Cracks of Gratitude

Lara Patangan ponders our common brokenness and how it ultimately leads to gratitude.

My mom has kept many questionable things: our childhood crib, which was likely recalled sometime around 1979 because a watermelon-sized baby's head could get stuck in its super-sized slats. She also kept a wooden potty chair from the same era that had long lost its pot. Other useless items include stacks of 30-year-old magazines she still intends to read and old eyeglass frames from decades of miscellaneous dead people. 

Recently, I found a broken ceramic platter. “Wait! You can’t throw that away,” she reprimanded. “That’s what we ate Thanksgiving turkey on when I was growing up.” The platter, split into 4 jagged angles, hardly looked big enough for a skinny chicken, much less a fine turkey dinner. Perhaps turkeys were smaller back then, before they were shot up with hormones like a steroidal bodybuilder. 

Regardless, the yellowed platter with the delicate pink roses in its center was broken. It was cracked and faded — not sturdy enough for even the smallest Cornish hen. Still, my mom wanted it glued back together, even though most people wouldn’t want to eat an anorexic turkey off a jaundiced platter held together with glue.  

Perfection vs. Brokenness

Images of seemingly perfect families gathered around a formally curated table where guests are dressed in warm, flattering tones while gazing at a plump turkey on unbroken china inundate us this time of year. Yet, most families probably look more like my mom’s cracked platter. Individuals broken by addiction, divorce, disease, loneliness, and loss who come together to make something whole in appreciation of all there is to be grateful for, despite whatever challenges they face or have overcome.  

Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude to look beyond the cracks in our lives — past all the things that have gone wrong; the loss; the hard days and hard people, in order to focus on abundance. It seems like an especially holy holiday without the distraction of consumerism, materialism, or gluttonous gift-giving. Besides the overused directive to count our blessings, there is something unmistakably gratifying about simply giving thanks that doesn’t require frustrating math like addition.  

What painted signs, embroidered pillows, and coffee mugs brimming with platitudes of gratitude fail to acknowledge is that often gratitude is the glue that holds us together. It’s the mercy of seeing redemption in our suffering and recognizing how acts of kindness have made a meaningful difference. Gratitude is a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s providence that we so often take for granted. It’s practicing patience towards family, friends, and neighbors despite the ways they may deeply hurt us. Gratitude is the reminder that cracks are merely an opportunity to create something stronger. They are battle scars that remind us that love can be imperfect and still wildly worthwhile.  

Gratitude Binds Us to One Another

What’s broken in and around us isn’t as significant as the way gratitude binds us to one another. It acknowledges the reality of our humanness, which is innately flawed, and still sees the beauty that exists. Gratitude is like the faded pink rose on my mother’s platter. It only looks more beautiful because of the cracks that surround it.  It reminds me of the verse from the Second Letter to the Corinthians:

For power is made perfect in weakness. I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses … For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9,10)

A testament to gratitude’s enduring strength is how it soothes even amidst the veiny fault lines of life. 

Most of us are blessed in ways that are too plentiful to absorb fully. Each breath is somehow a miracle out of which so many others flow. Each day is a chance to begin again, and every act of love changes lives. To gather together and know we are held even in our imperfection offers this world a bounty of hope for what’s possible when mercy for others is our highest call.  

The cherished platter has been glued back together again and returned to my mom. I don’t know what will eventually become of it. I only know that the glue that holds it together isn’t nearly as strong as the gratitude we celebrate and serve despite the inevitable cracks in our lives. For that, I am both thankful and stronger. 

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Copyright 2025 Lara Patangan
Images: Canva