Replacing Envy with Gratitude
Throughout my journey with infertility and pregnancy loss, I had to consciously make the decision to feel and express gratitude. It was so easy to do the exact opposite: look around at those around me, those I followed on social media, even strangers I encountered out in the world, and feel envious. I felt envious when I saw someone pregnant, when someone I knew announced the arrival of a new baby, when I was invited to a baby shower. I would wonder why that person was so much more deserving of a baby than I was, why they were allowed to get pregnant so easily while I couldn’t, why they got to grow their family two, three, even four times before I even was blessed with one child. In my anxiety about having a baby, I found myself focusing on what I didn’t have, and that led to negative feelings towards those who had what I wanted. I’m embarrassed to say I judged people somewhat harshly, finding them undeserving or less deserving than I was for those blessings.
This instinct hasn’t left me in motherhood. What so many people don’t understand if they’ve never faced pregnancy loss or infertility is that those anxieties don’t vanish once you have a successful pregnancy. Because you’re still infertile. You’ve still lost a baby. I still feel that twinge of envy when I see pregnancy announcements on my social media. I still wonder why that person who just got married was allowed to get pregnant so fast, why someone else is already pregnant again after having a baby.
In our home, we’re discussing finances and calendars and chaos management to determine when the right time is to schedule another transfer. There’s no “trying for another baby” like most couples discuss. While most people just talk about when they’re ready to parent two kids instead of one and then just start getting “busy”, we have to figure out when we’ll have the money, when we’ll have the time for eleventy billion doctors appointments, when we’ll have the energy to parent a toddler while I’m wackadoo on hormones for a transfer protocol.
We also have to think so far ahead because of all the different outcomes and possible solutions we face in infertility. We don’t just wonder how far apart in age our kids will be, and what time of year the baby will arrive. We wonder what we’ll do if neither of our remaining embryos work. Will we try a full IVF cycle again? Will we adopt embryos? Will we adopt a baby? How long will each of those scenarios take? How old will Henry be by then? How old will we be? And will we have the money to do any of those things? Will we have to discuss if we’re happy with just one child?
What if, God willing, a second embryo transfer works? We have a third embryo we will have to decide what to do with. Will we try for a third? We’re already halfway to 38- How old will we be by then?
So much is lost when you travel this far into infertility. There’s so much that we will never get to see and do in growing our family because this is the way we are able to have children. So when we see someone who gets to take the traditional way, envy is a very human reaction. But the longer we focus on what we don’t have, the harder it is to enjoy the life God has blessed us with now. We need a heavy dose of gratitude to refocus on the things that we do have.
In my study of this concept in Scripture, I searched two terms: “thanksgiving” and “give thanks.” I found that the noun “gratitude” didn’t appear very frequently in Scripture as compared to “thanksgiving,” while the action “give thanks” showed up numerous times.
The first occurrence of either is in Leviticus, where we find the concept of thanksgiving sacrifices. If you’re like me, you are groaning internally. Leviticus? That’s the book with all the rules! When I hit the search button in Blue Letter Bible and saw that book pop up first, my whole body clenched! When I hit search on my query for “give thanks,” I was hoping something earlier would pop up, but no dice. So I dug into Leviticus.
And I was pleasantly surprised by what I discovered there.
Leviticus 7:12 is tucked into a chunk of passages with commands about offerings. The thanksgiving sacrifice is part of God’s commands for fellowship offerings. There are two ways the Israelites could make fellowship offerings: the first was offering it as an “expression of thankfulness” (Leviticus 7:12 NIV), the second as the result of a vow or as a freewill offering. Each method had it’s own rules and requirements for how the offering should be created and presented.
Three things jumped out at me as I was reading about this type of offering. The first was in the name of each method. The King James Version calls the first method the “sacrifice of thanksgiving” and the second method a “voluntary offering” (Leviticus 7:16). While Scripture typically interchanges the words “sacrifice” and “offering,” our society has put a fairly negative connotation on the word “sacrifice.” When we talk about having to sacrifice things like time, money, hobbies and more (especially in parenting), it is often said in a tone of exasperation, frustration, or grief. We don’t like to sacrifice, and many people believe we shouldn’t have to. The parenting world is full of methods and gadgets and ideologies that put the parent first so that they don’t have to sacrifice anything in their lives to accommodate their children. So to sacrifice in the name of thanksgiving, we’d have to give something up. We’d have to do something hard, maybe even something that wasn’t wholly comfortable for us. And I think this is exactly what God wants for us when He seeks our gratitude.
I’m reminded of the season immediately following my miscarriage. We had been struggling to get pregnant for almost a year at that point, and I had taken up the habit of keeping a gratitude journal. I had noticed my tendency towards envy, so each day I wrote down three things I was grateful for. They didn’t have to be big things; I could thank God for green lights all the way to work or the beautiful sunrise I could see out of my classroom window or a delicious dinner cooked by my husband. I just needed to shift my perspective to all the things I had instead of the one thing I didn’t. I was still keeping this journal the day I miscarried my first baby. As I sat in bed that night, staring at that blank page, tears streaming down my face, I knew God was calling me to find gratitude within my tragedy.
And I didn’t want to.
How was I supposed to feel grateful when my baby had died?
How was I supposed to feel grateful when it felt like a miracle had been snatched away from me?
How was I supposed to feel grateful when what I really wanted to do was throw that journal across my bedroom and scream at a God who I felt betrayed by?
I can tell you one thing, I didn’t find it in myself to feel grateful. The Holy Spirit gave me the strength to make the sacrifice of thanksgiving that night. And so I put pen to paper and wrote three things I was grateful for on the day I lost my first baby.
This is the difference between a sacrifice of thanksgiving and a voluntary offering.
The second thing I noticed in this passage from Leviticus is that one of the things a sacrifice of thanksgiving requires is a meat sacrifice. In the Old Testament, before Christ, the people were required to give sacrifices to atone for their sins, to make themselves right with God. Often this required the death of an animal in order to include meat in the offering. This ritual had to be performed over and over, as humans continued to sin over and over.
When Jesus died on the cross, He fulfilled this requirement once and for all. We are no longer asked to make literal sacrifices over and over to make ourselves right with God. However, sacrifices of the heart, such as my personal experience with gratitude, will bring us closer to God as we rely on Him for the strength to do so. And there is nothing in this world to be more grateful for than the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf to save us from our sins and make us right with God forever.
But what I found most lovely about this passage was the Hebrew word used for thanksgiving here. It means, among other things, “thanksgiving in songs, choir of worshippers.” God doesn’t just want grudging gratitude from us; He wants our voices to be raised in joyful songs to Him! Even if that song is warbling out among gut-wrenching sobs. Psalm 95:2 uses this same word when it says, “Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms” (KJV). The NIV says, “...extol him with music and song.” Our thanksgiving is a beautiful song to God’s ears, because He knows that when we continue this song day in and day out, it will penetrate our hearts and change our perspective from envy to gratitude.
We have a perfect symbol of this type of gratitude in Jesus, right as He was on the precipice of making the ultimate sacrifice for us. On the night before he was arrested, Jesus gathered with His disciples to celebrate the Passover feast. In what we now call the Last Supper, Jesus models gratitude in the midst of sacrifice to the Twelve, and to us. “After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said ‘Take this and divide it among you. …This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you’” (Luke 22:17,20b). “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me’” (Luke 22:19).
Jesus knows what He is about to face. He knows that Judas is going to betray Him, that Peter is going to deny Him, that so many of His followers are going to abandon Him. He’s facing horrible anguish; in the next section of this chapter, we see Him praying to His Father to take the cup from Him. But He’s also willing and ultimately prays that the Father’s will be done. So when we see Him giving thanks in the Last Supper, we can be certain that it comes with a sacrificial heart. This meal is the model for our Holy Communion. It represents the real, physical sacrifice that Jesus made for us on the cross. And Jesus himself gives thanks for it.
The Greek word in this passage is where we get the word “eucharist,” another name for Holy Communion. It means “to be grateful, feel thankful, express gratitude actively.” It is the grace we say at a meal or beginning of a feast. And it is what we owe Christ for what He has done for us, so we are able to do it with Jesus’s help.
Jesus knows that gratitude comes with deep sacrifice of the heart sometimes. He knows that it is not always easy for us to feel thankful when we’re faced with struggle, loss, and trauma. He experienced this Himself, so He gets it 100%. But He also knows that when we replace our envy with gratitude, our focus is turned to what we have through God’s blessing, enabling us to feel joy in our thankfulness, regardless of the sacrifice it requires.
Turn your eyes to Jesus and ask for His help. He can turn your heart towards all that you have and help you find it within yourself to feel grateful, no matter the circumstance.
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