A Year of Thanks-Living

Last year, I read Ann Voskamp’s book, One Thousand Gifts when it released digitally. I realized as I read Ann’s journey to the heart of gratitude---in all things, that I had so poorly recognized what it means to “give thanks.”

I think there is a difference between being grateful and giving thanks. Grateful is good but it can be like a blanket that covers so much----leaving the heart with a warm fuzzy feeling but not getting to the heart of how life comes together in its parts.

It is easy to know you are blessed---especially in light the living conditions of most of the world’s population. If we do not know about that reality in this information age it is because we put our heads in the sand and refuse to look at the big world that has become so very small.

Most of those of us who live in America (and the first world) know how blessed we are and we say we are grateful.

But Ann encouraged her readers to slow down and write the blessings down, count them, to single out the gifts of God in a list by “sleuthing” out the blessings. This challenge has changed the way I make the bed, do the laundry, and clean a toilet. It has made me listen to the birds, hold a baby during a long nap, to notice the wind and the clouds, the color of the sun.

This has been a year of thanks-living that began with a book. I am so grateful that Ann was brave enough to live it, write it, and share it with the world.

Those who give thanks, live thanks.  (Paraphrasing Ann.)