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.

A New Creation

If you're reading this through Facebook, it's because you haven't hidden my updates from your wall. First off, let me just say I appreciate that immensely. Secondly, if my Lose It! updates are beginning to get to you, you can hit the "x" next to my posts and then pick "Hide all from Lose It!"

Okay, with the disclaimers out of the way, I can now begin to tell you how much I am truly enjoying this weight loss/working out journey. The best gift my husband could have come up with, he gave our family last September - gym membership. Believe me when I tell you I was never a gym person. It freaked the heck out of me. We had made one attempt at going to a yoga class years ago and I even used their stationary bicycle once and then that was it. I was done. It was much, much more relaxing to stay home and drink wine and have a nice dinner. Much better than to be in a roomful of healthy, fit people all staring at overweight little me.

I cringe a little when I think of how much time I have wasted being afraid of the world and being ashamed of my body. I cannot pin-point an exact date all that changed but it had much (all?) to do with accepting Christ. Of that I am certain. I felt light and I felt free, and for the first time in my life, I wanted to run. I know. It surprised me, too.

Since last May, (I am dating May because I remember my birthday and how much I weighed - no other reason) I have lost 29 pounds and gained some muscle in the process. I have run my first 5k (3.1 miles), my first 4 miles, done many group classes in cardio-kickboxing, strength training, tried x-bike, learned to zumba and spent innumerable hours weight lifting as well as reading all I could get my hands on about sports nutrition and eating right.

In the grand scheme of things, compared to a real athlete for example, this is small, miniscule, but knowing where I come from and who I used to be, the changes I have made are truly remarkable. While I was never obese, I was overweight with almost no muscle and zero endurance. I couldn't run for more than two minutes. Today, I run two miles (at least) five times a week. I was weak, so weak my arms jiggled when I waved. Now I weight train with my husband three times a week and can bench 70 pounds, deep squat 65 and do tricep extensions with 45. I go to kickboxing and strength training classes twice a week and zumba classes once a week.

I love every minute of it. Every single, sweaty minute.

You may ask why I'm doing this. Is it pride? A desire to be beautiful? Strong? Or just healthy? Am I in a competition? Training for something? The answer to all these would be somewhere in the middle. The answer truly is, as I had shared with a close friend, is that I want to see what this amazing body God gave me is truly capable of. Not only is this an amazing, beautiful body He has given me, it is also God's temple. I am finally beginning to believe that. ("What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" - 1 Corinthians 6:19) So, I suppose you could say that I am doing this as a testimony to God's grace.

Which is why, even though I'm a fan of shows like The Biggest Loser, it bothers me when they speak of "being selfish" and "doing this for yourself" and "loving yourself." No amount of telling yourself you're beautiful when the reality of sin is staring you in the face is going to make you believe it. No amount of trying to forgive yourself will work if you know you have broken God's law. We all know that, don't we? Aren't we all aware of something not being all right with ourselves? Maybe I'm delusional, but I think we do. No, I think I might just be a Calvinist in this one - I think unless the Spirit of God quickens us, we are dead. And I have been, for a long time. But I think I've been made alive and forgiven. I am a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Blah (or the New Baby Blues)

Three days of rain in May and see what happens? My enthusiasm dips, my allergies get my head all stuffed up, I miss my morning runs a few days in a row, I start to feel pudgy and my joie de vivre is nowhere to be seen. Ugh.

Slowly I begin to notice women without children. How they have time to linger in grocery store aisles and actually read the names of ingredients, how they aren't talking in forced enthusiasm and raised voices to get their toddlers to listen to them, how they can drive without screaming at their kids in the back of the car, how they can actually pick up and go - on a whim - anywhere they choose without worrying about nap times and routines.

I whine and complain to my husband. I'm never alone, I say. The children are always with me. Even nap times are so... regulated. My life doesn't change. Every day is just the same as the last. And the last and the last. It's beginning to get to me. What I would do for a day (or a week) to myself!

These are the tough days, I guess. Motherhood wouldn't be such a high calling without it being difficult somewhere down the line. It's not all roses and hearts, no matter how much Hallmark makes us want to believe it. Rather, it's about trying to teach my children the right way to ask me for something when all I want to do is complain at God about how hard my life is. It's about recognizing that everyone is in the same boat in one way or another. It's realizing that I am the best prepared and especially chosen for this job even when I don't do it perfectly. My husband never complains that he is the one who has to go out and work and if there's a financial crisis he is the one we look toward to bring home the grass-fed beef. Then why should I?

And slowly a new mood begins to emerge. That woman who was poring over labels at the grocery store? Who knows if she's just turning the corner now into another aisle, buying a pregnancy test, hoping, praying, thinking, "I'm almost thirty-five. Please, please, please be positive."

No matter how much I complain, I have to realize this truth: there is nothing like motherhood to bring me closer to the heart of God.

Growth

I have glimpsed something today that I find hard to express in words and yet I must try because the truth of what I have realized is so seminal to my understanding of what it means to be a Christian. My knowledge lags far behind my experience and, often it seems, so do my words.

I fasted from red wine for seventy-three days. I fasted because I felt like I was making it into a idol. I am by no means an alcoholic, but I do like red wine. It is the only alcohol I drink and I truly enjoy it. So, why did I give it up? The short answer is above. The longer, and perhaps the more difficult answer, is that I lacked knowledge and therefore I lacked faith.

Why is it that as soon as one tries to approach God legalism gets such a strong grip? Why are we so gullible? So easily swayed by our feelings and what we should do than what God says? Brennan Manning calls this mask of trying to be virtuous and holy "the impostor." Maybe I was under the grip of such an impostor. Something about me constantly tries to earn God's favor while rejecting His grace.

I think that today I finally understood the reason for this. The reason is that I am spiritually weak. The reason for my spiritual weakness? I don't know the truth. And only the truth can set me free. Not how I feel, not what I think I should feel and not what I think I should do. There really is nothing I can do, besides walk in the path He has created for me. Recognizing that path requires freedom from shoulds and coulds and fear. Recognizing that path requires, in other words, a deep and abiding faith in God.

This faith can only come from a thorough knowledge of The Bible. So far, I have been satisfied with milk but my appetite has grown. Today I crave the meat of God's Word. Because only meat nourishes, only meat sustains; only meat truly satisfies. It ensures I will not go hungry or lacking. The truth is supposed to hold me steady, so I am not tossed around in currents of worldly philosophies - something I am especially vulnerable to, based on my past. And, as someone said to me today, the only thing worse than a shipwreck is to be tossed around forever aimlessly, not knowing which way one is going.

So, finally, I believe, I am ready. And I am hungry. And I know that I am growing.

Finding a Voice

One of Jerry Seinfeld's greatest one-liners goes something like this: "The one thing people fear more than their own death is public speaking; which means that at a funeral, they would rather be in the casket than at the podium!" I was to give my testimony yesterday at our annual Tea and Treasures at MOPS. It was ten minutes of getting in front of seventy-five women and talking - okay, reading - what Jesus means to me and what He has done in my life since He became My Lord and Savior.

I could barely sleep the night before. Each time I woke up, I felt nerves and had trouble going back to sleep. It helped to know that everyone goes through this, even a "mentor mom" in our MOPS group I look up to and other women who had given their testimonies the year before. But I was still nervous and shaky. Each time I thought about getting up there to face the crowd, looking into their eyes while talking, I inwardly shuddered. No exaggeration.

On the day of Tea and Treasures, I remember the co-ordinator introducing me and me shuffling over to the front, taking my position in front of the microphone a bundle of nerves. My hands were shivering, I didn't trust my voice to carry me through ten minutes in front of a group. Ten minutes can be an excruciatingly long time when all eyes are on you. I would know. I had tried to give a real estate presentation before in front of a much smaller group and had fallen flat on my face. Metaphorically, of course, but still. Now, I tested the microphone, asked if it was too loud, took a long breath, even said something about my heart beating. Duh. Of course, my heart was beating - I was alive! What I meant was my heart was beating so fast! That should tell you something about my overall state.

I began to talk and that was when everything changed. Everything. An unearthly calm came over me. I paused - at the end of sentences as I had been advised to do, and looked at the audience. I was in no hurry to get done. I didn't need to even look down to read some sentences. I even - gasp!- enjoyed myself, sharing my love for The Lord, revealing things about my life that had previously been stowed away in the dark, hidden in corners of conversations only accessible to a few. I allowed the Lord access into them and He shined through. He shined through me.

I had read somewhere that He equips the called, but had never before experienced it in such a real and powerful way. He truly does. He is helping me find my voice. I can't wait to do it again!

The Weight of a Gift

Last evening, I saw a true show of extravagant, crazy love. It wasn't new and it wasn't earth-shattering. But it may have been the very first time I truly saw it.

I had been grumbling for a while now that there is not single thing in the house that is my own. Nothing that personally belongs to me and me alone. This desire strikes me as extremely selfish and yet extremely urgent at the same time. I rush to explain it. The thing I own wouldn't define me, I say. I make excuses, searching in the deepest recesses of my emotions for the reason for this unwelcome desire that seems to consume me.

Well, I cannot complain any more. My husband bought me a notebook computer - one bigger, faster, better than I wanted. One that slightly embarrasses me and slightly scares me because of the money we spent on it. One that, if I had been working, I would have struggled to pay him back for. Except, I don't work. And I have no way of paying for this laptop I didn't deserve but so graciously accepted. I didn't need it, per se. It was a gift, in the purest sense of the word.

I always thought people who said they didn't deserve things they received were lying, that their humility was false. Yesterday, I rethought that idea. Yesterday, as I went through the emotions of trying to reconcile receiving this gift - defined by dictionaries as something bestowed or acquired with no effort on the part of the recipient to earn it - with somehow paying for it or even deserving it, I realized: I don't think I had ever felt this way before. Ever. In my entire life.

The converse of this ugliness is that after receiving a gift such as this one, I still feel like I have to earn it, make up for it in some way, so that the scales are balanced on some cosmic level known only to me. I never thought I would be one who had a hard time accepting love, that I was one who feels she must earn it. But I am.

Psalm 103 comes to mind. It says God has crowned us with lovingkindness and tender mercies. I thought I understood it, but I guess I don't really. For all my entitlement, I suppose I am still lacking in understanding the true depth of God's love, a small measure of which I saw through my husband's lavish spending on me yesterday.

Perhaps that's why the world has trouble understanding the gospel of Jesus Christ. Sometimes the weight of a gift is just a little more than we can bear to understand.

Self-pity, anyone?

My Macbook is broken and needs to be fixed. It's going to cost $280. You would think my world is coming to an end.

What is it in me that marches in lock step with the demon of self-pity?

I told my husband, "At least I'm aware of it and I'm aware that these feelings I have are not real." He says, "So a homocidal maniac knows he's a homocidal maniac. Hmm." Wish I thought that was funny. But at least it's honest. Argh.

I have spent much of the day going back and forth about keeping the old one for watching Hulu and Netflix (it works when attached to an external screen because it works fine but the backlight is out so you can't see the screen.) and buying one for my own personal use or just getting it fixed and keeping things as they are. My impulsive decisions in the past have usually been mistakes and so I want to wait to decide either way. I have prayed and failed to control my thoughts, prayed and failed. Over and over and over.

The answer I have received is to wait. If only it wasn't so hard.

At least I remembered to pray first.

For tonight, I think, that little change is going to have to be enough.