Thank you for listening to the Allender Center podcast.

I'm Dr. Dan Allender.

And I'm Rachel Clinton-Centen.

We're fiercely committed to providing hope and healing to a fragmented world.

And restoration for the heart.

Thank you for joining us.

Let's get this conversation started.

Well, as we come into Thanksgiving, it is imperative that we talk about gratitude.

I mean, honestly, there is such a benefit in having a particular epic holiday build around gratitude.

And yet, it's almost impossible to address gratitude without also bringing up grief.

And as we step into this topic over a few weeks, it's going to be very important to see the linkage between grief and gratitude because they are anomalies.

We don't really think of gratitude within the realm of grief.

At least I don't.

Do you?

I mean, I would say in like a twisted, maybe bad theological way, I think there were some ways of, probably out of good intentions,

people trying to help you deal with your suffering by saying, like, you know, be grateful

because God is transforming you or like, this is a lesson that will form character. And again, is there some

truth that we, there is a way that we get to be grateful for the transformation that does come

when we are able to enter grief like, yes, in like the larger scheme of things. But it was often

used as a way to kind of say,

get over your, get over your sadness, get over your heartache, you should be grateful,

or you should be grateful because you're not suffering as bad as other people in the world. So if grief and gratitude are linked, they're linked in ways that actually are a denial

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