Thank God First, Then Make the Call You Are Dreading

The season I did not want to talk about

A few years back I went through a stretch where everything felt like it was sliding. Work was shaky. Money was tight. I had a few calls I needed to make and kept not making them. A call to a guy I owed an answer. A call to somebody I had let down. A call to a family member I had been avoiding because I did not know what to say.

Every morning I would wake up and the first thing on my mind was the phone. And every morning I found a reason not to pick it up. The dread got bigger the longer I waited. You know how that goes.

I am not going to pretend I handled it well. I did not. I was short with people. I slept badly. I prayed, but my prayers were mostly a list of things I needed fixed. Help with this. Fix that. Get me out of here.

What changed

One morning, I do not know why, I started differently. Instead of asking for anything, I just said thank you. Thank you for the coffee. Thank you for my son sleeping safe down the hall. Thank you that I have a phone and people on the other end of it. Thank you that this is a hard season and not a hard life.

It was not a long prayer. Maybe a minute. But something loosened. The dread was still there, but it was not the biggest thing in the room anymore. The biggest thing was a quiet sense that I was not alone in this, and that I had more than I had been counting.

Then I picked up the phone and made the first call. It went fine. Not great. Fine. The man was gracious. The thing I had built up for two weeks took eleven minutes.

Why thank you first

Here is what I think happens, and I say this as a regular guy and not a preacher. When you start with help, you are starting from empty. You are telling yourself the story that you are short, you are stuck, you are in trouble. That story makes every call heavier.

When you start with thank you, you are starting from full. Not because things are perfect. Because you are looking at what is actually there instead of what is missing. And from full, the hard call is just a call. It is a thing you do, not a thing that happens to you.

I also think God likes it better. I do not know that for sure. But I know that when my son comes to me grateful before he comes to me asking, I am a lot more ready to listen. Maybe it works the same way up the line.

The habit I kept

That season ended, like seasons do. But I kept the habit. Every morning now, before I ask for anything, before I look at my list, before I check the phone, I say thank you for three things. Out loud if I can. It takes a minute.

Then I look at the hardest thing on my list and I do it first. The dreaded call. The awkward email. The conversation I would rather skip. Thank you first, then the call. Every day.

Some days the call still goes badly. That happens. But I notice I handle it better. I am not making the call from a place of fear. I am making it from a place of having already counted my blessings, and a bad call cannot take those away.

If you are in a hard season, I am sorry. I know what it feels like to wake up with the weight already on your chest. I am not going to tell you it will all be fine, because I do not know that.

But I will tell you this. Before you ask for help today, say thank you for something small. Then pick up the phone. The call is probably shorter than the dread. And you are probably stronger than you think, because somebody is holding you up even when you cannot feel it.

Say thank you before you say help. It changes the call, and it changes you.