Thankfulness

Try to spend fifteen minutes being thankful. Don't do anything else but list the things you want to say thanks for. Thanks for this, thanks for that, thanks for them, thanks for those. Try it. Some of the women I meet with for accountability group tried it and found it very difficult. "That is a long time!" one of them said with a look of exhaustion on her face. "I was thanking God for green grass, leaves on trees, trying to find anything to be thankful for," another piped up. They were discouraged by this exercise. I was surprised really. 15 minutes doesn't seem like that long to be thankful. Certainly I could find things to thank God for that amount of time. So I took it on as a challenge.

I decided to write my thankful thoughts in my journal. I sat down. Pen in hand. Time to be thankful. This should be a piece of cake. I touched the tip of the inky pen down and lifted it up without drawing a stroke. What am I going to write? What do I want to say? How do I want my thanks to come across? I'm thankful for the green grass but why am I thankful for it? Is this a list of thanks or is this a river of thanks?

I think I prefer the river. I am, after all, thankful for rivers. I love how they flow up and down, side to side. I am thankful for the way they shape and form rocks and banks. I am thankful for the sound of the rushing water that takes me back to my childhood and draws me forward as it surges by. I'm thankful not for a list of good things but I am thankful for life and all it is about. It is more than a list, that's for sure.

So in my quest to spend time being thankful I decided to choose something that I knew I was thankful for. I guess I started to make a list in my head, maybe there won't be that artsy river after all. Hmmm, I'm thankful for my family, my church, for all kinds of things. But I don't just want to say what I'm thankful for, I want to say why! Focus! So I started with music. I am thankful for music. I am. That is a fact. But that didn't take me fifteen minutes to write, more like 15 seconds. I am thankful for music... and then I kept on writing.

Here is my thankful journey. I want to express my gratitude, not in a wooden list of facts but rather like a gushing brook, babbling and snaking through my heart and life. Cause that is what true thankfulness is, moving, shaping, growing in us as we acknowledge it and acknowledge it's source. I really am thankful.