Thankful today...for beauty

Numbering some gifts
on a beautiful almost-spring day...
• Hiking along an ancient creek
(with dearly loved ones)

• Cooking with Jesse and Jessica...

• Close friends crowded around a table
filled with good things...
• Words that bring conviction...
• Enough...
• And in my backyard...a pear tree,
blooming white...a promise of spring...

• And bright bits of yellow...

• And lush, soft green...

• A bright new rug, welcoming at the back door...

• Cut flowering branches,
bringing spring indoors...

...wishing you a grace-filled almost-spring day...

Counting gifts on the farm...

It's almost-spring and in addition to getting ready to plant hundreds of acres of corn and cotton, we're experimenting with a little garden spot. On this gorgeous almost-spring day, I counted gifts...

119. The good, dark earth.

120. Jesse...every day...

121. The promise of fresh veggies...


121. A beautiful tree...budding...

122. Gorgeous blue skies...

123. Unexpected beauty...in the weeds...

Yes, these are weeds. Hen bit to be precise. A very bad weed when it's encroaching on your crops, but, when you take a closer look...

...it's really beautiful. Finding beauty in the weeds...like looking for the gift in the not-so-beautiful times of life...


(Oh, and one more for fun!)


124. A soft, gray, sleeping farm cat...

Counting gifts...

Still working on counting gifts...receiving all as grace. (See this post for more explanation!) On Mondays, I'm joining a group of others in sharing some of the gifts I'm thankful for in this season. I'd love to know what you're counting today!

104. Young mothers.
105. Baby slobber.
106.Cool, smooth sheets.
107.Wisdom for the moment.
108. Truck naps.
109. Velvety soft cat paws.
110. Breezy days, open windows.
111. Church potluck.
112. Sweet goodbyes...

"Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are...a divine choice..." Henri Nouwen

"Count blessings and discover Who can be counted on..." Ann Voskamp

*Confession - I feel compelled to confess that I'm struggling somewhat in this discipline of practicing eucharisteo - naming gifts, giving thanks, receiving grace and joy. I have a tendency to rack up a spiritual "to do" list, as though checking boxes off a list will please God. (Crazy, right? Is this a firstborn thing or a Type A personality thing? I do not know!) Anyway, I don't know who is reading this or why I felt the need for a little "full disclosure," but I don't want to give the false impression that I have a "handle" on anything...I'm just struggling...looking for grace in the moments...trying to be fully present, truly thankful, resting in God's wildly unreasonable love for me...

One thousand gifts...

I've been putting off this post...intimidated somehow. I've read a book that is so poetic and so life-changing that writing about it makes me feel completely inadequate.

The book is One Thousand Gifts - A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp and it has taken my breath away. In a nutshell, Ann, a Canadian farm wife, accepted a dare to record 1000 things she loves - 1000 gifts from God. The process became a hunt for the beautiful in the every day - and a deepening awareness of God's love expressed in the microscopic and the magnificent.

The heart of the book lies in discovering and understanding eucharisteo - a word used to describe Jesus' giving of thanks hours before his death. "He gave thanks" - eucharisteo. The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning grace. As Ann writes, "Jesus took the bread, and saw it as grace and gave thanks. He took the bread and knew it to be gift and gave thanks."

Ann continues, "Eucharisteo - thanksgiving, includes the Greek word for grace, charis, but also holds its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning joy...is it that simple? Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?"

The entwined threads of grace, thanksgiving and joy form the refrain of the book - a deep searching for deepest communion with God by simply receiving all as gift - the beautiful and, sometimes, the ugly-beautiful, because...well, life is hard.

So, I accepted the dare, took up pen and began my own hunt for the gifts - not always profound or poetic or spiritual - but gifts -- all gift, all grace. It's a discipline, this search for grace, this giving of thanks. Ann quotes Erasmus (as I...um...often do...) "A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit." The habit of ingratitude - or just inattention -- must be driven out by a habit of eucharisteo.

I love her repeated refrain, backed up with Scripture after Scripture - "Eucharisteo precedes the mirace." So, in the middle of a mess, in the middle of chaos or tragedy, can I look for the gift? Can I accept all as grace and expect the miracle? The miracle of joy...of love? Recounting the gifts is receiving God's love and returning it in thanks and praise - the joy results because this is what we were created for.

Far too often, I have (as Ann says) "slapped a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life, which left me deeply thankful for very few things." In the naming, the counting, we experience the joy.

"Do not disdain the small. The whole of life - even the hard - is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole," Ann writes.

Okay, I could quote the whole book, but I won't...I encourage you to read it. These are just glimpses of the first three of eleven startling chapters. I leave you with one more passage, then a few of the gifts I'm thankful for...

"And this, this is the only way to slow time: When I fully enter time's swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here. I can slow the torrent by being all here. I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment...Giving thanks for one thousand things is ultimately an invitation to slow time down with the weight of full attention...it's not the gifts that fulfill, but the holiness of the space. The God in it...thanks makes now a sanctuary."

My list (now at 87) includes...

warm bread, fresh from the oven (and real butter!)

...coffee, prepared by Jesse...

...flannel pajamas...and a freshly-made bed...

...family...and family photos, sweet company in an empty nest...

...a favorable wind...texts from my kids...rain-soaked fields...stars in a clear, black sky...empty laundry baskets...a fragment of time to read in the truck...rain on tin roof...leftovers...

My Scripture memory for the first two weeks in February reflects this season of learning:

"Pray diligently.
Stay alert with eyes wide open in gratitude."
Col. 4:2

For the rest of February, I'm also focusing on thanks:

"At all times and for everything,
giving thanks
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
to God the Father." Eph. 5:20

I find myself literally adopting a posture of hands lifted, open, as I look with new eyes for the gifts all around me. I'm accepting the dare to live fully, right where I am.