I am grateful. I mean it. Truly, truly grateful. Unfortunately, I forgot it for awhile. And chances are, I will forget it again at some point in the near future. But right now, in this moment, I am grateful. For the big blessings, beauty in the natural world, the gift of love, all the little things, and even the hard stuff. This isn't an easy place to get to when you are feeling ungrateful. Sometimes it takes great intention and effort to find gratitude in the everyday. It helps when someone else points it out.
Ann Voskamp writes about the idea of practicing eucharisteo in her book One Thousand Gifts. And the more I listen to people talk--myself included--the more I realize that the practice of giving thanks in our words and actions on a daily basis seems to be absent in our culture. And I have to ask, if we aren't expressing that thankfulness on the outside, do we even feel it at all? Please understand that when I am using the collective WE, I mean specifically, myself. Me. I have spent the past couple of weeks feeling pretty ungrateful. So I started looking for a way out of it and I began to notice that when we don't speak with gratitude, the only other option is a lack of gratitude. Most of what we are privileged to call problems, are nothing more than inconveniences at best. Ask the rest of the world. We've just lost perspective.
It is only in the hard eucharisteo that I am learning once again, to count the smallest things as blessings. And maybe I need to stop complaining and get a grip. Or a sense of humor. Or remember that I am not the center of the universe. I need to lighten up and look around. I need to be reminded. And when I feel perspective slipping away, I go spend some time with James and Nicole. There are bigger problems in the world than the barista getting my order wrong. Maybe I just need to learn to thirst again. I think it is probably safe to say that when Jesus called us to take up our cross, He wasn't talking about a grande nonfat caramel macchiato with one splenda.
Ann Voskamp writes about the idea of practicing eucharisteo in her book One Thousand Gifts. And the more I listen to people talk--myself included--the more I realize that the practice of giving thanks in our words and actions on a daily basis seems to be absent in our culture. And I have to ask, if we aren't expressing that thankfulness on the outside, do we even feel it at all? Please understand that when I am using the collective WE, I mean specifically, myself. Me. I have spent the past couple of weeks feeling pretty ungrateful. So I started looking for a way out of it and I began to notice that when we don't speak with gratitude, the only other option is a lack of gratitude. Most of what we are privileged to call problems, are nothing more than inconveniences at best. Ask the rest of the world. We've just lost perspective.
It is only in the hard eucharisteo that I am learning once again, to count the smallest things as blessings. And maybe I need to stop complaining and get a grip. Or a sense of humor. Or remember that I am not the center of the universe. I need to lighten up and look around. I need to be reminded. And when I feel perspective slipping away, I go spend some time with James and Nicole. There are bigger problems in the world than the barista getting my order wrong. Maybe I just need to learn to thirst again. I think it is probably safe to say that when Jesus called us to take up our cross, He wasn't talking about a grande nonfat caramel macchiato with one splenda.
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