Thankfulness

 

I am going to give you a few more from 1000 gifts list.

 

52. Chipmunk harmony!

55. text messages

57. bread on the floor – because we are wealthy enough to have bread.

58. sleeping babies

62. musical abilities of others

65. icy cold fingers from early springtime play

69. tables being cleared . . . slowly

70. dishes being washer . . . slowly

72. squeals and shouts – voices God gave

73. conversations . . . not hurried

77. Rayna correcting her own grammar!

82. wooden puzzles

86. vacuum cleaner bags

90. pillow journals

95. amazing garbage men

96. ice cold milk

97. Survivor night.

 

I’m almost to 100.  Seems to be slow going, like I should be more thankful than I am.  I guess it’s a process, right?

 

PS. gonna have to keep working on, gently, Jason in regards to the marathon.  He’s really not a fan.  Oh well, if not this year, there will be other years.

 

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Thankful Thursday

My 1000 gifts list is not growing very quickly, but I thought I'd share a few more with you.

37. a fixed water tank.
38. winter nights, with bright stars
41. online shopping!
42. lego
45. buzz cuts on boys
48. a clear desk
50. audiobooks
51. Rolo bites


Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Learning about being intentional

 I'm learning that if you want to make changes you really have to be deliberate about it.  I'm not being deliberate about what I want Saturdays to be for us.  I've had a couple of crazy busy weeks and I haven't used  my Fridays to the best of my advantage to set up and prepare for Saturday being a day of rest, a weekly sabbath.

My starting point for being intentional about Saturdays needs to be Friday afternoon.  Friday afternoon I need to get chores done, hot spots cleared, meals for the whole day prepped and cooked if possible.  I need to make sure everyone has the clothing they need for a couple of days.  I need the kitchen to be in shape.  Basically I need to do an extra days' work, so that I can come out ahead on Sunday.

Is that the focus of Friday?  Absolutely not.  The focus for Friday is preparing for a Special Guest.  I am preparing my home, my family and my heart for a day spent together, with one another, and with God.  I want my house to be tidy, clean, and ready for an appointed time spent with God.

My plan for meals is to make Friday night supper special, including a dessert.  Saturday breakfast I have not figured out yet.  At this point, I've been doing pancakes, but that requires me cooking, when I don't want to cook on Saturday.  Lunch can easily be sandwiches, or left overs.  Saturday supper will be a crock pot meal, that I just have to turn on Saturday morning.

 When I was speaking with my friend about this topic, she said that even though I'm not where I want to be, identifying the problem areas is half the battle.  And that's the truth.  So in the coming weeks, I plan to be intentional about keeping Friday and Saturday as clear of extras as I possibly can.

This last week (yesterday) I sat with the children at the table for Saturday supper (that doesn't always happen).  I asked them to tell me something they were thankful for.  I got a variety of responses.  I wouldn't let them say, "everything" or something vague.  I got "Christmas", "food", "my birthday", "the Wii", "fresh buns".  I plan to ask this question regularly.


Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

     Doubting God’s goodness, distrusting His intent, discontented with what He’s given, we desire . . . I have desired . . . more.  The fullest life.

     I look across farm fields.  The rest of the garden simply isn’t enough. It will never be enough.  God said humanity was not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  And I moan that God has ripped away what I wanted.  No, what I needed.  Though I can hardly whisper it, I live as though He stole what I consider rightly mine; happiest children, marriage of unending bliss, long content, death-defying days.  I look in the mirror, and if I’m fearlessly blunt – what I have, who I am, where I am, how I am, what I’ve got – this simply isn’t enough.  That forked tongue darts and daily I live the doubt, look at my reflection, and ask: Does God really love me? If He truly, deeply loves me, why does He withhold that which I believe will fully nourish me?  Why do I live in the this sense of rejection, of less than, of pain?  Does He not want me to be happy?

Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, Chapter 1

 

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Thankful Thursday

Here are a few more from my 1000 gifts list:

 

12.  Kristyn hitting the wind chime.

14.  drawers filled with clothes.

16.  tents in the living room

18.  frizzy ringlets, pretty girls

20.  dance mat typing

22.  dh bringing me coffee from the gas station!

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Angry versus Joy

I am continuing to read Ann Voskamp’s book, One Thousand Gifts, and here is another paragraph that hit a little too close to home, a little too close to my reality.

Really? I lay my head on the table.  Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love? That Satan’s way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily life than Jesus’ way?  Why else get angry? Isn’t it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want?  When I choose – and it is a choice – to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness?  Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective – more expedient – than giving thanks?

~~Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, p 126

 

Still diggin',

I started my list

I started a list of thanks.  I started a list naming the things God has given me.  I started a list of the little things that really are the BIG things in life.  I won’t always post.  I’m not going to keep a running list on my blog, but from time to time, I’ll post a few – sometimes here, sometimes on Digging Deeper.

 

1. baby brother’s belly laugh
2. gas in my bus
3. Scrabble with Kathryn B.
4. chubby baby fingers
5. a boy with his dog

I’m on a hunt.  I’m on a mission.  The challenge is to find 1000 things, one thousand gifts.  Will you take the challenge?  Will you find 1000 little things that God has given you?  Will you slow down life enough to notice these gifts of the now?  Will you name them and be thankful for them?

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Day Twenty-Four

“Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?”  I am reading One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  I am beginning to see that I may seem thankful, but really I just say it; I don’t live it.  I want joy but if it is tied to thankfulness than I am found lacking.

 

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Is she reading my mind? Is she living my life?

“Funny, this.  Yesterday morning, the morning before, all these mornings, I wake to the discontent of life in my skin.  I wake to self-hatred.  To the wrestle to get it all done, the relentless anxiety that I am failing.  Always, the failing.  I yell at children, fester with bitterness, forget doctors appointments, lose library books, live selfishly, skip prayer, complain, go to bed too late, neglect cleaning the toilets.  I live tired.  Afraid.  Anxious.  Weary.  Years, I felt it in the veins, the pulsing of ruptured hopes.  Would I ever be enough, find enough, do enough? But this morning, I wake wildly wanting to live.  Physically feeling it in the veins trembling, the hard pant of the lungs, the seeing it in the steady stars, how much I really want to really live.  How I don’t want to die.” 

~~Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, chapter 2.

Still diggin',

God’s Secretive Plan

From the very beginning, that Eden beginning, that has always been and always is, to this day, His secret purpose – our return to our full glory. Appalling – that He would! Us, unworthy. And yet since we took a bite out of the fruit and tore into our own souls, that drain hole where joy seeps away, God’s had this wild secretive plan.  He means to fill us with glory again. With glory and grace.

~~ Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, Chapter 1.

 

---

We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature,

but not the wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age,

who are coming to nothing. 

No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom,

a wisdom that has been hidden and that God

destined for our glory before time began.

1 Corinthians 2:6,7

 

 

 

Still diggin',

Day Twenty

 

Satan, he wanted more.  More power, more glory.  Ultimately, in his essence, Satan is an ingrate.  And he sinks his venom into the heart of Eden.  Satan’s sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve are, simply, painfully, ungrateful for what God gave. ~~Ann Voskamp, 1000 Gifts, Chapter 1

 

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

     Doubting God’s goodness, distrusting His intent, discontented with what He’s given, we desire . . . I have desired . . . more.  The fullest life.

     I look across farm fields.  The rest of the garden simply isn’t enough. It will never be enough.  God said humanity was not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  And I moan that God has ripped away what I wanted.  No, what I needed.  Though I can hardly whisper it, I live as though He stole what I consider rightly mine; happiest children, marriage of unending bliss, long content, death-defying days.  I look in the mirror, and if I’m fearlessly blunt – what I have, who I am, where I am, how I am, what I’ve got – this simply isn’t enough.  That forked tongue darts and daily I live the doubt, look at my reflection, and ask: Does God really love me? If He truly, deeply loves me, why does He withhold that which I believe will fully nourish me?  Why do I live in the this sense of rejection, of less than, of pain?  Does He not want me to be happy?

Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, Chapter 1

 

 

Still diggin',