A Simple Prayer of Gratitude This Thanksgiving

Hope beyond what I can muster.

Peace beyond what makes sense when the world is blowing up around me.

Forgiveness beyond what I can earn.

Love beyond what I can offer in my own strength.

And strength when I feel I have nothing left to give.

Thank you feels grossly inadequate and yet, so often, I don’t even find time for that.

We are so richly blessed and I don’t know about you, but I wreck that gift.  I tangle that up on a daily basis with my distraction.  In my busyness I hardly stop to take notice of the extraordinary blessing that abounds on every single corner if I will open my eyes, my heart and seek to see it.

That I was born here and not there.

That there are worries I may never face, fears I will never fight, pain I will never endure, simply because I was born on this soil, in this family, right here.

And yet I hardly notice.  Because, you know, I’m busy.

I mess this grace and gratitude thing up daily, friends, with my distraction.  I’m distracted and side-tracked, self-serving, self-seeking and so very underserving.  At the very least, the very least, I can offer up my humble thanks, my appreciation. The simplest prayer of gratitude.

Thank you for the hard moments, when I’m at the end of me because only then do I see even more of You.

Thank you for courage to do it again, to be faithful when it doesn’t feel like enough, doesn’t feel like it makes a difference.

Thank you for truth that is bigger than my emotions, resolve that is bigger than how I feel.

Thank you for faith that is bigger than fear.  You are always bigger than fear.

May we give thanks for courage and for hope.  May we give thanks for grace and for faithfulness, for truth and for beauty.  May we thank Him for tomorrows and whatever amount of health we have, for the smiles we get to see today.  One more day.  May we thank Him for frosty mornings, for family.

This year has been both a year of blessing and a year of hard for me.  A year of beauty and hurt wrapped up together.  Yours probably isn’t all that different.

I could never have written, would never have written, this one on my own.  But, God.  This has been a year of faithfulness like never before.  I am amazed, amazed, by how much we can see Him when we are willing to look. This is a year in which I will look back on as the beginning of so much.  More of Him, less of me.  Dying to self in hard places and maturing in ways I never knew I needed to.  Strength I never knew I had for things I never knew I would need it for.  This is what I’m thankful for, friends.

I’m thankful for Him.

We were never meant to do this alone.  There is no brave enough for that.  I had no idea this year was leading me here, but it doesn’t matter where the road is leading when your heart trusts fully in the One who is leading you.

I’m parking my heart there, throwing down roots in that very place.  Laying aside pride and insecurity, my will, my wants and humbly, at times weakly, saying,  I’m yours.

He is faithful, friends.  Always faithful.

And the very least we can be is thankful.

Tomorrow as we celebrate one of our country’s most beloved holidays, may we find even a few quiet moments to offer up our genuine thanks.  Not only for the neat and tidy, but for the challenging, the awkward and the trying, fully knowing He was there through it all. And if we are brave enough, may we find the courage to say, I’m yours.

Wishing you the Best Thanksgiving, EVER.