How to be Close to God with Thanksgiving
Gratitude helps us experience God's presence, because there's unbelief in ingratitude. That is, we would be grateful if we didn't falsely believe that there was reason for us to be ungrateful. Ingratitude doesn't trust God's purview to allow what has already happened to us - whether in His decision to punish us, His children, or in His decision to allow us to be buffeted by the World.
Thankfulness believes God, and that belief allows our conscious closeness with Him.
I used to think that closeness with God was with my mind's or with my heart's focus, but I think about Him and I have pleasant feelings about Him as reactions to what I know of Him as I see Him working in my life, and that knowledge comes through belief with thanksgiving in prayer.