I have fallen in love with a book.
This blog is not meant to be a book review blog, but every now and then I find a book that I just can't shut up about.
This one is called, One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp.
I don't read many blogs, but I read hers.
I have never, ever read a book published by a blogger, but hers I can not put down.
It haunts the recesses of my mind nearly every waking moment.
In a good way, a very, very good way.
She writes of (here I go, about to slaughter her beautiful book) living a thankful, purposeful life.
The sub title reads, A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are.
She talks of thanking God for his many, many gifts.
That may seem obvious.
What is not so obvious (at least it was not for me) was the idea of thanking God, even in our trials.
The hard ones.
The ones that seem impossible to bear.
She writes of witnessing the tragic death of her toddler sister when she was only a small girl when a delivery truck didn't see her toddling after a cat in the lane as he drove onto their quiet farm road.
She writes of her parents life after the accident, and her own, being closed to grace.
She says that in essence, sometimes we look at what God has given us and we accept the good things and gladly thank Him for them.
But when the bad things come we shake our heads and say no and ask why, and in so doing we seperate ourselves from God.
We accept the good, but not the bad.
We think we know better than God.
I think of my impossible trials.
I think of my grandmother, brutally murdered by a serial killer.
I think of how that tragedy destroyed my father.
Of how he turned to alcohol instead of our Savior.
I think of the ensuing devorce, the broken family and home that came in the wake of that horrible tragedy.
There was not much thanksgiving going on in those years.
There was, however, an abundance of bitterness and grief and pain.
But life is a gift, the good along with the bad.
I think of Corrie Ten Boom, author of The Hiding Place.
She was a survivor of the German concentration camps, yet she was Christian.
She and her family hid Jews in their home and were caught.
She and her sister endured things you and I could never imagine.
Her sister, Betsy, was forever kind and loving and, yes, even thankful.
She was thankful even amidst hell on Earth.
At one point in her book, Corrie writes of the horrible conditions in the 'dorms'.
They were horribly crowded and infested with fleas and lice.
Betsy told Corrie that they must thank God in EVERY situation!
Corrie was doubtful that God expected her to be thankful for the fleas.
But not Besty, she knelt down and thanked God for the fleas, the very scourge that made their skin crawl.
Later in the book, after Betsy had passed away, Corrie found out how much of a blessing the fleas really were.
Somehow, through all the strip searches, Corrie managed to smuggle a small part of the New Testament into the camp, an act that literally could have cost her life, along with the lives of her family.
Corrie ended up sick and unable to do the hard, physical labor of the camp, so she ended up sewing socks with other sick inmates in their dorms during the days, the one place in camp the guards never went.
During these days Corrie was able to take out her New Testament and read to her Jewish friends of Jesus Christ and to preach His gospel.
After many months of this she found out why the guards never came into the dorms.
Can you guess?
You got it, it was all because of the fleas.
Corrie learned to thank God for the fleas!
Is it not the same with our trials?
Aren't there things we learn and become that we never would be if it were not for them?
Shouldn't we thank God for them, accept them and learn and grow and move on?
Shouldn't we choose happiness, even in the most impossible of hard times?
Isn't that when we need to rely most on Him?
Isn't He the gardener, doesn't He know what to do to make us grow?
Perhaps He gives us these trials to get us to come to Him, to rely on Him instead of our own feeble attempts to do it all by ourselves.
Part of what changed Ann Voskamp was a dare from a friend to make a list of 1,000 things that she loved.
She learned to name her blessings and to purposefully see the hand of God in her life.
Ever since I read this, I have been mentally making my own list.
It happens as I live my life, this internal script of thanks.
It happens as I pick cherries and watch my children dance and play in the Summer sunlight.
Suddenly the love and gratitude seem to be flowing out of me and I can no more stop it than I can stop the flow of a waterfall.
They keep coming.
I need to write them down.
I need to never forget these moments, these memories, these gifts, these miracles.
Only it seems to me that there have got to be more than just one thousand.
It seems to me that I really never will come to an end of naming them all.
So here I go, my feeble attempt to thank God for this incredible, difficult, beautiful life that He has hand picked, just for me.
- Picking sweet and sour cherries, still warm from the morning sun
- Friends willing and happy to share their abundance
- Baby curls
- Ethan holding Lily on his lap, cheek against baby cheek
- Fairy dust
- Walks along the river when we just can't help but stop to dip our toes in
- And when I say toes I mean our whole selves up to our waists
- Children carrying chicken eggs in their shirt like a basket
- Children running around in swimsuits all day long
- Tree swings and hammocks
- The way my willow leaves wave and whisper in the wind
- Water balloons bulging fat in tiny hands
To be continued...
(every day of my life)
