Were you ever guilted into cleaning your plate because of “all the starving children in Africa”? While it’s hard to imagine that I ever had to be encouraged to eat, I do recall my mom occasionally employing the starving children tactic to get me to down those last, difficult bites of lima beans or liver. I even remember snapping back, once and only once, “So can we put a stamp on this stuff and mail it to those kids?”
I wasn’t very thankful back then. I want to be now. I see now what I couldn’t see then – that there are many, many things I’ve never had to worry about, not even for one minute, that are daily, life-and-death struggles for millions of people in this world. Food to eat, clean water, medical care.
I’m thankful for those things now, but I want to be more thankful. So thankful that I will stop complaining, both in my head and with my mouth, about anything in my life. Have you ever imagined how petty our typical complaints would seem to someone living in the slums of Calcutta, India? I have and it makes me ashamed.
“I am so tired of this satellite TV cutting out in the middle of a show…why don’t they have more check-out lines open?…I can’t believe I have to wait so long every time I come to this doctor’s office.”
Meanwhile, somewhere, right this minute, a mother is helplessly watching her children starve to death.
My worries are “luxury worries.” How dare I allow them to dull my thankfulness and siphon the joy from my life? How dare I?
Some good friends moved to Hawaii a few years ago and shortly thereafter, the wife, Wendy, learned she had breast cancer. She’s cancer-free now, but the treatments were difficult and the outcome uncertain for awhile. Some mutual friends went over to visit Wendy and her family and came back with this report: “Every day Wendy sees a rainbow out her kitchen window in the mountains. Every day. But every day she acts like it’s the first rainbow she’s ever seen.”
Wendy has learned to savor every morsel of life and to refuse to take its wonders for granted.
I have another friend, a single mom, who struggled financially for years before establishing what is now a thriving business. During those lean years, this woman and her son sacrificed and persevered and made do. When my friend finally opened her new business, her young son proudly said the office was “five cartwheels wide.”
I love that! Five cartwheels wide. He knew because he had cartwheeled across that office in celebration and gratitude.
How do we measure life? I want to measure mine in rainbows and cartwheels. Not by what I’ve lost, but by what I’ve learned. Not by what I’m missing, but by what I have. Not by what is wrong, but by what is right.
I want to be thankful down to the marrow of my bones, seeing blessings every day – EVERY day – like I’m seeing them for the very first time.
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”—James MacDonald
“In everything give thanks…” (1 Thessalonians 5:18a)