Raining Gifts

I went a whole week without counting gifts. I made it into July, faithfully naming  God's graces daily, all the way to #813. And I kinda fell off the wagon... I got busy and way distracted and some days it didn't even cross my mind.

The smell of rain always reminds me, though. And today, we got a summer rainstorm. I heard the fat drops smacking our metal AC window units and ran to let the dogs in before they got soaked. My son immediately asked for his rain coat and boots because when God gives us puddles, we splash in them. I dressed him and as I opened the door, I breathed in that damp earth smell. The smell of life. Immediately, I grabbed my book, my little book of gifts, scratched out and scrawled, day-by-day.

And I wrote:

• Rain -- J in it, puddles, the sound and smell
• Sliding down the wet slide -- "Clean shorts?"
• The smell of coffee and rain that reminds me of honeymooning in Scotland

The first gifts I'd written in a whole week. I could hardly believe it. We played and cleaned up and as I finished my coffee, I thought: in one single moment, God gifts us immeasurably. I picked out the gifts from one moment and they could not be contained, not even in my mind.

• The rain. God sends literal life-water over all the earth, growing crops, nourishing the creation. Rain is provision. It is our survival, our continuing. Today, it cooled and watered and allowed for growth.
• My son. He sends out joy like rays of sunlight. He lives right in the moment, fully present and aware and so curious. He ushered me into motherhood which God has used as a mighty tool of sanctification in my life.
• Our home. A summer rain is fun for us, an escape, a place to play. We come inside, dripping and muddy, and we have our shelter. The storm is not an inconvenience, not something to be hidden from, and it is not lost on me how very blessed we are.
• Cleansing. No other water drenches quite like a downpour. The fat drops smack you and make even your bones feel wet. This is the closest we'll ever get to the physical feeling of redemption.
• Play. Play requires time and freedom and space. It requires a clearing, and we have the luxury of that place. We have margin in our days and we spend it on joy.

This hardly scratches the surface. The more I think, the more I see. And I know, every moment I breathe is filled like this. Every moment my heart beats is bursting open with gifts from God.

I missed a whole week of moments, a whole week of gifts. And it's not that I didn't live them; I did! I was there. I drank joy. But I didn't take the time to slow and see. I didn't open my eyes to the presence of God in those moments. Mostly, I didn't take the time to say, "Thank you, Lord." The longer I go without remembering God in my moments, the more I start to think the moments are mine, of my own making and for my own design. But they aren't. They aren't when I remember and they aren't when I forget. All the moments are God's moments and all the gifts are God's gifts and they are all meant to point our eyes to the Giver, to remember and give thanks.

Receiving to Give

This is my tenth post in a series on Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts. Each post will cover one of the eleven chapters of this book on seeing God and learning how to live fully... right where you are. Each post will be tagged 05/2014 and One Thousand Gifts. All quotes in italics are from the book.

Chapter 10: Empty to Fill

I suppose you could think of this counting gifts thing as a type of hoarding. Gathering up all the moments and scooping them in close to keep -- mine, mine, mine. But God didn't make it that way. The incredible thing about gifts from Him is that they are never only for you. The money He blesses you with, the joy He fills you with, the patience and gratitude and love and gentleness -- even the blessing of the sacrifice of Christ, it is yours, it is for you -- "This is my body, which is given for you" -- but it is not yours alone. Treasuring it, reflecting on it, keeping it close, it is a kind of joy hoarding, but it is also the kind of gift that fills you to overflowing. It is the kind of gift that will undo you so far that you cannot help but share. And suddenly the burden of your joy is to bring joy to others, to share the joy you know.

Chapter 10 is about giving.

"Eucharisteo is giving thanks for grace. But in the breaking and giving of bread, in the washing of feet, Jesus makes it clear that eucharisteo is, yes, more: it is giving grace away. Eucharisteo is the hand that opens to receive grace, then, with thanks, breaks the bread; that moves out into the larger circle of life and washes the feet of the world with that grace."

We started off here seeing the sermon of our lives. Who you are, what you do, it preaches everything about you. It tells the world what you truly believe. And in this searching for life, searching to live the message we want to preach, we named the mysteries and we redeemed time and we learned about the true grace that God gives in all things (yes, really, all things). We started to learn how to see God around us, to focus  on Him, and to learn how to trust Him. We changed our positions from one of worthy demanders to one of humble receivers. It makes us different. We cannot be the same.

If all is grace, then all is gift, and all we have is not ours. Our stuff, our money: God's. Our children, our loved ones: God's. Anything good in us -- love, patience, peace, joy: God's. And He has graciously given, lavishly bestowed. But these are things that cannot be fist-clenched into security. You cannot lock them in a closet and throw away the key, sure to have them forever and always. Every moment of your time with them is continuing grace from God. And the reason for the giving is, what? To bring glory to God. God gives to you that you might give to Him. And we give to Him through our praise, but we also give to Him by giving to others. "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:40) When we feed and clothe and visit those who need us, we are serving Jesus, and it is no coincidence that this passage comes right after the Parable of the Talents, after words considering what you will do with what you have been given. 

"Passionately serving Christ alone makes us the loving servant to all. When the eyes of the heart focus on God, and the hands always on washing the feet of Jesus alone -- the bones, they sing joy, and the work returns to its purest state: eucharisteo. The work becomes worship, a liturgy of thankfulness... Spend the whole of your one wild and beautiful life investing in many lives, and God simply will not be outdone. God extravagantly pays back everything we give away and exactly in the currency that is not of this world but the one we yearn for: Joy in Him."

When you look into the eyes of any person and say, "You are gift to me from God Himself," you cannot help but love them. And that love compels you. This person is more than a mouth to feed or a body to clothe; this person is a soul and a spirit and a flame to nurture. They are not a someone in and of themselves, but rather a vessel, an image of God. And even in the most difficult situations any one person could find themselves in, they can be blessed by God... through you.

How do we do this? How do we make this real and move it beyond words and thoughts and heart-tuggings? Well, good question. This living to give, this reflection of the gift-giver, will look different for all of us. My momma life forces me to confront this every day. Every day, I give my time and my love and my patience and my joy to two sweet little people. And in the tantrums and the giant messes and the frustrations, I remind myself to see through the tears and attitudes and see Jesus there. As I rock and wipe and wash and mend, I remember: all is grace, even this. All is gift, even this. And I remind myself...

"Jesus Christ still lives with a towel around His waist, bent in service to His people... in service to me, as I serve, that I need never serve in my own strength."

I'm not alone. I'm not fighting for joy by myself. I'm not mustering up gifts to give from the pits of my heart. I am serving Christ. And as I serve, I am being served and the cycle just keeps on turning, giving and giving and giving, emptying myself to be filled again. And every time I think that I can't possibly give one more moment, one more grace, one more drop of anything, Jesus turns my water into wine and there I am again, receiving and, in turn, giving. And the deeper beauty of this reliance on Jesus is that then, my children, the ones I serve, do not see me in all my strength, but rather Christ. My very service to them points their eyes to the One I serve.

"I reach out and touch the reflection in the splattered mirror over the sink and whisper into those eyes: Yes, today, again, yes, you can bless! Here you can enact euchariesteo; here you can become a current in a river of grace that redeems the world! ... God can enter into me, even me, and use these hands, these feet, to be His love, a love that goes on and on forever, endless cycle of grace."

We have to be reminded. Just as we have to be reminded of all the gifts we have been given, we have to be reminded of all the gifts we can give. We have to return to God daily, preaching to ourselves these truths. And God, the God who gave us life in Christ, is faithful. He is faithful to use even the hardest days to bring glory to Himself. "You received without paying; give without pay." (Matthew 10:8) We have been so richly given, and now we give, not from the energies of our own hearts and bodies, but from the sustenance of God through Christ.

My own words keep ringing in my head: "Whatever life you lived today? It was from God." And I think, Really? This? Sometimes it feels so small, so insignificant. No one sees half (or way more) of the things I do; how can this be from God? How can this be important enough for Him to see, to care about? Maybe all you accomplished today was not yelling at your friend. Maybe all you accomplished was finishing that one little thing at work. Maybe every last thing you did today has already been undone. (All the parents of littles are raising their hands.)

Here's the thing: The life you lived today was from God, whatever it held, however it felt, whatever you did. Whatever that day brings, it holds people you can bless, no matter whether the world says they are unworthy, whether the world says you are unworthy. Newsflash: we are all unworthy and yet God gives and gives and gives... and so should we.

Tune back in on Thursday, 5/29, for my post on Chapter 11: The Joy of Intimacy

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Building Trust

This is my eighth post in a series on Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts. Each post will cover one of the eleven chapters of this book on seeing God and learning how to live fully... right where you are. Each post will be tagged 05/2014 and One Thousand Gifts. All quotes in italics are from the book.

Chapter 8: How Will He Not Also?

Chapter 8 is about trust.
 

I read this chapter on a Saturday evening and the words were still ringing in my head the next morning as I drove my kids to church. Trust. Hard fought for among people and so easily lost, but I couldn't help think about all the things we trust implicitly. How we trust the world. I became keenly aware of the 3000+ pound vehicle I strapped my precious blessings into, this metal, plastic, rubber structure that I press the pedal to 70 miles an hour and there they are behind me, just sitting and smiling. And I take us in that metal box under a concrete overpass, rock hanging above us in the sky. How much trust does that require? I'm willingly, knowingly bringing my children under a weight that would break any vehicle it fell on. I'm trusting that our van drives smooth, that the doors don't fly off, that the tires don't explode, that the overpass hangs up there in the sky like it was meant to do and always has, but I'm trusting that it will keep on keeping on.

Have you ever gone to sit in a chair and thought, I wonder if this thing will hold me. Maybe once or twice on your grandmother's 70 year old dining room chair, but I'd hazard a guess that 99% of the time, you don't give it a second thought. It's the classic Philosophy 101 thought exercise, but I don't care; it has implications. I trust that the chair will hold me because of all the times I've ever sat in a chair, it held me. My experience tells me that chairs hold. My lifetime of chair sitting has preached to me that chairs are reliable and I don't have to think before I sit in them because they will do what they always do: hold.

"Without an active, moment-by-moment trust in the good news of an all-sovereign, all-good God, how can we claim to fully believe? ... Anything less than gratitude and trust is practical atheism."

I may trust chairs. I'd guess most of the world does (except for perhaps the two people I know who have broken a chair they sat in... imagine their trust issues!). I may trust chairs, but I'm far less trusting of God. And when you think about it, my implicit trust in the function of my chair should be way less automatic than my implicit trust of God. But I have fuzzy vision. I lack focus.

When I tune the eyes of my heart in, I can list you thousands of ways that God has protected me, some of them from before I ever acknowledged Him with my lips. Thousands. Maybe more, but I wouldn't have the time or memory to count. This is certainly a track record worth trusting, a lifetime of gift and provision and protection and love. Why is it so hard for me to trust God when it is so easy for me to trust a chair?

"If trust must be earned, hasn't God unequivocally earned our trust with the bark on the raw wounds, the thorns pressed into the brow, your name on the cracked lips? How will He not also graciously give us all things He deems best and right? He's already given the incomprehensible."

It's so easy to see when you look into the face of Christ. Of course God will give us all things. He already gave us Jesus. Even if that was it, the only gift, the only blessing, it shatters any doubt we could ever have about how much God loves us. And if we truly do not doubt His love, we can have the greatest, most fabulous, most wonderful trust in Him. He has far and beyond earned our trust, but we have to work to build it in our own hearts. 

"Thanks is what builds up trust... Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks. Remembering frames up gratitude. Gratitude lays out the planks of trust. I can walk the planks - from known to unknown - and know: He holds."

We build up our trust of God when we thank Him. We extend the hand of gratitude and we learn to appreciate, to see God around us, and slowly, slowly we start to believe in Him. And we build a belief that we can stand on, a belief like the one I have in the chair I'm sitting in, one that is automatic and implicit.  

"This is the crux of Christianity: to remember and give thanks, eucharisteo. Why? Why is remembering and giving thanks the core of the Christ-faith? Because remembering with thanks is what causes us to trust - to really believe."

We look back on all the times God has cared for us, loved us, showered us with grace, and we grow our trust. We grow our trust and we strengthen our belief. This is our whole being; this is our whole life. Seeing and remembering begets gratitude. Gratitude begets trust. Trust begets belief. When we hone in our vision, see God, and thank Him, we build a relationship of trust that will stand firm.

"The God whom we thank for fulfilling the promises of the past will fulfill His promises again. In Christ, the answer to the questions of every moment is always Yes."

I have built a relationship with chairs. I have spent a lifetime sitting in them, and they have always held for me. I don't have to wonder or think or fear that the chair will suddenly abandon me, desert me, not work for me. My answer to the chair is always Yes! I trust you.The same goes for the cars I drive and the roads I drive them on and the house I live in and the houses of friends and family that I visit and the stores I shop in and the trees and boulders I drive by. I trust that they will all hold because they've always held. They have fulfilled their functions for me time and again and by that, we have a relationship of trust. I do not fear while I drive or sleep in my house. I know. The answer is Yes.

We get hung up on God because we can't see Him and we feel like we can't know. It's confusing; is this God or is this something else? How do I know God meant this and not for something else to happen? Is this gift from God or is it from a great decision I made? Is this pain from God or from my sin? Here's the thing: it's all from God. Whatever life you lived today? It was from God. And all those gifts and all that pain, they are all being made into good for you and glory for God. Always. Always. Every moment. YES! God is always good and you are always loved and that means that you can trust Him.

"All fear is but the notion that God's love ends. Do you think I end, that My bread warehouses are limited, that I will not be enough? But I am infinite, child. What can end in Me? Can life end in Me? Can happiness? Or peace? Or anything you need? Doesn't your Father always give you what you need? I am the Bread of Life and My bread for you will never end. Fear thinks God is finite and fear believes that there is not going to be enough and hasn't counting one thousand gifts, endlessly counting gifts, exposed the lie at the heart of all fear? In Me, blessings never end because My love for you never ends. If My goodnesses toward you end, I will cease to exist, child. As long as there is a God in heaven, there is grace on earth and I am the spilling God of the uncontainable, forever-overflowing-love-grace."

Do you hear that? That... is a song of Love. "All fear is but the notion that God's love ends." And God's love can't end so we can't fear. But our sight is fuzzy and our eyes need help; our hearts need focus. So we build the bridge, plank by plank, thanks by thanks, and yesterday carries us to tomorrow and into the forever infinite love of God, and before long, we have built a road of trust, a trust that we can count on in all things.

Tune back in on Thursday, 5/22, for my post on Chapter 9: Go Lower

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True Grace

This is my fifth post in a series on Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts. Each post will cover one of the eleven chapters of this book on seeing God and learning how to live fully... right where you are. Each post will be tagged 05/2014 and One Thousand Gifts. All quotes in italics are from the book.

Chapter 5: What in the World, In All This World, Is Grace?

Chapter five is about suffering.

It was as though Ann was in my head. I'd been working hard, naming gifts, redeeming time. But I couldn't hush this nagging in the back of my mind. If I thank God for the gift of a bird's song and the sweet "Yai wuv yoo" from my son and the way my daughter always, always, always sleeps with her right arm crooked above her head or across her eyes...

"What are all the other moments?"

What is everything else? What are the days with nagging upset tummies and attitudes a mile long and naps all broken? What are the scary doctor phone calls and the three-hour-old ambulance rides and the yet another cancer diagnosis?

"Do I believe in a God who rouses Himself just now and then to spill a bit of benevolence on hemorrhaging humanity? A God who breaks through... only now and then, surprises us with a spared hand, a reprieve from sickness, a good job and a nice house in the burbs -- and then finds Himself again too important to deal with all... suffering and evil?"

This is real and it is weighty. This truth finds itself in the hearts of mothers cradling their sick babies. This truth finds itself in the heart of mothers who have lost their babies. This truth finds itself in orphans and widows, and shake a hand and you have met someone who has hurt. And we can name big hurts and small hurts, but they are all hurts and in the grand scheme of things, all hurts hurt. We don't need to lay down our measuring sticks to compare them. They are all real and they are all pain and they are all worthy of asking: How is God mixed up in this?

Everyone's journey is their own. And there are many people who have walked through pain and their walk looks very different from mine. I will share with you what was my experience. A man asked me if I felt abandoned by God when my daughter came sick and I was able to tell him, truthfully, no, I did not feel abandoned. But I did cry out. I did ask why.

"I won't shield God from my anguish by claiming He's not involved in the ache of this world and Satan prowls but he's a lion on a leash and the God who governs all can be shouted at when I bruise, and I can cry and I can howl and He embraces the David-hearts who pound hard on His heart with their grief and I can moan deep that He did this -- and He did."

The Psalms are full of shouts and groans and "whys" to God, and in the midst of suffering and evil, they are absolutely appropriate. The virus that infected my growing child, that ate away at her soft tissues and left her in a silent world, I will call that what it clearly is -- evil. The depression that breaks so many souls into ending their earthly journeys -- evil. The anger and pride that swells men's hearts to put guns in the hands of children to fight their wars -- evil. The poverty that nags at bellies and leaves children dying from emptiness -- evil. It is real. It is impactful. It hurts. And in this symphony that God is conducting, there are minor notes. There are sore spots. And it breaks God's heart.

"I can hear Him soothe soft, 'Are your ways My ways, child? Can you eat My manna, sustain on My mystery? Can you believe that I tenderly, tirelessly work for all the best good of the whole world -- because My flame of love for you can never, ever be quenched?"

We are not privy to the big picture. We can't see where this has come from and where it is going. But how many "overcoming adversity" stories have you seen? How many people have you heard about on those heartwarming sections of the news broadcast who have taken their broken legs or broken minds or extra chromosomes or war-torn childhoods and from them, run races and healed hearts and brought joy and created peace? I can't even number them. I can't number the hands that have held mine and told me, "I have seen what God can do with loss."

"I awaken to the strange truth that all new life comes out of the dark places,
and hasn't it always been?

Out of the darkness of the cross, the world transfigures into new life. And there is no other way.

Then... yes: It is dark suffering's umbilical cord that alone can untether new life.

It is suffering that has the realest possibility to bear down and deliver grace.

And grace that chooses to bear the cross of suffering overcomes that suffering."

We live in a world that has tumbled far and broken and we live in bodies that are trapped and wounded. And we cannot escape that, not while we are here for our little while, for our but-a-breath. But while we are here, breaking and being broken, we can know that God is redeeming.

"The God of the Mount of Transfiguration cannot cease His work of transfiguring moments -- making all that is dark, evil, empty into that which is all light, grace, full."

I have known the power of fear overcome by trust in God. I have looked into the eyes of the brave and marveled at their courage. I have known that fear myself and marveled at its own dissolving in the face of grace after grace after grace. God taught me more about Himself through my walk with my daughter than He ever did in anything else. She weighed as much as a small bag of flour and she was covered in bruises and her spleen was chewing up every last platelet her body could make. And I watched God transfigure her. I watched transfusion after transfusion sustain her while her liver and spleen healed. I watched those bruises fade and her sweet eyes open wide. I watched her gain ounce after ounce and round out. I watched God take dark, evil, and empty and make it into light, grace, and full. Miracles, every one.

Here's the thing: God didn't owe my daughter miracles. He didn't owe them to me or my husband or our family or anyone else who loved her. He chose healing for her, but He just as easily could not have. 

"When I realize that it is not God who is in my debt but I who am in His great debt, then doesn't all become gift? For He might not have."

Those ways that are greater than my ways, the plans man means for evil that God means for good (Genesis 50:20), these are not things I understand. And maybe "if I had the perspective of the whole, perhaps I'd see it? ... Is it a cloud to bring rain, to bring a greater good to the whole of the world?" And there is comfort in knowing that from evil, God can transfigure good. But the reality of our experience on earth is that we may never know that good. We may never see the grace upon grace upon grace. We may never see the miracles. But it does not change the story.

"I have hacked my life up into grace moments and curse moments. The chopping that has cut myself off from embracing the love of a God who 'does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow' (Lamentations 3:33), but labors to birth grief into greater grace. Isn't this the crux of the gospel? The good news that all those living in the land of shadow of death have been birthed into new life, that the transfiguration of a suffering world has already begun. That suffering nourishes grace, and pain and joy are arteries of the same heart -- and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty. Can I believe the gospel, that God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son?

What in the world, in all this world, is grace?

I can say it certain now: All is grace.

I can see through the woods of the world: God is always good and I am always loved.

God is always good and I am always loved.

Everything is eucharisteo."

We look around the world, even in our own little corners of it, and we see evil and we are right to name it so. This is not a land that has been healed. This is not a land where tears are no more. Right now, there is weeping and sorrow and it is real and it cuts and burns and destroys and we are right to tear our clothes and beat our chests. But never for one second believe that God is not weeping too. That God is not mourning too. He, too, waits for the day of our reunion with Him, of the peace that will reign in the place of upheaval, of the joy that will permeate in the place of sorrow. And that day is coming. We must trust in that.

In the meantime, while we wait, know this grand truth, this truth that will cut through any evil cloud lurking and any painful road waiting ahead of you or haunting behind you: God is always good, and you are always loved. It is true, not because I say it is true, but because God says it is true. And our beliefs must be ones that we hold onto even when they don't feel true. And there will be many days when this does not feel true. But when it does not, stop yourself and take a deep breath. Really feel your lungs fill with air, pushing out of your chest and filling up your heart. Grace. You are here to breathe and live another day. Grace. Of all the walls and hammers that could have brought you down, God has you here, right here, right now. Grace. And man may mean evil against you in ways you could not have possibly imagined, but God means it for good and you can stand on that. Grace.

In none of our moments guaranteed and in all the woods this world will grow around us, we must see through and know this truth. We must. And we must fight to preach Gospel to ourselves, to find the graces in the unlikeliest of places. Because the world will not do that for us. Our hearts will not do that for us. God does that for us. God opens our eyes to what we once could not see. And while we may wait for heaven to know the "why", we can trust in the "what is" -- God is always good, and you are always loved. And nothing -- no thing -- "neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:39)

Did you catch that? Nothing can separate you... from the love of God. How do we know this love? What is our assurance of this love, our security in this love? Jesus. The God-man come and killed, broken for our repair. If God showed love like that, how can we ever doubt? If God was willing to give up His own son for us, "how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32) It may look dark. It may feel dark. It may be dark. But look for the holes. God is always good, and you are always loved.

Tune back in on Monday, 5/12, for my post on Chapter 6: What Do You Want? The Place of Seeing God

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Redeeming Time

This is my fourth post in a series on Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts. Each post will cover one of the eleven chapters of this book on seeing God and learning how to live fully... right where you are. Each post will be tagged 05/2014 and One Thousand Gifts. All quotes in italics are from the book.

Chapter 4: A Sanctuary of Time

Oh, chapter four. Chapter four had me whooping and hollering. Chapter four looked me straight in the eyes and said, "This is for you. Enjoy." Chapter four opened a gate somewhere in my fence and let me out, let me run, set me free. Chapter four is about redeeming time.

Ever since I became a mom, I feel like someone has been siphoning off my time. Surely I used to have more. Where is it going? Once my daughter arrived, this only compounded. I know our experience was strange at first; not all second-time-parents spend the first two months shuttling back and forth from the hospital. But still. Even once she was home. Even once things evened out. I just felt swamped all the time, like I was running this crazy race only to end up still behind, someone whining or crying because I couldn't bring it all together fast enough.

I tried reading about time management and strategies to get myself together a little better. That helped some. But it didn't touch the reality that so much of my life -- so much of every parent's life -- is doing for the kids. If not directly (feeding, diapering, bathing, playing, loving, soothing), then indirectly (cleaning, considering, mothering myself, sleeping). I can organize my life like I'm running a ship, but I still have to contend with all the things that need to be done -- and do them. The other day, I read a really lovely post from a blogger I enjoy in which she shared a quote from her husband's grandmother (who raised eight children): "Whether you have one child or eight, that's all you do." YES! Megan goes on to say, "My days were filled with mothering when I had only Dacey, and my days are filled with mothering now that I have a nine year old, a six year old, and a pair of one year olds to keep up with." This is me. This resonates so deeply with me.

Ever since these babies, I've been in a little war with time. I never have enough and I never know exactly how to spend the minutes I have. I needed to redeem time.

"I don't really want more time; I just want enough time... not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done -- yesterday. In a world with... its 'live in the moment' buzz phrase that none of the whirl-weary seem to know how to do, who actually knows how to take time and live with soul and body and God all in sync? ... I just want time to do my one life well."

This is where I whooped. "YES!" "YES! YES! YES! Thank you!!!!" People tell you, "Your kids grow up so fast and you'll miss it if you blink, cherish every moment" and then other people respond with, "You don't remember how hard it was to raise your kids, you don't want to cherish all these moments" and it leaves me feeling... whirled, as Ann says. So yes, tell me to "live in the moment" if you wish but I have no idea how to do that without feeling like my head might explode. Anyone can experience this, not just parents with littles. The moment is here, and then it passes. How do I live in it? How do I grasp onto it when it's a moving object? I feel like you're telling me to jump onto a moving train.

But here it is, y'all. Here is where the light bulbs all flicked on and the switches all clicked. Here is where I learned to redeem time:

"The real problem of life is never a lack of time.

The real problem of life -- in my life -- is a lack of thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving creates abundance; and the miracle of multiplying happens when I give thanks -- take the just one loaf, say it is enough, and give thanks -- and He miraculously makes more than enough... 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 redeem time from neglect and apathy and inattentiveness when I swell with thanks and weigh the moment down and it's giving thanks to God for this moment that multiplies the moments, time made enough."

Seriously, with all truth, with all honesty, this made me cry. With a baby nearing a year old and a two-and-a-half year old who I swear grew three inches last night, I feel like my life has been slipping away from me, numbered not in moments but in baths and diaper changes and in feeding yet another mouth. I feel like the hour glass has been poured open and I'm grasping desperately to catch all the falling sand, just to hold on for another moment, to go back, to see again, to really live. I've not known how to live in those moments, only that I feel like I should, but I couldn't get it all together, couldn't get all the pieces working as one.

At the heart of this for me is a thoughtfulness. I can't live my days unengaged. I can't spend my time frivolously. It drives me bonkers. I have to know what I am doing with myself. And I have to know why. The real problem in my struggle with time is that my control freak nature did not know how to receive. I thought my problem was ordering, that I needed to name all my ducks and put them in their rows and suddenly I would have enough time; I would be able to live well. No. Instead, I needed to receive my time from God, see Him in my moments, and thank Him for every one. This is my what: giving thanks to God. And this is my why: to bring glory to Him. I thank God for the coffee my husband brewed me and I bring glory to Him. I thank God for fresh vegetables and give glory to Him. I thank God for the clover in the cracks of our sidewalk and I bring glory to Him. I know my what and my why. I have redeemed time.

"It's not the gifts that fulfill, but the holiness of the space. The God in it."

When you stand before God, hands open, ready to receive, God gives and gives and gives and gives. And the gifts are wonderful. Coffee, sweet peppers, life growing in hard places. They are beautiful and tantalizing and heart-swelling. But ultimately, they are from God. And that gives them worth. That gives them value and weight and necessity. We have to spend our lives hands open and waiting because "here is the only place I can love Him." 

"Life is not an emergency. Life is eucharisteo... 'Wherever you are, be all there' is only possible in the posture of eucharisteo. I want to slow down and taste life, give thanks, and see God."

I have redeemed time. And now, I have so many moments. Open-handed, I receive the gift, I name the gift, I thank God for it, and I offer it back to Him. It was not mine to begin with, and it is not mine to end with. But this process, this eyes- and hands-open waiting, this seeing and naming, this thanking: it redeems time from "neglect and apathy and inattentiveness" and it gives me back my moments. When I read back over my journal of gifts, I am transported. I am taken back to those moments and I can see them again as if I were standing there. Instead of trying to hang on to those pieces like clinging to the back of a moving train, I offer those moments back to God and the gift of my true presence there, the "reward" for my offering, is the honor of seeing God and the joy of remembering Him there.

Living "in the moment" absent of finding God there can only be fulfilling for so long. I can only swell with existence in the same place so many times. I can only appreciate the same people and trees and flowers so many times. But when each seeing and feeling and being is an opportunity to meet God in the moment -- it never gets old. We never tire of meeting God. It is our heart's deepest and most real desire. I can see my son's serious shaking head as he tells me, "No hold punder (thunder)" and I can feel my heart laughing at his sweet two-year-old mind, the creativity and the life that God has given him. "You don't have to hold the thunder, baby." I can see the clouds rolling in through the sky, heavy and dark, and remember the exact smell of the air before they opened up, and I marvel -- again and again -- at the majesty of God. I can remember that bunny rabbit hopping through our yard as the woman on the other line delivered me strange and scary news, and I can remember thinking, "Thank you, God, for bunny rabbits and for strange and scary news," and I can feel my heart drop and soar and wait, hands-open, for what God will give next.

I get to feel this life. I get to live it! No, I don't receive every moment like this. I forget and get hurried and flustered and worried. But then I remember and I stop. And I smell my hungry toddler's clean head and I give thanks for him. The frustration in the room melts away and I feed him with a smile of true gratitude. I wipe my angry baby's tears and I thank God for her tenacity (without which she might not still be with us) and I hold her with an open heart. I apologize to my husband and I thank God for the security of our marriage covenant, knowing that he will forgive me because he promised (nearly six years ago) that he always would, and we repair the wounds that life brings between us and we see each other as gifts.

It's not that suddenly my days are all sunshine and roses without a problem or care in the world. It's that suddenly, God is in every moment of my day. And His holiness fills my life like air and I breathe Him in until I can't any more. And then I exhale with total thankfulness, and breathe Him in all over again. This is life. This is living. This is how we redeem time.

"This is where God is. In the present. I AM -- His very name. I want to take shoes off. I AM, so full of the weight of the present, that time's river slows to a still... and God Himself is timeless... This is supreme gift, time, God Himself framed in moment. I hardly breathe... and time is of the essence, because time is the essence of God, I AM. This I need to consecrate: time."

Tune back in on Saturday, 5/10, for my post on Chapter 5: What in the World, In All This World, Is Grace?

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Naming the Mystery

This is my third post in a series on Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts. Each post will cover one of the eleven chapters of this book on seeing God and learning how to live fully... right where you are. Each post will be tagged 05/2014 and One Thousand Gifts. All quotes in italics are from the book.

"When one is thirsty one quenches one's thirst by drinking,

not by reading books which treat of this condition."

- Jean Pierre de Caussade

Chapter 3: First Flight

"I would have to do something... I scratch it down: Gift List. I begin the list. Not of gifts I want but of gifts I already have."

Chapter three is about the doing. Our lives preach a sermon, and to preach a sermon of God's goodness, we have to live as though God is good. There are as many ways to do this as there are people, but one, simple, practical way to live out your thanks is... to simply give thanks. And not just general thanks for your life or health or this day. Not just once a day or in the prayer before dinner. But to live thankfulness.

"Though pastors preached it, I still came home and griped on. I had never practiced. Practiced until it became second nature, the first skin. Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation... I would have to learn eucharisteo."

Ephesians tells us to give thanks for everything, and so we say, "Thank you for everything, God," and go on about our day, never giving it a second thought. But a different kind of living, a kind of seeing God around us always, requires different eyes. It goes beyond an intellectual assent to God's goodness and His gifts and looks instead to find those gifts, each and every one if it were possible. And so my list began... 

1. My daughter's impossibly loud laughter

2. My son singing

3. Fresh music (Paste playlist)

4. Rain and clouds to help babies sleep

5. Warmth

6. Pizza Hut!

So simple, right? And I practiced. I practiced for a few months, three things a day, doing my duty to count and see. But Ann had more in mind. And I didn't know until I read her say it...

"In this counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for few things... Life-changing gratitude does not fasten to a life unless nailed through with one very specific nail at a time."

And so instead of summarizing my day at the end with three things I remember, I started keeping the journal open and writing down each and every little thing. And this is what I found:

343. My son's creative play

344. Homebaked bread

345. Rainbows in the water drops of my coffee grounds (promises)

346. Ann's words ringing in my ears

347. Smell of rain

348. My son's golashes

349. Fighting blue jays at the top of the tree

350. Pockets, rocks, and running through raindrops

351. Motown!

352. Bunny in the rain

353. My daughter, exactly the way God made her, "just the way she's supposed to be"

354. Sun after rain

355. Oozing cheese on my salty, creamy egg sandwich

356. The way my son says crocodile: "cow-cow"

357. Holding hands up the stairs

358. The moment before and after you know

359. Hearing the rain before feeling/seeing it

360. Tires on wet road

361. Not "what if" or "why" -- what is

362. My son knocking on the door

363. Crispy stromboli

364. Olive oil sealing dough seams

365. My son saying "good morning!" when opening doors (any door, any time)

366. Friday night guitar jam

367. Snuggles with my daughter

24 gifts. 24 gifts!!! In just one day! (Sorry if I made you hungry. Food is an easily seen gift for me!) And the best part of all... is that I needed that to be the day. Number 353 tells you why. That day, that morning I woke up, read this chapter, and said this -- this is what I need to do. I need to number all day. And so I did. While I watched that bunny in the rain, I heard a woman on the other end of the line, a nurse from my daughter's neurologist, tell me about something they called "widespread tissue loss." Not any tissue... her brain tissue. Widespread. Loss. And there goes that bunny, hopping through the rain. And I began to rain. I sat a bit stunned and confused and not really sure, until I heard her, my daughter, screeching with laughter because her brother ran by. And I smiled through my tears (like those promise rainbows in my coffee grounds) because my daughter just is -- she was before I knew and she is now and she will be... exactly who God made her to be. And I needed to count the gift to see it.

"I look at a day, a thing, an event in front of me, and it may look manna-strange: "What is it?" But when I name it, the naming of it manifests its meaning: to know it comes from God. This is gift! Naming is to know a thing's function in the cosmos -- to name is to solve mystery."

That day, I had been handed mystery. This news, what does it mean? And no one can say. No one knows (but God). We only understand a fraction of what the brain is, of what it does, of how it works. We say it is plastic and we can grow new cells but what do we know? I woke up that morning, hand open, ready to receive the gift, even though I did not know what it would be. And I gathered those gifts and named them, one by one. And as I named them, I solved their mysteries.

"The gift list is thinking upon His goodness -- and this, this pleases Him most! And most profits my own soul... If clinging to His goodness is the highest form of prayer, then this seeing His goodness with a pen... these really are the most sacred acts conceivable. The ones anyone can conceive, anywhere, in the midst of anything. Eucharisteo takes us into His love."

"Eucharisteo takes us into His love." Without a name, without a solved mystery, that phone call could have cut me apart from God. He knit my daughter in the womb and when she came to us, she came sick, and this phone call? It was just another thing on that list, on that list of brokens. Without a name, without solved mystery, I would have raised my fists to the air and demanded to know, "What is this, God? What is this?!"

But I already know. I solve the mystery. I name the gift.

353. My daughter, exactly the way God made her, 'just the way she's supposed to be'" (as a lady in Once Upon a Child told me just days earlier)...

354. Sun after rain...

358. The moment before and after you know...

361. Not "what if" or "why" -- what is

This is me learning through gifts, me seeing God in the mystery and knowing it is Him. Knowing He wants me to love and embrace my gifts as He gives them (gift #353), that He has promised goodness in all things (even when it looks like rain, gift #354), that our knowing is only to point our eyes toward Him (because He already knew, gift #358), that we don't need to search for the other ways it could have been or ask why things are the way they are but rather we need to see what is and name it -- gift (gift #361).

"Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world. When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us? The clouds open when we mouth thanks."

I do my daughter no good to beat the ground and cry, to curse at God and hurl my hate at Him. It changes nothing and it does no one good, not her soul, not my soul, not the world. Instead, to stand in the face of fear and uncertainty and trouble, and say, "God is in this place. This is gift" -- that changes lives. To look in my daughter's eyes and tell her, "You are not trouble. You are not accident. You are gift." -- Those are the words every last one of us is waiting to hear. Those are the words every last one of us needs to hear. You are gift because you are of God. You are gift because I see you and I name you and I solve your mystery. Thanks be... for you.

Tune back in on Thursday, 5/8, for my post on Chapter 4: A Sanctuary of Time

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The Search for Life

This is my second post in a series on Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts. Each post will cover one of the eleven chapters of this book on seeing God and learning how to live fully... right where you are. Each post will be tagged 05/2014 and One Thousand Gifts. All quotes in italics are from the book.

Chapter 2: A Word to Live... and Die By

Chapter two is about the search for life.

"It's the life in between, the days of walking lifeless, the years calloused and simply going through the hollow motions, the self-protecting by self-distracting, the body never waking, that's lost all capacity to fully feel -- this is the life in between that makes us the wild walking dead."

If we are what we do, many of us are wastes of time. We are unfinished products and boring desk jobs and staring off into space. Me? If I am what I do, I am an applesauce distributor, couch surfer, and Plants v. Zombies 2 champion. Is that it? Is that what I want from my life?
 

The idea that our lives preach... it struck me. What was my sermon? How far was my living from my believing? As it turns out, very far. I was living as the walking dead, going through the motions, hanging on as I tried to mother and mother well to two babies, two years old and younger. This is no small task, and I try not to be hard on myself, but mostly, I needed new life for myself. I spent my days trying to self-distract so that I didn't have to tune in to the hard stuff, so that I could self-protect. But I could not persist as a cook-cleaner-day care worker. I had to be more; life... had to be more. But how? I can't shed my skin and fly off to the Caribbean. These children, at least for the short while they are in my care, they are my life in many respects. My soul does not revolve around them, but much of my physical, waking (and sometimes sleeping) life does. It's just where we are. So how to find life in my right now, my right here?

"Isn't it here? The wonder? Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it? ... Who has time or eyes to notice? All my eyes can seem to fixate on are the splatters of disappointment across here and me... I don't need more time to breathe so that I may experience more locales, possess more, accomplish more. Because wonder really could be here -- for the seeing eyes. So -- more time for what?"

 I guess the better question than how to find more life is what should life look like? What is a life well-lived, a life fulfilled? This is sort of the human question, isn't it? And there are billions of human answers, grasping straws, flailing arms. We've got to figure this out. Ann (wisely) turns to Jesus:

"With an expiration of less than twelve hours, what does Jesus count as all most important? 'And he took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to them...' (Luke 22:19 NIV)."

Jesus did life with these men. He gathered them together and taught and healed and walked and walked. They walked everywhere together, much like my children and me, walking and talking and eating together. And when He had just a touch more time with his partners in life, they sat to eat and He gave thanks. This word -- "he gave thanks" -- becomes the foundation. The word is eucharisteo. And it means everything. Literally it means "grace": "The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning 'grace'... It also holds its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning 'joy.'... Grace, thanksgiving, joy. Eucharisteo."

This, on the darkest night. Jesus gives thanks. He sees the grace of God, He thanks God, and He has joy. This is our model. This is our how and it is also our why. And it is the reverse of our very nature.

"Non-eucharisteo, ingratitude, was the fall -- humanity's discontent with all that God freely gives. That is what has scraped me raw: ungratefulness. Then to find Eden, the abundance of Paradise, I'd need to forsake my non-eucharisteo, my bruised and bloodied ungrateful life, and grab hold to eucharisteo, a lifestyle of thanksgiving."

The waking dead life is one that searches for something that can't be found. It is a life that searches for something that simply isn't. Often, we really don't even know what we want, only that whatever it is isn't this. "This isn't what I signed up for." I can't even tell you how many times I have thought that thought. While holding a baby, back arching, screeching because she doesn't want to eat. "I didn't sign up for this." While wiping up the stomach ooze from her leaking G-tube. "I didn't sign up for this." While holding her stiff as the nurse sticks her for the third time for her blood, her panicked eyes red and tearing into me, trying to figure out why I was letting this happen to her. "I didn't sign up for this." I'm not strong enough. I didn't ask for it. I'm not made for this. This wasn't my plan. No one ever in the history of ever would sign up for this, would ask for this. Yet here I am.

And instead of searching for that other, for that alternate universe that will never be, I have to change my lifestyle. Instead of living the ungratefulness of wanting other, I need to grab hold to a lifestyle of thanksgiving. A lifestyle. Not a once-a-year celebration, not a every-now-and-then "oh yeah!", not a "Wow, this was a really good day" of passing thought. A way of living.

I believe that God is good. I believe that God loves me and that He gives His children good gifts. I believe that God authors our lives and numbers our days and cares for us. I believe that He wants the best for us. If my life is a sermon and this is what I believe, I want this to be what I preach.

The thing about a belief is for it to really be what you believe, it must transcend your experiences. It must be true, and you must believe it to be true, despite how you feel or what you go through. Sometimes life requires that we change our beliefs, but we should change them only because they were not true to begin with, not simply because they do not feel true any more. And these beliefs I had about God, have about God? They are true. And they don't change just because life is hard. So what does that mean?

If God gives good gifts and He gave me my daughter, my daughter is a good gift. If God cares for me and wants the best for me, then the gifts He has given me in my children -- even when they are hard -- are caring and loving gifts, the best gifts. It means that when I am trying for the hundredth time to explain to my toddler why he cannot play with the scissors and he is crying and crying (yet again) and I can't get through to Him -- that this is a gift of God. It means that when I get frightening phone calls from doctors and I can't make sense of what they're saying, what this could mean for my family -- this is a gift from God. It means that when I tell my daughter I love her and she hears silence -- this is a gift from God. It has to be because I believe it is, because the Word says it is.

So how do I live as though this is what I believe?

"Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives.
Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace."

 I give thanks. I live eucharisteo. And instead of the voice of ungratefulness saying, "I didn't sign up for this," I live the voice of thanksgiving saying, "I receive this from you, Lord, with joy." Instead of the bitter confusion of loss, I live the open-armed life of grace. Instead of the worry of what will be, I live the peace of welcoming God. If I truly believe that God gives all things in love, then for my life to preach that sermon, I must receive all things with thanks. This transcends circumstance and occupation and emotion. And beyond just lifting us up to the joy -- remember: grace, thanksgiving, joy -- it is essential to our salvation.

"The act of sacrificing thank offerings to God -- even for the bread and cup of cost, for cancer and crucifixion -- this prepares the way for God to show us His fullest salvation from bitter, angry, resentful lives and from all sin that estranges us from Him... Thanksgiving -- giving thanks in everything -- is what prepares the way for salvation's whole restoration... I would never experience the fullness of salvation until I expressed the fullness of my thanks every day, and eucharisteo is elemental to living the saved life." 

If we want to live redeemed lives, if we want to walk the walk (as they say), we must give thanks. We must offer up our thanks as a sacrifice. The blood of the Lamb has been shed and we must say, "Thank you, Lord."

We are saved, not by saying thank you, but by the grace of God. Ann is sure to point this out. But -- we live our salvation in response to that. And what should our response be? Thanks. God showers with grace, we thank Him for it, and our joy is complete. This is the redeemed life. This is the life taken from the pit of anxiety and depression and anger and loss and ungratefulness. This is a life of grace, so flowing with the waters of mercy that our hearts cannot contain our gratitude. It overflows and runs down and waters the ground of our lives and we grow and grow into joy.

"But, Aleah, are you blind? How can all this be grace?" Preach, sister. Preach. I hear you. It is a wild, ugly world out there. "And we have to say thank you for it?" I get you. I am with you. Sometimes it doesn't feel like grace. Sometimes it doesn't look like grace. But that doesn't mean it isn't. We must learn to have eyes to see.

Tune back in on Monday, 5/5, for my post on Chapter 3: First Flight

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