What the Lord Has Been Teaching Me About Inconvenience

Lately, I feel like the Lord has been teaching me a lot about inconvenience.

I guess it started about a year ago, when we decided to downgrade to one car (out of frugal necessity, really, rather than choice). Perhaps for the first time, my eyes were opened to the blessings that came alongside inconvenience, seeing how the change made me be more intentional about considering our schedules, accepting the hospitality of friends and neighbors who were willing to give us a ride when needed, as well as the obvious financial fruits that resulted.

And then when we moved into our new apartment, it has seemed like one thing after another has happened, regarding discovering new leaks and creaks all over. For the first few days, we didn't even have hot water, so we had to heat up big stock-pots worth of water just when I wanted to do dishes. (We don't have a dishwasher either!)

Currently, we have a small invasion of teensy-tiny ants that have been driving me crazy, as I race after them with a fly swatter, flip-flop or little bottle of bleach-water to drown them with. (Let me know if you have any tried-and-true tactics to offer up.)

It's been one, and then another.

And each time, when the frustrations flair, I feel like the Lord is asking me to be thankful for these inconveniences. He is teaching me that though they are annoying and often more time-consuming than not, there is still—there is always—something to be thankful for. He is teaching me to accept what is given to me with grace. He is teaching me to see with new eyes how small these things really are, despite how big they feel in the moment.

He is teaching me to let him have his way with my heart, even through these most minor of situations. Though they are trivialities to be sure, he is still at work, molding and shaping. Turning everything into a lesson. What, around here, we like to call a "blesson." ;)

I know that this little journey that the Lord is taking me on right now is not over or near complete. I can sense I am still in the middle of this, perhaps even at the beginning!

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A Blog Post About Riches

Though I've not been doing as much blog writing as I'd like, I have been doing a great deal of blog reading. One post that especially spoke to my heart was one from Brooke's blog about finding ourselves overwhelmed with worries of what we can and can't afford:

"...in these times when i give into fear, or talk too loudly about limited income, or mention all those things we “can’t afford,” i paint this picture that makes it seem like to follow Jesus is almost akin to being an economic martyr.

it isn’t.

i need to give testimony to this: we are paid well; we are living in abundance. our boss is our Dad, and our Dad is very rich."

She goes on to witness to the riches that festoon her life: fresh fruit and organic eggs for breakfast, coffee shop trips, a tax return that paid for a new water hearter, donated items for a baby-on-the-way. And though there are at times struggles to make ends meet or wants that go without, she sees the beauty in them, too:

"His provision always comes, and always in perfect time. sometimes it comes through the offer of a job for pay, or picking up an extra shift at work. sometimes He prompts someone to share/give to us items that we need, or to just give us cash. sometimes we get checks from unexpected sources for odd reasons (like a refund check for having overpaid on car insurance). sometimes things are on sale. sometimes we’re able to barter services. and through it all, He is teaching us to revel in the beauty and freedom of simplicity and thrifting. and He shows our hearts what is really necessary and what is not, giving us grace to let go of the frills.

i am wealthy. my goodness, i am so rich."

I need this reminder. We have chosen to live a life that is simple and not marked by extravagant incomes. But that can often get forgotten when we focus on what we do not have instead of what we do have (quality free time, hobbies, homemade bread!). This kind of thinking completely distorts the picture because we have found ourselves never wanting, never missing bills, never having to choose milk over bread. We are not poor by any means! And yet it can be so easy to find ourselves bemoaning what we lack, even when they are by all accounts luxuries.

Oh, to truly embrace what we have rather rather than yearn after that which we don't...

I'd encourage you to go read Brooke's post in its entirety!

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A Glimpse Into My Gratitude List

As inspired by my reading of One Thousand Gifts, I’ve started my own burgeoning list of all those sundry things for which I must give thanks to God. It is almost hardest for me to remember to be thankful for the smallest of things, so I am enjoying this exercise.

Here’s a look at some of the items and moments that have graced my list of late (as well as some of the prayers they have also incited):

Dear Lord, thank you for all your gifts, including:

• A good book to read and inspire me.
• Warm flannel sheets.
• Pretty, soothing music that comforts my soul.
• An onion to chop up.
• Extra ingredients for tonight’s dish, and the perfect amount.
• Your patience regarding calling me back to you.
• Your perfect timing regarding ending my job.
• Providing me with this respite right now, a chance to relax. (Please help me enjoy and relish it!)
• Ready cups of coffee that are sweet to my taste buds.
• The stories that you share with me in the Bible. (Please help me continue to learn from them and fall in love with them!)
• Easing into the morning slowly.
• A clean desk welcoming me to the day.
• My blueberry scented candle that burns scents into the winter air.
• The insights and clarity you give when I take the time to sit down and listen.
• Giving me blankets to throw over my lap
• Giving me a kind and loving husband who shows me your love daily. (Please help me be able to better reflect your love back to him.)
• Inspiring me to keep this list. (Please teach me through this. Please change my heart.)

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Cultivating Gratitude for the Smallest of Things

Gratitude. Ann Voskamp in One Thousand Gifts posits that a life of joy and of a filling salvation comes when we learn to live a lifestyle of being grateful and thankful for every single thing God has gifted to us. Good, bad, big, little. We rejoice in it all.

Upon reading Philippians 4:11-12, where Paul writes, “I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation…”, Voskamp points readers to the fact that Paul had to learn these things. She realized that we must learn to live a life utterly thankful for all that God doles out. It does not come naturally.

So she decided to keep a list. She shares many of the things on that list, thanking God for his little gifts of sunshine and a warm griddle and the dancing moonlight. Little things. I kept waiting for the big ones. The revelatory ones. Honestly, I started to scoff a bit at the little things that made her list.

Then I read this: “Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant—a seed—this plants the giant miracle. The miracle of eucharisteo, like the Last Supper, is in the eating of crumbs, the swallowing down one mouthful. Do not disdain the small. The whole of the life—even the hard—is made up of the minute parts, and I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole. These are new language lessons, and I live them out.”

Learning to seek out an attitude of gratefulness in even the smallest of things, I hadn’t realized how important that is. Because there are always small things for me to be thankful for; the artwork on the wall that makes me smile, the healthy pumpkin-oat muffins I made for breakfast, the cardinal that skips along outside our window. We need not wait for the big things to give thanks. Instead, by stringing our days with little upon little thing to thank God for giving to us and placing in our path, it reminds me of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas story, when it says, "The Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day."

Yes, seeking out the tiniest of details and seeing them as gifts from God and thanking him for them teaches my heart to grow bigger.

“Joy is always given, never grasped.
God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.”

— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

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Cultivating A Grateful Heart Even When It Hurts

Lately, I’ve started and stopped reading a couple of books, because they just seemed empty and trite, nothing for me to sink my teeth in. But yesterday, I started reading a new one that I have already poured myself into, a quarter of the way in less than 12 hours: One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.

I’d originally heard about the book from Lindsay at Passionate Homemaking, who had mentioned it in a couple of posts. (Lindsay also keeps lists of all her book reading, which I get good recommendations and ideas from.)

One Thousand Gifts chronicles the author's exploration of a need for thanksgiving in all things—even in our greatest pain and struggles. She shares all the death that has ravaged her family, including her sister who was killed before she lived to know kindergarten and her nephews who died months after birth and her mother-in-law, lost to cancer. All these deaths that hurt and don’t seem to make any sense when we think of what it means for God to be "good."

This book is an exploration of those hard questions. Of what it means to be thankful even in those searing, scarring times. Poetic and beautiful and gut-wrenching and honest, Voskamp takes readers along as she probes the Bible, great theologians and the routine of everyday life for insights about this need for gratitude to encompass every portion of our lives.

“On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces…” (1 Corinthians 11:23-24) When Voskamp reads this, she writes, “Jesus offers thanksgiving for even that which will break Him and crush Him and wound him and yield a bounty of joy….”

Thanksgiving in the hardest of times was modeled perfectly by Christ. And it is a practice that God calls us to. Psalms 50:23 says, “He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may who him the salvation of God.” She says, “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.”

It is in learning to be thankful for every moment, for the big, the little, the easy, the difficult, the inconvenient, the anguishing, that we are drawn deeper into our God’s embrace and, almost paradoxically, into a fulfilling joy.

This is about as far as I am into this heartfelt journey Voskamp takes readers on in One Thousand Gifts. I know, from reading Lindsay's reports on the book, that I've hardly scratched the surface of what this book is about. But it’s already got me thinking about my lack of gratitude for all that God has given me and my need for it to permeate my soul deeper. Like few other books of late, it has awakened me and encouraged me to take my faith deeper and farther in this regard.

“From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story. Satan, he wanted more. More power, more glory. . . . Satan’s sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve are, simply, painfully, ungrateful for what God gave,” Voskamp writes. “Isn’t that the catalyst of all my sins? Our fall was, has always been, and always will be that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.”

(FYI: One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp doesn't officially release until next month, but you can read the first three chapters on Zondervan's website. You can also pre-order it on Amazon.)

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