GOODBYE, HELLO...THANKFUL

I wanted to write a post yesterday with reminiscences of the year just past...but life was big yesterday and the post did not happen. Today: first day of a brand new year. It promises to be a year of fresh opportunities and exciting changes.

The house is winding down after a day filled with rambunctious kids, mega-cooking, and daily chores. The adult children are tucking the grandchildren into bed, and I finally have a quiet moment to myself. Curled on the couch in front of a toasty fire, I am tired...and so very thankful.

To close out 2024 and welcome 2025, here is a list of things I am thankful for this wintry evening:

I am thankful that God is faithful when others are not, that He loves me unconditionally, and that He is big enough to handle my questions and my fears. He is so, so good.

I am deeply thankful for the beautiful, thoughtful, passionate and compassionate people who are my family. It blows my mind that I get to be counted as one of their number. They are my favorite people in the world.

I am thankful for The Aunties, my soul-sisters who love me unconditionally and point me consistently to Christ and with whom conversation is always easy. Every life-giving moment spent with you is sweet and precious.

I am thankful for a wonderful next-door neighbor. Thank you, dear friend, for the adventures, weekly movie nights, frequent "therapy" sessions, and all your help doing life during a challenging season.

I am inexpressibly thankful for the many hospice patients I was blessed to serve this past year and for their families. I am no longer working as a hospice nurse, but not a day passes that I don't think of one or more of these dear souls with warm affection. I am so deeply grateful for the privilege of walking with them right up to the veil.

I am thankful for a new and very different job working with a tremendous team of talented, compassionate, and fun healthcare providers. I have patient, good-natured teachers, and I am learning so much. I am excited to go to work each day. I absolutely love it.

I am thankful for a noisy, lively house that once again has craft things strewn over the table, toys in the floor, chickens in the yard, and a dog waiting eagerly at the door.

A SOFT NOVEMBER MORNING

It's a soft, gray, mizzly day here at the farm. The air is cool and moist. Crows cackle in the trees behind the house and a soft drip-drip-drip plashes lazily from the roof edge into a rain-soaked trench below.

I could use more mornings like this.

Mom and I are staying home from church this morning. Mom had another one of her crash-&-bounce-back, cheat-death-again episodes yesterday. She is fine today, but she is tired.

Yesterday, we also celebrated the quickly approaching arrival of the newest member of our family. In the span of two weeks, I will have spent a weekend of fervent prayer in the hospital, applied my nursing training to revive an unconscious parent, and attended a baby shower, a wedding, and a funeral. Oh, and I also worked, bought groceries, cooked meals, did laundry, changed bed linens, and all the usual stuff.

It is lovely today to have a pause, a quiet day at home, a sabbath.

It's been a couple of crazy weeks since I last posted here at the blog. I tried to keep my once-weekly commitment - actually have two unfinished drafts from those silent weeks - but, you know, life. Both of my aging parents have commented to me recently - and I agree - "Life is so ridiculous!"

My mind is not clear enough this morning to write a well-thought-out post - am still processing so many emotions and needs and uncertainties - but I want to write something, if only to prevent two silent weeks at the blog from rolling into three. And so...

Today, I am sharing a few things for which I am thankful.

I am thankful I have a job that doesn't leave me completely emotionally and physically exhausted at the end of each day. I am thankful for a reliable car and a paycheck that allows me to put gas in the tank so that I can drive to a hospital two hours away. I am thankful for supportive co-workers, faithful friends, and precious family who check on me and who pray for me when I am anxious.

I am thankful for a son-in-law who loves my sweet daughter so very, very well, and for his gracious, kind, generous parents who love her like their own. My heart is overwhelmed at the goodness of God shown to my family through every single one of the in-laws He has given us.

I am thankful for my nursing education and work experience; thankful that a health crisis triggers a trained response instead of panic; thankful that "head down, feet up" is a reflex and I know how to "use my levers [bones]" to lift and transfer a large, unconscious person.

I am thankful that even though I STILL do not have anything to wear to this wedding on Friday, I know I will be welcomed no matter what I show up wearing, it will be a joyful celebration, and I have already been promised a dance.

And I am thankful for this quiet day at home and a slow, soft morning on the porch swing. (I think of you, Katherine, every time I sit here. Thank you!)

THANK YOU

Over a decade ago, a friend gave me a copy of Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are. Thus began my journey of recording daily small gifts to develop and strengthen the discipline of gratitude.

As I engaged with Ann's book all those years ago, I wrote this: "Ann began a study of prayers of thankfulness in Scripture. What she found surprised her. Prayers of sincere gratitude were often recorded in the midst of - or just preceding - great trial or distress. This puzzled her. Ann's study - and her resolution to fill a notebook with '1,000 gifts' - led her to discover that she had been understanding joy backwards. She had thought that joy came first, that true gratitude and thankfulness to God were based on, were the fruit of, his tangible blessings in this world. On the contrary, Ann found that it is thankfulness that produces joy." (You can read an ancient post about "One Thousand Gifts" HERE.)

Fast forward, oh, five or six years. Another friend gifted me blank journal and challenged me to "write down five things each day you are thankful for." I already had a "thankful notebook," so I decided to use the new journal to record instances of the clear hand of God in my daily life.

Things like a flat tire on a busy four-lane highway, a prayer for help, and the immediate arrival of a family member - "I thought that looked like you!" - who cheerfully changed the tire in less than 15 minutes.

Things like a fearful plea that God would get me safely to my destination on my first-ever solo international flight, which required changing planes in a foreign country - and the young man who sat in front of me on the airplane leaving Chicago, who, after brief conversation, exclaimed, "Oh, I am going to Kigali, too! We have the same connecting flight in Brussels. Stay with me, Auntie, and I will get you exactly where you need to be!" His name was Immanuel.

Ten+ years after reading One Thousand Gifts, I no longer log small gifts daily into a spiral notebook, and that first journal documenting God's interventions and provision is tucked between other journals on a shelf. Thankfulness today has become much more a way of thinking than an exercise with pen and paper.

I am a morning person, typically waking long before my alarm sounds as the sky fades from black to deep indigo. Used to, my first thought of the day was worry as cares of the coming day crashed in on me before my eyes were even fully open. Nowadays, my first thought is usually, "Thank you."

Thank you, Father, for the glittering morning star.

Thank you for light rising on the eastern horizon.

Thank you for this quiet moment before the day begins.

Thank you for the Carolina Wren singing outside my window.

"Thank you" has become a morning routine, a habit. It's just what happens when I wake up.

And for that, I am so very thankful indeed.

* * * * *

"Thank you" - these are literally the first words that pop into my mind when I wake up most mornings. (Oh, to be clear, I will have much less pleasant thoughts as the day progresses, but the day really does typically start with "Thank you.")

About a month ago, something very weird happened: I woke to an entirely different thought. Thank you has become so "normal" that when this different phrase popped into my slowly waking mind, it startled me.

I blinked. I looked around the room, wondering if someone else had spoken, but no one was there. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

Again, clear as wren song: "I love you."

I hardly dared to breathe. Who had spoken? Where had this come from?

I never figured out if "I love you" was spoken from my heart to God - I do love him - or if it was spoken from my Father to me, but I eventually decided to settle on the latter. Perhaps it was both.

Thank you, Father. Thank you.