Thankful: Remembering the Past

Published by christi on November 3, 2022

Many years we have kept a thankful journal during the month of November. Some years we have kept a continuous thankful list. Other years, just those around the Thanksgiving table recorded gratitude.

Re-reading some of them recently brought some tears and some giggles. Stick figures drawn by those too young to write (now parents of children too young to write) … long entries in my  father’s bold scrawl, and concise ones in my mother’s  cramped arthritic script…thanks recorded by others who are no longer part of our lives (for a variety of reasons) … thanksgiving for the car breaking down in the driveway rather than a long ways away, for warm blankets and jackets in a year when we had no heat, for gifts of flour and sugar when there were eight of us at home to cook for, for bargains at the shoe store, for the gift of exactly the amount of money needed to pay a specific bill (without any human communication about it),  for miraculous supply despite unemployment, for the “three-alarm”  Thanksgiving turkey (Our oven went into self-cleaning mode…three times.), for the gift of a new oven!

Many things have not happened as we might have wanted, but our ability to tell the difference between what we want and what we need is often warped and obscured. We are often like children who want a cookie when what they need is broccoli. (We are more likely to give thanks for the broccoli after we grow in our understanding of nutrition.)

If I only give thanks when I get just what I wanted, I would miss out on so many of God’s gifts! The discipline of giving thanks on the regular puts us in place to see God’s hand where we might have missed it. If we are not looking for Him, we often miss Him.

My “thankfuls” today include:

— a diagnosis of arthritis with bone spurs (thankful it does not require surgery),

— God’s promise to comfort and have compassion on our ruins and restore them to the status of life-giving and restorative places which gives me hope that we will be able to de-junk the spaces adequately,

— enough jalapenos and bell peppers growing in the garden to make and can a batch of salsa,

— quarts of fermented dill pickles in the fridge,

— chickens nearing the age of egg-laying (Waiting is the hard part!),

— sweet potatoes grown from the ones that were sprouting under the sink,

— a cloudy day to help newly transplanted “volunteers” adjust to their new places,

— tomatoes making a comeback,

— a family history of seeing God come through with His promises.

Following Jesus every day in the everyday,

Christi