Saying Thanks

I need to say thank you more than I do. Lots more.

Certainly, I want to help my kids develop a thankful, grateful spirit. That’s why we practice saying please and thank you and why we make them ask nicely instead of ordering other people around. 

But mostly, I just want to start saying Thank You way more often than I normally do. To take opportunities when they present themselves and to create them when they don’t just drop in my lap.

Like over Christmas. I spoke briefly with a former pastor at my parents’ church on Christmas day, and I took the moment to thank him, almost without intending to. Pastor Shearer was the assistant/youth pastor at our church growing up, and honestly, a huge portion of my faith’s foundation came from his influence: missions trips, memorized verses, Sunday school lesson after lesson after lesson. And now that I’m a parent, I desperately hope and pray for a similar gift for my kids, someone like Pastor Shearer to build into my kids’ lives, to help them build a rock-solid and biblical foundation that will last them for the rest of their lives. And so I thanked him.

Like delivering a meal to a friend with a new baby. This is a girl who gave me a particularly rare gift. Three years ago, we were both pregnant for the first time. She was due just a couple months before me. But her son was born still at about 30 weeks. And I delivered two healthy babies at 38 weeks just a few months later. But after the twins were born, she went in on a gift for our family with a mutual friend. She gave me a baby gift. Though her grief was still overwhelming, she chose to celebrate with me. Really, she gave me permission to celebrate. It took real humility and grace and faith to do what she did, and it was a kindness that I still feel deeply. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever written a more sincere thank you card than the one I wrote for that gift. So thank you, Andrea.

Like just humbly thanking Jess and Kristen and Gail and so many of my online friends. You listen to me whine and stress out and you remind me that I am not alone, that things are never as bad as they appear to be, that things will get easier. You give me words to describe my struggles so that I can understand my own life. And you do not judge my silliness and my stupidity and my failures. Thank you, to all of you, as well.

Yep…I need to say thanks. It’s good for me. And I hope to do it more regularly…online and in real life. I want to dwell more on the sweet gifts that I have been given and say thank you for them, instead of imagining that I somehow deserve all the blessings that God has poured into my life. Because I absolutely do not deserve them. And when that truth really grips my heart, I think gratitude will be the only possible outcome. Which would be a very good thing!

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