The Discipline of Thanks

"It's hard...the discipline of thanks comes only with practice. I know. So many days, so hard. I want to give up, too. But give up the joy-wrestle... and I die."

I have just finished reading Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Blessings and it is hard to see the ways in which it has affected me. Good books do that - they seep in and are remembered later, much later when it really matters. The premise of the book is simple: we say we are grateful, but are we really? If we paint with wide brushstrokes the thankfulness for "everything," are we really noticing the everything we give thanks for? And, more importantly, when what we perceive as bad happens, can we still be thankful, knowing that the circumstance comes from the hands of a loving God?

Ann is no stranger to accepting tragedy. She recounts the death of her sister crushed in front of her parents, a brother-in-law burying two children of his own within eighteen months of each other. And the question remains: When what we see as bad happens, can we still give thanks? Can we take the hard bread that God gives, can we eat the mystery as the Israelites ate manna and let it sustain us?

The book brings to mind another: The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, who hid Jews in Nazi Germany and was sent to concentration camps because of it. She recounts how they sat in a crowded room with other women, in unsanitary, unclean conditions, some sick, all malnourished and gave thanks for fleas because her sister reminded her that we are to give thanks in all circumstances. Corrie later comes back to this instance and remembers that it was because of the fleas that women in that group were able to hear the Gospel because the Nazis left them alone. Because of the fleas, "for creatures [she] could see no use for."

Give thanks in all circumstances.

Easier said than done. And yet, done it must be. In my own little way, I have started. I have begun a gratitude journal, where I try diligently to write things I am grateful to God for. I follow each sigh with thankfulness. Sometimes I see the blessing immediately. Sometimes I don't. But I have begun  because I can see how gratefulness is a discipline. And naming things to be grateful for - that, Voskamp claims, is Edenic. Naming always is.

And for that little beautiful truth, I am especially thankful.