30 Days of Gratitude

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

wait, who am I kidding?  My halls were decked a week ago.  Yes I am one of those offensive people who dares to string the lights and hang the stockings before Thanksgiving.  I don't know we're supposedly offending by trimming the tree before the 1st of December but I for one am happy to start counting down the days until Christmas before I can pack away the kids' halloween costumes.  I love Christmas.  That, my friends, is an understatement.  Blame it on the fact that my name means Christmas, or the fact that growing up we had more Christmas trees than bedrooms, I just can't get enough of it.  This year however, I gave a lot of thought to the idea that as believers we should give more than a tip of our hats to a holiday that is centered upon the idea of giving thanks for our blessings.  Thanksgiving wasn't invented by the Pilgrims and Indians (or Native Americans), God's people have had celebrations centered around giving thanks for centuries.  Psalm 107:1 says: Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever."   While I'm still not convinced I should leave my Christmas decorations in their boxes for an extra week or two, I was inspired to take more time as a family to practice thankfulness, or gratitude.  So when I happened upon a gratitude-centered idea on Pinterest, I pinned it with great excitement.  And then I put it on my digital calendar so it wouldn't collect virtual cobwebs amongst all the other fabulous ideas wasting away on my Pinterest boards.  (Because, really, when am I going to find the time to make a family mission statement out of wood pallets or make those holiday themed cake balls that will never look as cute in real life?)

Imagine my delight when my phone kindly reminded me on the day we were to begin our family gratitude project.  The project was actually a photo challenge - aptly named 30 Days of Gratitude.  Each day we were given a word prompt and the challenge was to take a picture of whatever that word was or reminded us of, taking a moment to thank God for blessing us with, well whatever we were photographing.  I loved the simplicity of it - the prompts were simple, nothing you had to think deeply about or travel far to find.  We quickly learned that we are surrounded by innumerable blessings, big and small.  

                                       Like the morning sky...

 

                                                                             And leaves...

Hands...

(Sofi took this picture of her holding hands with her uncle Josh)

                                                                                            Written word...

(Isabel wrote her favorite verse on a box of meals
our church packed to send to starving kids
in Nicaragua)



 

And an inspiring person.  (Matt totally copied me on this one.)

We included the whole family in the project (even some of our extended family), with each person taking their own pictures on their own devices.  Our 3 year old was a little young to hand an ipod over to but she had fun watching us run around taking pictures every day.  At the end of the project, my husband, myself, and our 2 older daughters each had 30 pictures of things we were grateful for.  That's 120 pictures, which we printed off (a small miracle for this family who hasn't printed pictures since we bought a digital camera in 2007) and had a blast looking through them together.  I loved seeing each person's perspective, how some things were similar and others completely different.  It gave me a window in my daughter's hearts and my husband's as well.  Take "Happiness" for example.   

 For Isabel, happiness was seeing 

her grandpa and sister smile

And Sofi felt that candy was the ultimate definition of happiness (a perspective she may have gotten from yours truly)

What I loved most about this project was that it encouraged me (and I think each member of our family) to be grateful for the little things.  Things I take for granted, things I grumble about, things that I couldn't earn or create or buy with money.

Like the geese that soar and gather and land in the field behind our house...




It's hard to see in the picture but there are hundreds of them.  We see and hear them often but have never stopped to watch them like we did that afternoon.  Groups of them would fly past our house, follow the same arc as they turned around and then landed in the field.  Hundreds of geese followed this same pattern and were still coming and going when we finally went inside.  The girls, of course found this amazing.




I even found gratitude in a basket of laundry, waiting to be folded and put away.




Because piles of laundry mean that we have nice warm clothes to wear.  More clothes than we need, in fact.
















My favorite picture, though, was of Lights:

Because what better to be grateful for than Christmas?  (I wasn't kidding, I truly love Christmas)









When we finally strung them up all up at my mom's house on Thanksgiving (along with my parents' and brother's pictures) we had quite the display.  Definitely a new take on "counting our blessings."  Check out the end result:

The girls had so much fun looking through the pictures with their grandma

 This picture shows just a small section of our clothesline of gratitude, that looped around the dining room and into the kitchen.  It was a great reminder of all the little things we take for granted every day.  And a few days later when we celebrated Thanksgiving Part 2 with my in laws (is there anything more amazing than TWO Thanksgivings?!) the girls proudly showed off their photographic display again.  

Whether we're preparing for the Thanksgiving holiday or stringing up Christmas lights, or even sipping lemonade in the summer sun (doesn't that seem like ages ago?), our hearts should sing with gratitude.  At any given moment, God has surrounded us with a hundred reasons to give thanks.  So take a moment, get lost in the expanse of the milky way, marvel at your child's perfect fingers, breathe in the aroma of your morning coffee, listen to the chorus of birds singing.  Give thanks for the breathtaking handiwork of an Almighty God.  Give thanks for the blessings He has filled your life with (and yes, that includes laundry.  And the dirty dishes that mean you have food to ward off hunger, the gas tank on empty that means you have a car to drive, the blaring alarm clock that means you have a job to rely on or kids to cherish, even the housework that means you have a home worth caring for).  Better yet, involve your kids in this miracle of gratitude.  Even though Thanksgiving is over with, what better way to start off the season during which we celebrate God's greatest Gift?  

As I'm writing this, my three year old is singing in the background, "I wanted to thank You, thank You, thank  You," a worship song that she has heard perhaps in the car or in church.  Our hearts were made to sing His praises, and the miracle of thanksgiving, the divine gift of gratitude, is that it fills us with joy.  It is impossible to give thanks and not be joyful.  

So deck your halls, sing falala, have yourself a merry little Christmas.  But most importantly, give thanks.  It's the surest way to find joy this Christmas season, and throughout the year.  

So what are you thankful for?

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep...

I find that the end of the day, when my girls are snuggled up in pjs and tired from a long day at work and play, I have this window of opportunity to connect with them, really connect in a transparent and unfiltered way that makes the day's drudgery of cleaning and laundry and homework helping and car shuttling seem so unimportant in comparison.  It occurs to me that I spend 99% of my day doing these "unimportant" tasks, and just a few minutes snuggled up with my oldest girls in their bunk bed (yes, imagine all three of us in a twin bed and feel free to laugh) or my youngest on her rocking chair, and these few minutes usually yield the most fruit.  Which makes me think I should hire a maid or nanny to take care of the "unimportant tasks", because then I would be an amazing parent ;)

I don't always take advantage of these moments.  In fact, I am often too tired or frustrated and have had it "up to HERE!" at this point of the day and I am all to happy to switch off lights, close the doors on my children's darkened room, and collapse on the couch.  Or even the floor.  The amount of talking that happens in a house full of 3 little girls is incomprehensible at times and at the end of the day I am ready for a break from all the talking (which comes in many forms - whining, tattling, arguing, complaining, shouting, giggling, singing, sharing, complimenting, expressing... you get the idea).  But the other night, I took those few minutes with my 2 oldest girls and made the most of it.

Isabel was ironically refusing to speak to anyone at the moment - the long day had gotten the best of her and after a series of unfortunate events that sent her to bed a bit early she was curled up under her blankets shutting out the world.  So of course I just invited myself in.  I snuggled in next to her, and started a conversation.  Being the chatty little thing that she is, she couldn't resist the temptation for long and reluctantly joined in.  I don't remember what we were talking about, but she had shared some frustration and I encouraged her to pray, telling her that after a long day and before a new long day ahead, it's a perfect time to spend a few moments talking to her Heavenly Father.  To which she responded, "I don't know how!"  I resisted the urge to lecture her on the countless times we have discussed prayer and prayed together, and the obvious fact that she prays frequently herself.  We often talk as a family about how we can talk to God like He is right here with us, because He is.  And that our prayers don't need to be fancy or formal, it's just us having a conversation with Jesus.  But that night I talked to her about the types of things we can include in our prayers.   I encouraged her to thank God, to present her requests, to confess and ask forgiveness for her sins, and finally to praise God.  She asked how to do the last part - to praise God.  So I suggested to do it together, taking turns.  I started out by saying something that was true about God, like God You are holy, then she responded with another word.  At some point Sofi joined us and there we all were, snuggled up on that tiny bed, praising God together.  This was not an elaborate and planned lesson on prayer.  It wasn't a regularly scheduled family Bible study.  It was just us, taking a moment, making the most of an opportunity, giving the glory back to the God who created all the moments before and every one yet to come.

Isabel was the last one to name a truth about God and she said "You are merciful."  It was like the icing on the cake, because I knew that day she needed to experience and appreciate God's mercy.  Just a few hours earlier, she had run into her sister (accidentally or on purpose was the much heated debate) and it had sent her into a tailspin.  After some tears and poorly controlled anger, I pulled her aside and asked her why she was so upset.  The incident wasn't the end of the world, everyone had moved past it, and yet here she was, jaw clenched, fist tight, head bowed.  She wouldn't speak it out loud, and I insisted that I'm her mom, so she has to talk to me (this ploy still works... for now) so she wrote the words instead.  And here is what she wrote:

"I HATE making mistakes."

Mistakes - proof of our imperfection, tools that we use to remind ourselves that we're not _______ enough.  Smart enough, calm enough, thoughtful enough, strong enough, old enough, experienced enough.... good enough.  I watch helplessly at times as Satan uses my daughter's mistakes to convince her that she's not good enough, and no amount of preaching and teaching on my part can defend her little heart from the weight of her mistakes.  Which incidentally, are few and far between.  No child is perfect, and mine are no exception, but Isabel is truly a good girl.  She has a heart full of compassion and hands that are quick to serve, but oh how she strives to be perfect.  The truth is that I can't heal the wounds caused by her mistakes and the guilt she feels because of them, but God can.  So laying there in the quiet darkness of her room, the truth that God is merciful was just the truth she needed to speak, to accept, to experience.  Because mercy doesn't just cover her mistakes, it obliterates them.  It makes them as worthless and powerless as the lies spoken by the one who reminds her of them over and over again.  Praise God, for He is merciful.

What do you know to be true about God?  Take a moment to speak those truths, praising God for who He is and not just what He has done.  If you have children, praise God together, snuggle under the covers and make the most of those little moments before they're gone.