Give Thanks

I know it's Halloween, but the season of Thanksgiving and the holidays are fast upon us. Several of you have asked me to share what follows. A few weeks ago I had the privilege of speaking at the high school where I teach part time. The topic I was asked to speak on was "Giving Thanks in All Things" and Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts. So...given all that we've been given and all that we have lost, may you have a joy-full season of Thanksgiving with your families and loved ones. I will try to write again soon, but this season does seem to take my breath away! So we'll play it by ear.

Giving Thanks in the Dark

Bullied. Depressed. Anxious. 

Death. Cancer. A difficult pregnancy. A diagnosis we weren’t expecting. 

We all have lists. And for a long time I kept tally of hardship. It was good evidence. It was good proof. I had a right to be thankless. I’ve lived on "the dirt floor basement of my heart."[1] But the thing that keeps our hearts bound to ingratitude is not a list of conditions; it's a condition of the heart.

In her book One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp writes that ingratitude for all God had freely given was humanity's first sin. The Fall was ingratitude (35). So what now? What now when our hearts are wired toward discontent? It's a question I'm still learning how to answer. 

To be honest, I'm not really qualified to talk to you today about giving thanks in all things, because I haven't. And I know plenty of people who have faced a great deal more pain in their lives than I have and whose endings are not as happy as mine. All I can share with you is what little I've learned so far.

I. Defining

Depending on your perspective suffering is both a natural and unnatural part of our common human existence--natural because we all experience it and unnatural because it's not the vision God had for our lives when he created us.

Gratitude is not a feeling. Sometimes we mistake relief for gratitude. Your mom brings the homework to school that you forgot in your morning rush, and you feel so grateful you're not going to get a zero for it. Or I take off my rear view mirror trying to re-park my minivan and the crunch of plastic and shatter of glass drives me out of the car whispering "Oh, please, Lord. Tell me I didn't take off someone else's mirror, too." Miraculously, the car I hit is fine and I dash off a note, tape it to the owner’s windshield and offer a prayer of thanksgiving. I am so relieved! These are grateful moments. But what would I have said had there been damage to that other car? Would it have been "Thank you!"? Probably not. So sometimes we mistake the feeling of relief for a spirit of gratitude.

Gratitude isn’t a brand of Christianity some of us choose to buy. I've noticed gratitude is quite trendy right now. A quick Google search of the terms "shop gratitude" generates over 12 million hits. You'll find baseball jerseys, bumper stickers, mugs, journals, workbooks, videos, tarot cards, even a board game! It seems gratitude products promising to improve your life are the newest self help trend, and they're not just hip for Christians. The trend is in for Buddhists and New Age thinkers and just about every other major religion. I'll be honest, that kind of stuff just isn't my style.

After reading One Thousand Gifts, I started a gratitude journal, but I abandoned it long ago because I’m not someone who is very good at methods of anything, least of all methodical faith. Practices have their place and this one pulled my gaze off my own grief and taught me to see the grace that was all around me. But keeping a list and living life can be two very different things.

So if gratitude isn't a feeling and it's not a brand, and if it’s not found in spiritual disciplines we ought to practice but don't, what is it?  

Gratitude is a secret work Christ does in us. It’s a soul branded by God's grace.

Gratitude is accepting God’s invitation to relinquish our need to control our circumstances and to go from living like this (CLOSED FISTS) to living like this (OPEN HANDS).

When we live open to and satisfied with the gifts God gives, even our pain can be a gift.

II. Our Story

There have been a number of bumps in my road that have set me reeling. I’m a bit sensitive to the elements, anyway. Things bother me. I have friends and family who seem to keep their heads above stormy seas far better than I do. For some reason, the bump that sent me reeling more than any other was learning that our son Kaleb had Down syndrome.

Many of you know him already, so you know that he is, in fact, just fine. Better than fine, actually. He’s healthy and smart and full of personality and we love him like crazy. But the hours and days after his birth were difficult. I had many low thoughts and I was angry at God, not because I felt any wrong had been done to me, but because (it seemed) God saw fit to lay bare my own weaknesses of faith at the expense of my son’s health.

You see, I believed that hardship (and I saw Kaleb’s diagnosis as a kind of hardship), was meant to instruct us toward greater faith. I saw pain as a teaching tool. And I misunderstood that the spirit in which God suffers with us is not as chastising parent, but as loving Father. And he hadn’t given us our son as an instructional tool, anyway. He’d given him to us as an abundant gift.

But we were sad. And we were confused. And we lost our footing just a little bit. So the occasion of Kaleb’s birth was a strange kind of joy-pain. Joy because we had a son! And pain because we had to grieve the son we had imagined in order to embrace the real little guy resting in our arms. It was a process. And our family and friends walked with us. And God is good.

The reason I tell you all this is not just to share the details of our lives, but because there were days when I felt so discouraged, and I know we all experience that. Kaleb did have many health concerns in the first months of life and there was not much sleep and we had live-in help until he was four months old. Our girls, two and four at the time, were still babies themselves, and they needed me, and I was not available in the way I wanted to be. And so there were many middle of the night prayers and standing at the sink prayers and crying in the laundry piles prayers when I felt not the tiniest bit of gratitude in my heart, but when I made myself say thanks anyway.

Thanksgiving is our expression of our need for God, our need for his gift of grace in our lives. And boy did I need some grace.

III. Thanks in the Dark

There’s that way of praying all children have: “Dear Jesus,” our daughters will often say at day’s end. “Dear Jesus, Thank you for this day.” They say it every night, no matter what happened that day.  And it makes me wonder: Do we say “thanks” because the day was easy? Or because it was given?

Sometimes God empties us out just so he can fill us up again--fill us up with his grace.  Many times I have wanted to stay angry at God or people, because to let go of anger or hurt, to forgive, is to in some way accept the wrong that has been done us. It feels good to hold a grudge, doesn’t it? We feel entitled to lie down on that dirt floor basement because we hurt. But the truth is, there’s nothing virtuous about laying face down on the ground and refusing to get up.

Voskamp writes, “When we find ourselves groping along, famished for more, we can choose. When we are despairing, we can choose to live as Israelites gathering manna. For forty long years, God’s people daily eat manna--a substance whose name literally means ‘What is it?’ Hungry, they choose to gather up that which is baffling. They fill on that which has no meaning. More than 14,600 days they take their daily nourishment from that which they don’t comprehend. They find soul-filling in the [unexplainable]. They eat the mystery….And the mystery is like ‘wafers of honey’ on the lips….I wonder too...if ...the losses that puncture our world, our own emptiness, might actually become places to see. To see through to God. That which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave. Maybe so” (22).

When Christ gave thanks at the last supper, it was in his darkest hour. He knew he would be betrayed. He knew the end was near and that the suffering would be great. Just as his body would soon be broken, he broke bread, he gave it to his disciples. The word for “he gave thanks” in the Greek is eucharisteo. The root of this word is charis or “grace.” And charis comes from chara meaning “joy.” And isn’t joy the thing we reach for? (Voskamp 31-33).

The height of our joy depends on the depth of our thanks. “As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible,” writes Voskamp (33). And so we give thanks, even in the dark.

IV. You

Maybe your life feels full enough without God in it. Maybe you’ve got it all under control, anyway. I did. Well, there may come a day when need rises. And you will be glad you know right words and can utter right words until joy grows up in the place of despair. And the words will be like manna to your soul. Your theme verses for this year are a very good place to start: "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of The Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." (Col. 3:15-17 NIV)

Now. Are you restless? Are you weary? Why give thanks to a God who seems so far away? All new life comes out of the dark places. We are born out of darkness and we return to it. And we give thanks now, even in the dark and most of all when we cannot see, because all--ALL--is grace. You are deeply loved. And you already have all that you need to be full in Him. Even if you don’t feel it. It’s in the giving of thanks that our hearts grow full of joy again. If we wait for joy to give our thanks, joy will never happen. Thanksgiving precedes joy (Voskamp 35). Joy is the gift of a thankful heart.

V. Conclusion

On the morning of June 27, 2012, almost five months to the day after Kaleb’s birth, I read Psalm 37 sitting on the front steps of our house and copied verses 23 and 24 into my journal. “If the Lord delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm. Though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand" (NIV). The sun was warm and bright and the words I read were true. But I remember the day we brought Kaleb home from the hospital. It was a winter of record-breaking snowfall and Kaleb had been born in the snowiest month. The banks on either side of the walkway had accumulated so high we could barely see over the tops of them. Walking down our path to those front steps was a dim affair even on a bright day. Ironically, our hearts were in much the same state as that path. We could find our way to that front door not because we could see the house from the sidewalk, but because we knew the way by heart. What our eyes couldn’t see and our hearts could not feel, we forced our lips to say.

That summer morning, five months later, I wrote these words under the words of the Psalmist:

The terrain may get treacherous, and it does at times, but God, rather than standing at a distance and letting us falter, makes our steps firm. We don’t always see this. We’re busy looking down, watching for holes in the ground, a rocky way, loose sand, mud, a steep climb. But a hiker knows that while it’s important to watch your footing, it’s equally important to keep your eyes on the horizon. When the trees break and the climb plateaus, there is great beauty, beauty enough to take your breath away. And the foot can find firm ground without our constant vigilant watch over the dirt. Trusting God affords a lovelier view by far. The verse doesn’t mean no bad will come. It means we will never be abandoned in the midst of evil. That, I imagine, is hard to claim when one is up to one’s waist in quicksand. But I do think it’s what the Bible means, after all.

Let me assure you, having Kaleb in our lives has been one of my life’s greatest joys. The Lord knew it would be so. He upheld me until sight returned. “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning" (Psalm 30:5 NIV).

Your steps are firm. You cannot not fall. Your Lord upholds through all things and in all things. And his body, once broken for you, lives again so that yours will not perish. If this is true, and God is for us, then let us give thanks in all things.

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[1] Taylor, Barbara Brown. Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith. San Francisco: Harper One, 2007.