List of thanks (One Thousand Gifts)

So continuing in the "One Thousand Gifts" (Amy Voskamp) journey...she now asks the question, how do I live out eucharisteo practically?  How does she "lay it down under all of my days?"  \

She begins by making a list of gifts, many are just normal everyday things, but they are noticed...."maybe I don't even know they are gifts really until I write them down and that is really what they look like.  Gifts He bestows.  This writing down-it is sort of like....unwrapping love."  She writes one thousand and at the end of the day...."Well, if all these were gifts that God gives-then wasn't my writing down the list like....receiving.  Like taking with thanks."

She reads in Philippians 4 that Paul learned to be content, learned.  She realized she would have to learn to give thanks in all circumstances and the list could maybe teach her that over time...learn to be thankful no matter what...She also realizes that to name calls it into existence, recognizing it as a gift from God.  "In naming which is right before me, that which I'd otherwise miss, the invisible becomes visible."

I get this...the noticing.  The other day, I saw a woman sitting on a bench, I have seen her once before I believe she lives in a house by the ocean.  I wonder about her, the lost husband maybe she once walked with on this road as they stared at the waves together.  Later, I notice the man on another bench this time across from the post office, I am walking out and our eyes meet for a moment and I smile.  He has time to sit on a bench, at one time, he was bustling about.  We all have a life, a story to tell.  I don't want to pass these by, they seem important and they seem tied into the idea of giving thanks.  I think noticing is the first step in thanks and then we must say, thank you, for whatever it is in that noticing.

Ann feels the list of thanks ushers her into God's love for her and that is where change happens, in His love.  Thanksgiving brought her to this place. (of course reading her book offers much more but I hope to capture a bit of her words....)
She quotes Julian of Norwich:"This highest form of prayer is to the goodness of God...God only desires that our soul cling to him with all of its strength, in particular, that it clings to his goodness.  For of all the things our minds can think about God, it is thinking upon his goodness that pleases him most and brings the most profit to our soul."

She continues, "This gift list is thinking upon His goodness-and this, this pleases him the most!  And most profits my sown soul and I am beginning, only beginning to know it.  If clinging to His goodness is the highest form of prayer, then this seeing His goodness with a pen, with a shutter, with a word of thanks, these really are the most sacred acts conceivable.  The ones anyone can conceive, anywhere, in the midst of anything.  Eucharisteo takes us into His love...the only way to be a woman of prayer is to be a woman of thanks....life change comes when we receive life with thanks and ask for nothing to change.

Monday afternoon

Our beach in Carmel by the Sea...a 10 minute jog or 5 mintue car ride

Andrew was trying on some shoes in a department store and Anderson said, "Those shoes are terrific!"  He is such an encouraging little guy!

out with sis

Anderson really likes all that is surfing....his wet suit, the paddle, the board...

Bobo and Dada coming in....

Thinking about the wave he just rode in.....

I love when he is just out from the cold water...there is a freshness with the pink on his cheeks and the water on his hair..mmmm

silly one!

Seaweed, something different from our Maui beaches

She loves to create!

I was there too!

tired boy

I love the beach!!!

"Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones."  Proverbs 16:24

Anderson put his hand on my back as I was cleaning our our van and said, "You're a good mama."

Giving Thanks

I wanted to share some more words that spoke to me from "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp.  I have had a running current in my own mind of how do I want to live this life here, this side of heaven.  This came up also in our small group this week, I want to know Christians (myself included) who are living a full of freedom life.  I often look around and all I see in struggle.  I want to believe life can me more...all the time?  No....sometimes?  Yes!  Sometimes it is like when you look around for a good marriage and you are hard pressed to find one.  You want to see people who are living victoriously, that something is different when you belong to Jesus, a life changed...a full life.

Ann writes, "Which road through this brief land?  What is all most important?  How to live the fullest life here that delivers into the full life ever after?  .....-give me the details of how to live in the waiting cocoon before the forever begins?  Ann talks about how she saw a book about the 1,000 places to see before you die.  She wonders if she has to see all those places to be fulfilled and can she find it in her life, right where she is..."Isn't it here?  The wonder?  Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it?  Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur?  All my eyes can seem to fixate on are the splatters of disappointment across here and me."

I know I have lived in that space of wanting to experience the fullest "whatever" or have the "right" experience or the "moment" that marks.  Often it is in the everyday, I find the "most".

Ann explores how Jesus spent his last hours on earth.  He broke bread and gave thanks ("eucharisteo").  "The root word of eucharisteo is charis meaning "grace" and it also includes the word, Joy!  She asks the question, "Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?  As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible.  The joy wonder could be here.  The only place we need see before we die is this place of seeing God, here and now."

She continues, "Non-eucharisteo, ingratitude was the fall (humanity's discontent with all that God freely gives) then salvation must be intimately related to eucharisteo, the giving of thanks.  Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives.  To participate in His death with our own daily dying and give thanks for it.  She talks about the story in the Bible of the only leper who came back to thank Jesus and He says, "Your faith has made you well."  But he had already been healed.  "Sozo (greek word for saved thee)  Sozo means salvation, complete wholeness.  Jesus came that we might love life to the full."  The leper's faith had saved him, "And the leper's faith was a faith that said thank you...Our very saving is associated with our gratitude.  Thanksgiving-giving thanks in everything prepares the way that God might show us His fullest salvation in Christ."  Giving thanks in everything "prepares the way for God to show us His fullest salvation from bitter, angry, resentful lives and from all sin that enstranges us from Him.  And the miracle of eucharisteo never ends; thanksgiving is what precedes the miracle of salvation being fully worked our in our lives." 

I am still trying to work this out in my own head and heart, but it feels important.  Gratitude...a basis for Joy, a full life. 

Found these cutest small Mason drinking glasses with paper straws!  Love them!  The paper straws did not last, but were cute!  Just love when I find something I love!



Growing up

I looked and saw that Deveraux was stirring our bowl....and she wasn't on a chair.  She could reach on "tippy toes", of course, I had to run and get the camera. 
Oh growing up is so bitter sweet!

Often in the morning, I pray at the close of my run...I make somewhat of a "proclamation" on where my heart is landing.  Where I am feeling a lack...something like this...'I want to pour into Deveraux today" or "I want to "love my husband well today..."  Those are good.  Yet, it hit me the other day, that I want to start each day with, "Thy will be done".  Whatever that looks like and be willing to be led.  Sometimes the proclamation is what I think needs to be done, but I want to be more led than that and believe that His will is better than mine and I have more strength when I walk in His way.