke to His disciples before His death and offered them His body and blood as gifts of life, He shared with them everything He had lived — His joy as well as His pain, His suffering as well as His glory — and enabled them to move into their own mission in deep gratitude. Day by day we find new reasons to believe that nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ. Of course, it is easy for me to push the bad memories under the rug of my consciousness and think only about the good things that please me. It seems to be the way to fulfillment. By doing so, however, I keep myself from discovering the joy beneath the sorrow, the meaning to be coaxed out of even painful memories. I miss finding the strength that becomes visible in my weakness, the grace God told Paul would be sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness. — 2 Corinthians 12:9 Gratitude helps us in this dance only if we cultivate it. For gratitude is not a simple emotion or an obvious attitude. Living gratefully requires practice. It takes sustained effort to reclaim my whole past as the concrete way God has led me to this moment. For in doing so I must face not only today's hurts, but the past's experiences of rejection or abandonment or failure or fear. While Jesus told His followers that they were intimately related to Him as branches are to a vine, they still needed to be pruned to bear more fruit (see John 15:1-5). Pruning means cutting, reshaping, removing what diminishes vitality. When we look at a pruned vineyard, we can hardly believe it will bear fruit. But when harvest comes, we realize that the pruning allowed the vines to concentrate their energy and produce more grapes. Grateful people learn to celebrate even amid life's hard and harrowing memories because they know that pruning is no mere punishment, but preparation. When our gratitude for the past is only partial, our hope for the future can likewise never be full. But our submitting to God's pruning work will not ultimately leave us sad, but hopeful for what can happen in us and through us. Harvest time will bring its own blessings. I am gradually learning that the call to gratitude asks us to say, "Everything is grace." As long as we remain resentful about things we wish had not happened, about relationships that we wish had turned out differently, mistakes we wish we had not made, part of our heart remains isolated, unable to bear fruit in the new life ahead of us. It is a way we hold part of ourselves apart from God. Instead, we can learn to see our remembered experience of our past as an opportunity for ongoing conversion of the heart. We let what we remember remind us of whose we are — not our own, but God's. If we are to be truly ready for a new life in the service of God, truly joyful at the prospect of God's unfolding vocation for our lives, truly free to be sent wherever God guides, our entire past, gathered into the spaciousness of a converted heart, must become the source of energy that moves us onward. Excerpted with permission from Turn My Mourning Into Dancing by Henri Nouwen, copyright Estate of Henri Nouwen.
Your Turn
Are you grateful for the good memories as well as the hard ones? God's grace is here for all of it! His power is made perfect in our weakness. Come share your thoughts with us. We want to hear from you! ~ Devotionals Daily Share this devotion with someone who needs it today.  Finding Hope During Hard Times
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Turn My Mourning into Dancing by Henri Nouwen now in a beautiful new hardcover version  Hardcover, Regular Price: $16.99 + free U.S. shipping* on orders $35 or more In times of suffering, simple answers often ring empty and hollow... so how can you find hope in hard times?
Learn how to survive the difficult seasons with the comfort and of God's constancy. With sensitive, practical advice, Henri Nouwen gently points you towards a life that is grounded in God's companionship and rooted within eternal hope. In this newly formatted edition, Turn My Mourning into Dancing discusses five movements we experience during hard times: From Our Little Selves to a Larger World
Praise for the Book "This book was gentle, but it spoke into the depths of my heart the things I was experiencing. I gave it away to a friend after losing her grandmother and am seriously considering purchasing copies to give to those I work with who are grieving loss. This book was my introduction to the work of Henri Nouwen, and I'm now hooked." - Libby "I lost my wife to leukemia last year and have been struggling. This little book has been very helpful to me to get by from day to day. Henri Nouwen writes so beautifully and with a skill that I feel is talking directly to me and my situation." - Robert "This book was a small price to pay for the great amount of comfort it provided. I didn't put it down until I was finished. With the loss of my soul mate, this book has kept me stepping forward out of the past and into a fulfilling future." - Donna  The perfect companion... Healing Words: A 60-Day Grief Journal  Hardcover, Regular Price: $12.99 + free U.S. shipping* on orders $35 or more Grief can be a feeling, a season, or part of your story. If you've lost a loved one, experienced a tragedy, or dealt with hard times, you know that few people understand your sadness.
These sixty devotions offer biblical comfort and, the journaling prompts provide practical teachings to help you reflect and heal. You will better understand how to process your grief and plan for your future.
Healing is a process and looks different for every person. This unique journal will meet you where you are and lead you to the path of healing.
Also from Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey  Hardcover, Regular Price: $14.99 + free U.S. shipping* on orders $35 or more When beloved author Henri Nouwen set out to record this daybook of totally new reflections, he suddenly found himself on "a true spiritual adventure." For in these 366 original, interlocking morsels of daily wisdom, Nouwen provides both sustenance and a trail for us to follow, as he unveils, to his own surprise, his personal map of faith. From the delicate interplay of human experience to the surrender to Christ and the embrace of Christian community, that journey of Christian spirituality is explored and celebrated here in each eloquent, thought–provoking passage, "The table is one of the most intimate places in our lives. It is there that we give ourselves to one another. When we say, 'Take some more, let me serve you another plate, let me pour you another glass, don't be shy, enjoy it,' we say a lot more than our words express. We invite our friends to become part of our lives. We want them to be nurtured by the same food and drink that nurture us. We desire communion.... Every breakfast, lunch, or dinner can become a time of growing communion with one another." Intimately personal and inspiring, Bread for the Journey is a daily feast of fresh insight into the challenges and deep joys of a life lived in close communion with God. Nouwen is a wise, loving companion who invites us along as he finds joy in the community of loss, true freedom in forgiveness of others, and hope in surprising places. Each daily meditation is a stepping–stone along a path of private discovery, offering Nouwen's seasoned yet fresh ideas on kindness, love, suffering, and prayer, the Church as God's people, and the importance of Jesus in one's life–reflecting, as a whole, Nouwen's own 'personal creed.' Bread for the Journey brims with daily nourishment and guidance for devoted followers and new friends alike – food for thought on a yearlong journey of discovery and faith.
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