Advent WellBeing: A Gratitude Letter
Last Sunday, as the first notes of Advent music rose in worship, something unexpected stirred within me. I felt tears gathering—quietly at first, then with a steady insistence. It took only a moment to understand what my heart already knew: I was remembering someone who shaped my life in ways I had never fully named. Someone I had always meant to thank. Someone to whom I had long intended to write a letter of gratitude but never did.
For me the season of Advent has a way of thinning the veil between past and present, bringing forward the people whose presence formed us, stretched us, steadied us, or showed us something true about God and ourselves. Sometimes the remembering comes as warmth. Sometimes as ache. Always as invitation.
In his book Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier, Robert Emmons describes one of the most powerful wellbeing practices he has studied: the gratitude letter and gratitude visit. It is stunningly simple. And profoundly transformational.
Participants in a well-known positive psychology experiment at the University of Pennsylvania were asked to do just one thing: Write a letter of gratitude (about 300 words) to someone who had made a significant positive difference in their lives but had never been properly thanked. Then deliver it in person.
They were asked not to tell the recipient ahead of time—simply to call and ask if they could stop by. When they arrived, they read the letter aloud.
The results? Extraordinary. Increases in wellbeing, decreases in depression, greater feelings of connection, elevated mood that lasted weeks. Gratitude, when spoken directly, becomes a kind of light. It illuminates both the giver and the receiver. And Advent is a season when we watch for the light.
So I offer you this practice—not as another task in an already full season, but as a way of tending your own heart. A way of honoring the people whose fingerprints still rest on your life. A way of allowing gratitude to become a spiritual discipline, a healing companion, a quiet form of courage.
Here is the invitation:
Choose one person who changed your life in a meaningful way. Someone who encouraged, guided, challenged, or blessed you—and whom you never properly thanked.
Write the letter. Be specific. Tell the story of what they did. How it shaped you. Where you are now because of their influence.
Schedule a visit. Simply say, “I’d love to stop by for a few minutes.”
Read the letter aloud. Let gratitude have a voice.
This Advent, while we wait for the Light that cannot be hurried, perhaps you might offer a bit of light yourself. Write the letter. Make the visit. Give the gift that lingers long after the paper is folded and the words are spoken.
You may be surprised by how much healing such a simple act can hold.
Walking with you,
Vicki