My Thousand Gifts

"Thank you, Jesus, that we can do this Your way. Thank you, Jesus, that we don't have to do this my way."

That has been my refrain, for the past three years, when my will is crossed.

It prepared me for a year of difficulty, of taking care of my mother, paralyzed with cancer. It carried me through that year, opening me up to receive grace (which my father defines as "God's power in me to overcome") when my heart wanted to slap the gift away.

Thankful praise is what gets me through the gates, into the court of my God: "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name." (Ps. 100.4)

It has kept me from yelling at the kids, from saying hurtful words, from being generally ungraceful... At least, it has when I have chosen to avail myself of that little secret, the sacrifice of praise (He. 13.15): praising even when it hurts. If it cost me nothing, there would be no sacrifice.

I am learning (and don't think for a moment that I am very far advanced along this syllabus) to praise Him, whenever I find myself in trying circumstances, for the opportunity to buy gold tried in the fire (Re. 3.18).

But thanks to Ann Voskamp and her One Thousand Gifts, I have been challenged to look for the little, glad gifts in every moment, and to expect to find joy in giving thanks. ("I might," she says, "be needing me some of that."¹) I am only in chapter 5, but I am already recognizing that, through this woman's uniquely expressed perspective, the Lord has handed me a key to unlock something—something lush and moist (Ps. 66.12b, margin), in areas of my life hitherto dry and stale.

"God has called us to the apostolic task of bringing eternity into time," says Art Katz.² Eternity is always breaking into time in the now (my father again), now is when I can respond to God and be lifted up out of myself and into a heavenly perspective. Here is a woman who seems (I judge, without having yet followed her to the finish of her book and the start of the rest of her journey) to have learned to live in the "eternal now."

With Ann (never has the lack of an e looked so graceful), I "might have found the holy grail... and lost it, moved on." But "I won't let it go this time. I'll enter into the mystery."³

So here goes, beginning my list of gifts:

1. Brows studiously furled
2. Little patting hands on face
3. Being the sunshine of one little person's world
4. Warm dimples
5. Friends to pray for
6. Christmas gifts sneakily given
7. Prayers of Family Priest (my husband)
8. Melting exhausted into sheets
9. Sighing, swallowing sounds of babe in arms
10. Water, hot and raining, with scent of honeysuckle lathering sudsy
11. Raisins, plump and wrinkled, dry and juicy
12. Breakfast bubbling on stove
13. Small herd of thundering elephants thumping boy feet on the floor above my head
14. Little baby girls—my one, my only, little baby girl
15. Lullabies in the dark
16. Babies waking up smiling and rested
17. Waiting patiently with peace
18. Plumply skinny baby arms twined round my neck
19. Dancing my baby cheek to cheek
20. Baby, baby, baby!

____________________________________________
1. Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are (ISBN 978-0-310-23191-0), p. 32
2. Arthur Katz, Apostolic Foundations: The Challenge of Living an Authentic Christian Life (ISBN 981-04-2481-7), p. 66
3. Ann Voskamp, ibid., p. 34, 35