~Martin Luther
I started reading One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp over six months ago.
It has
never taken me that long to read a book, but I can say now that it has been worth it.
Ann's style of writing is fancier than mine,
so at first I thought
that might be the reason it was taking so long.
{I kind of felt at times like I needed to take a poetry class to understand some of her eloquent language.}
But, as I finished it up, I knew the real cause.
Her words, her story, they forced me to chew for a while before I could move on to the next chapter.
This
meal book was meant for me to digest slowly and not just rush through,
like I do so many other
meals books.
When I started reading it, I also started working on my own list of one thousand gifts.
Some days the list came easy, but other days I had to seriously stop and ponder on it.
This should have been
my first clue that the book, her words,
were going to pierce me and open up parts of me that needed to be cleaned out.
I'm six months into this, and I'm only on #393 in my list of one thousand gifts.
There have been many blog posts where I've even forgotten to mention things that I was grateful for.
This was my second clue.
Do you know why it has been such a struggle for me?
I'm home all day long most days.
I get up before the kids because I know that as soon as they're up, my day starts.
Most of my days look very similar to one another,
which makes it too easy for me to
not see them as anything
extraordinary.
I'm not trying to be a party pooper,
and I
promise I don't need you to remind me that these very ordinary days are indeed gifts.
I'm just saying that in my day to day operating, I struggle to see the ordinary as extraordinary.
It was actually the thing about the book that kind of annoyed me the whole way through.
{If I'm to be honest.}
Paragraph after paragraph and chapter after chapter, Ann would describe the gifts she saw
in her everyday occurrences.
She gave thanks for the opportunity to teach children in the midst of fights and quarrels.
She gave thanks for a sink full of dishes and baskets overflowing with laundry.
There were hundreds of things she was thankful for in her life, a thousand to be exact.
I could relate to being thankful for a field of flowers, the bright moonlight, a starry night,
fresh squeezed lemonade, family game nights filled with laughter & lunch with friends.
It was the things she was thankful for that I
couldn't relate to that found me completely annoyed.
She found a way to see the hardest parts of her day as gifts, too.
Say hello to my third clue.
I've learned enough about life to know that the things that annoy us the most are meant to teach us.
So, I set out to allow Ann's words and her list to teach me a thing or two
or a hundred.
Ann wrote on page 194 of the book::
"But, when Christ is at the center, when dishes, laundry, work, is my song of thanks to Him, joy rains. Passionatly serving Christ alone makes us the loving servant to all. When the eyes of the heart focus on God, and the hands on always washing the feet of Jesus alone---the bones, they sing joy, and the work returns to its purest state: echaristeo. The work becomes worship, a liturgy of thankfulness."
Mother Theresa said,
"The work we do is only our love for Jesus in action."
I can cook a meal for a family and invite them over.
I can serve food at a homeless shelter.
I can teach a class at VBS.
I love helping a friend work through issues.
I love serving people for a week or two on foreign land.
Keeping a friend's kids while she goes to the store or a doctors appointment is easy as pie for me.
These kinds of service are easier for me than the day in, day out mundane tasks.
Everyday work at home or in an office doesn't always give us that "feel good" feeling.
This book showed me how much I still have to learn about serving others, especially my family.
I have been refusing to see the gift in breaking up fights between my kids.
It annoyed me because I was refusing to see the gift in hardship.
It annoyed me because I didn't want to see the gift in chronic back/hip pain.
Explaining to your kids why they shouldn't complain at the dinner table doesn't feel like a gift.
I've been serving my family for a long while now out of my own strength.
{Which explains why it hasn't seemed like a gift.}
I haven't been serving them out of my love for Christ and his service to me.
Love God. Love Others.
And, it always starts at home.
Thank you, Holy Spirit... {& Ann Voskamp}
The book was amazing, and I hope you'll take two weeks or six months to read it!
{thankful for}
394. math with the boys this morning and the teaching moments that it brought. :)
395. time with a friend this afternoon.
396. leftover chinese chicken lo mein with Lydia.
397. the ten games of UNO that I've played in the past 6 hours.
398. a good walk in the neighborhood before the rain came.
399. remembering to take my vitamins today!
400. Jesus, my perfect example of servanthood.
401. a surprise candle in the mail from Kourtney!!
