Because Life Isn’t Always Hunky-dory

Gratitude seeking graciously leads to gratitude living. Counting the gifts becomes such a joyful habit that once begun, you never want to stop.

But then there are days when the counting is not merely a joyful discipline. It becomes a lifeline.

A loved one, of the dearest sort, facing a potentially serious health issue. A slippery road provides the means of a most graceful slip right into a ditch. Two hours and a tow truck charge later, you’re finally pulled out. The bathtub that you had resurfaced instead of replaced to save money begins to peel.  The pan still sitting on the stove after two weeks because the part to hold up a fallen shelf on which it is supposed to sit has yet to be replaced.

We wear the yoke of Christ, and while it is an easy yoke, we still plow a cursed field. – Albert N. Martin, Grieving, Hope and Solace

I breathe deep. This is Monday. Gratitude day. I must remember to count, to find the gifts in the midst of these: the trials and nuisances of life. Because counting isn’t the response to moment by moment hunky-dory living. It is the pressing of a heart desperately seeking grace in all the hard places.

It’s for days like this that I count. I inhale the peace of God as I exhale words of thanks.  The problems don’t magically disappear, but brought into a right perspective, the burden lightens. If I must plow a cursed field, the yoke of Christ is gracious indeed.

In that moment of breathing thanks, as I seek to see the blessing, God gives me two special gifts. I smile as I add them to count. #1264 – 1276

• a beautiful sunrise, a gift that never gets old 

• a poignant reminder just when I needed it

• a friend on my mind, beating me to the punch by reaching out to me before I reached out to her
• peanut butter toast
• reading Ann of Green Gables aloud with my daughter; such “scope for imagination” from Ann Shirley
• a book to assist me in ministering to others that ends up knocking my own socks off with blessing and encouragement
• vacuum cleaner fixed and purring rightly again
• no injuries for me and only incidental damage to the car
• a discount on the tow truck charge because we had to wait so long
• a husband who would never get mad over such things
• the best chicken noodle soup, much need comfort food

In hope,
Shelli