During a marital separation it is often easy to lose hope and see nothing good happening, especially if your spouse is not responding to your attempts to reconcile, they are ignoring you, or your  interactions are always taking a turn for the worse. I had to make a conscious choice to be thankful. I told myself that any day we weren’t in divorce court with a judge and two attorneys was a plus. If we had the smallest civil interaction, or if part of our interaction was civil, I was thankful.

If we had no contact for a day or several days I tried to be thankful just to be alive. To enjoy the sun, enjoy friends, enjoy the quiet, and remind myself that we were not in divorce court that day. The Apostle Paul reminds us to be thankful in all circumstances, not just the ones that go the way we want them to.