Like many people in recovery, for various reasons, gratitude is sometimes an issue. If you're like me, it's more the issue of accepting compliments from others, without minimizing explainers attached in return, than it is being grateful for the outside world.
But, it can be both.
Anyway, recently, I realized in reflection that it was a problem for my dad on the other side. He just couldn't be grateful that often, or at least not publicly express it. I don't think it was an "older generation" thing of bottling up emotions as the primary cause. Rather, I think that it may have been a fear of looking psychologically weak and indebted, admitting he needed help at times (and had just gotten it) and related matters.
In specific, after he got his PhD at Concordia Seminary and was stuck with fill-in preaching because he didn't get a "call" to a Lutheran college, and also didn't get one to a Lutheran congregation, it was me that put a bug into the ear of a pastor visiting St. Louis that broke that logjam on the parish side. Yeah, Flint was already going downhill, but "East European ethnics" plus German-Americans in his congregation, it was a place he liked in many ways. Any thanks to me? Not that I recall.
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