falling in love again: Heart of Thankfulness Chapter 11

I can’t believe it’s the last chapter of 1,000 Gifts. I hope you have enjoyed going through the book with us. It’s been a blessing for me to share a book that has had such an impact on my life.

This last week, in the comments, just share some of your gifts you have listed through our series. 

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The gifts, the ones we’ve been counting for weeks now are a song

A love song, at no less.

In Eucharisteo I count, count, count, keeping the beat of His song, this love song He won’t stop singing.

A love song sung by a Savior over me.

Over me?

 

He is singing

“You are precious to me. You are honored, and I love you” Isaiah 43:4

 He is singing and giving.

Sunrises, lemons, soapy water. Giving cuddles, baked bread, and fresh blooming flowers.

And to think I could have missed it all. He’s singing and giving all for us.

We see into His heart and it is so personal, so intimate, and so utterly fulfilling.

Giving thanks and counting gifts awakens me to a God that is giving Himself with naked,

Unashamed passion. A God giving Himself to me for a surrender of love.

“In a thousand ways He woos.

In a thousand ways I fall in love

Isn’t falling in love always the fullest life?”

But falling in love is terrifying. And who wouldn’t be afraid at intimacy with a Holy God?

God, the trinity is relationship and He woos us to relationship.

There is nothing with God if there is no relationship.

So I allow my heart to fall in love.

Give it to receive it: Heart of Thankfulness

Throughout the posts that Nicole and I have written about One Thousand Gifts, we’ve talked a lot about opening ourselves up to seeing the gifts that the Lord has given us.  We’ve opened our hands to have them filled by the Father.  He’s filled our hands with joy, with blessings. 

“If eucharisteo had led us to let go and open the hand to receive all His shimmering river of gifts, how can we now close the hand?  If I close those fingers, try to hold, hoard the river- dam up the grace- won’t the water grow stagnant?”

He has filled my life so much.  The blessings and the gifts have been given to me in abundance, but can I keep it all for myself?  Will the gifts keep their meaning all shut up in my clinched fists?

“Eucharisteo is giving thanks for grace.  But in the breaking and giving of bread, in the washing of feet, Jesus makes it clear that eucharisteo is, yes, more:  it is giving grace away.  Eucharisteo is the hand that opens to receive grace, then, with thanks, breaks the bread; that moves out into the larger circle of life and washes the feet of the world with that grace.”

If I shut my hands, the grace stops flowing.  But, when I open my hands wide, grace flows… and it flows on.  I have been blessed so that I can go on to bless others.

Our mission here to to serve, to love, and to live like Jesus. 

We’ve learned so much about seeing joy these last few weeks of these series. 

Don’t you want to share what you see?

Don’t you want others to feel that joy, too?

"God can enter into me, even me, and use these hands, these feet, to be His love, a love that goes on and on and on forever, endless cycle of grace.”

Will you be an endless cycle of grace?

Heart of Thankfulness Chapter 9

This week might just be one of my favorite chapters of the book. I hope you'll join us again! We're digging deeper and becoming smaller and receiving the best gift of all: Joy.

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Have you ever spent much time with kids?

Little kids can be entertained for hours by the simplist things--boxes, spoons, paper.

anything new to them is filled with wonder.

it's a new experience to explore.  They giggle, laugh, and squeal.

pure joy. unhindered, unabashed.

joy. 

but adults, it takes a lot to see joy in an adult.

why? what happened?

what if the heights of our joy is measured by the depths of our gratitude?

how "small" can we make ourselves? small enough to see the joy in the seemingly small gift?

can we make ourselves as small as a child?  

"God created the world out of nothing,

and as long as we are nothing,

He can make something out of us"

Martin Luther

When I list my gifts, I can see the "bigness" of God, and the small-ness of me.

I can feel myself decreasing--sliding into the background, and the focus is

the love and passion from a God who gives good gifts.

Expectations kill relationships--human ones and the one with the Father too.

when we life life without the burden of expectation, what can top the surprising wonder of the moment? When I'm not expecting God to give--how much greater does the gift become?

Is it only when our lives are emptied that we're suprised by how truley full our lives were?

Instead of filling with expectations, the joy-filled expect nothing, and are filled. 

CS Lewis said he was "surprised by joy". Perhaps there is not way to discover joy but as surprise?

To receive the gifts--we have to live low. Life small.

and He has promised to fill those small empty moments with joy.

Receiving the gifts is not a strain, a burden. But a simple letting go and letting God fill.

The world doesn't live small. It lives large, extravagant.

and it hungers.

maybe this is why.

Joy comes from a place far deeper than feelings

Joy comes from the presence of God. 

Joy is God and God is Joy and joy doesn't negate other emotions

Joy transcends all other emotions.

Even when marriages are struggling,

when children stray,

when there is no money in the bank

and no dream in the heart. 

"I will take joy" Habakkuk 3:18

I hope this week you will become small and "take" joy with us.

Heart of Thankfulness Chapter 8

God and I, we've long had trust issues

Those are the very words that begin chapter 8 in One Thousand Gifts.  From that moment on, I knew that this was a chapter that was really going to speak to me through current struggles I’m having with the Lord.  (FYI:  I’m writing this before Passion.  Hopefully some of these struggles are being worked on. :))

Worry, anxiety, fear, the unknown.  All these things have the ability to throw me into a state of panic.  To cause my patience to run thin, my words to become negative, and my heart to become joyless. 

“Worry is the façade of taking action when prayer really is.”

Do I really choose worry over prayer?

Yes, I do.  The night before I read this chapter I cried myself to sleep.  The thought of going back to my college town after Passion without Tyler scares me. 

I’m afraid of being alone.  I’m afraid of having no friends.  I’m afraid of being invisible.

I’m afraid of being unhappy.

“Stress isn’t only a joy stealer.  The way we respond to it can be a sin.”

My response to stress can be a sin?  How?

The Lord has commanded me to trust in him (John 14:1). And stress is the opposite of trust.

“I can’t fill with joy until I learn how to trust:  ‘May the God of hope fill you will all JOY and peace as you TRUST in him, so that you may overflow.’”

Wait.  I won’t know joy until I know how to trust, and I can’t trust while having stress?

How in the world do I change this lifestyle of stress I’ve created?

“Count blessings and discover who can be counted on.”

So eucharisteo is my ticket out of stress and into trust?

Yes, I think that’s the thing.  Remembering the past.  Remembering his faithfulness.  Remembering his love.  Remembering his perfect plan.

Those stones of thankfulness, of rememberance for what the Lord did pave a way for my trust in the future.

The Lord came through for me.  The Lord LOVES me. 

Can I not trust him now to do that same?

Can I not choose to have a thankful heart that trusts so I can have a life full of joy?

Heart of Thankfulness Chapter 7:

Is anyone else in shock that we are in the last week of 2011 or is that just me?

As we approach the new year, I hope that you will make it a resolution of yours to allow God to change your heart into a heart of thankfulness.For both of us, this book is one that the Lord continues to use  on our hearts, and we would love to have you join us whenever!

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It's my own face that obscures the face of God. My own rage, anger, impatience. 

In the mess and loud and screams Jesus whispers "What do you want?"

and I want to see. To see him in the mess. To see Him in the sinful, self loving world I live in. 

But I don't see, because I believe in the power of the pit. I smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love. Do I really believe that? Can something so hideous reside in my heart?

I try to hide it, but truly I do believe that complaining, exasperation and resentment will get me farther than love. "When I choose, and it is a choice, to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness? Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective--more expedient--than giving thanks."

and the grace of God whispers to me

Blasphemer.

Blasphemer.

We first must focus. "Jesus took the break, looking up to Heaven, and gave thanks."

Focus. Eyes to Heaven. 

It's a matter of focus. 

Looking for the ugly-beautiful, count it as grace, and transfigure the mess into joy with thanks and eucharisto. 

"Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won't see it." Annie Dillard. 

and by thanks, we see. We see that He is here. Here in the ugly, in the mess. 

"We can see deep because we have seen His glory and received one gift after another.

But we only recognize the glory of God in this moment when we wake to the one grace after another"

I'm  blind when I want to be. 

The gift is always there. The reason for thanks is always there. 

Do I sometimes choose my anger over joy?

We can only choose one emotion at a time, which do we want to feel?

Heart of Thankfulness Week 6

Week 6 of “heart of thankfulness” is here!  If you’re reading along, or have read Ann Voscamp’s book, leave us some feedback.  We would love to know your thoughts on the chapter!

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“Every moment I live, I live bowed to something.  And if I don’t see God, I’ll be bowed down before something else.”

I want to see God.  Truly, I do.  But, sometimes I just see everything else.  The pain, the struggles, the frustrations, the ugly… I see the negative.  I lose sight of the positive.  I lose sight of the good… even if I only caught a glimpse for a second.

“Eucharisteo is everywhere and I want to see euchariesteo everywhere and I want to remember how badly I really want to see it.”

Sometimes my longing to see the good physically hurts.  I WANT to see it!  Why is choosing it so hard?

“but, faith is always a way of seeing, a seeking for God in everything.  And if the eyes gaze long enough to see God lifted in a thing, how can the lips not off eucharisteo?”

Faith.  Faith is the key.  Without faith in the One who is Truth, we miss everything.  We miss it because of fear, of distraction, of trying to figure this life thing out on our own.  But, when we have faith.  When we’ve placed every single thing we’ve got in his hands.  When we wake up in the morning and decide to let it all go that day, we get the chance to see.  We get the chance to see because the burden on our back that had us staring at the ground has been lifted (Matthew 11:30). 

“Living in his presence is fullness of joy- and seeing shows the way in.  The art of deep seeing makes gratitude possible.  And it is the art of gratitude that makes joy possible.  Isn’t joy the art of God.”

Wait… we can SEE the way into his presence?  Is it that easy?  Can we just choose to see his gifts, his glory and live in his presence?  Yes, we can.  And that’s where joy lives.  Joy lives with gratitude and gratitude with joy.  One doesn’t exist without the other. 

And neither exist without choosing to see.

Heart of Thankfulness Chapter 5

Hi friends.

how is your week? are you seeing the gifts easily this week, or are you having to search for them?

I hope that in both, the easy and the hard, you see the gifts.

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How do we lay our hands open for the hard eucharisto when we know it will hurt?

when we see the change, the times out of our comfort zone, the times of waiting

how do we look those things in the eye and open our hands and hearts to them?

the daily practice of the gifts, the discipline of gratitude is the way to daily practice the delight of God.

"Daily discipline is the door to full freedom, and the discipline to count to one thousand gave way to the freedom of wonder and I can't imagine not staying awake to God in the moment, the joy in the now. But awakening to joy awakens to pain."

"Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to fully living" We can't have one without the other. We can't live a life fully aware of the blessings and gifts without feeling and seeing the pain. But should we go back to the numbness?

What will we lose?

Health?

Comfort?

Money?

Security?

and when will we lose it?

What in the world, in a world of certain loss, is grace?

What counts as a blessing, as a gift? And what are all the other moments?

Every dark woods has words, messages from Christ that we need a lens to see. That lens is eucharisto. With thankful hearts, we see not as the world sees, but as the Word sees. And the Word is not a book on a shelf, but a human man who knows pain. 

All that God makes is good. So what are the dark woods? Could it just be the perspective? The way our eyes see the bad?

But what perspective sees good in divorce, cancer, and dying children?  

He is involved. He does let it happen. And when our aching hearts cry and wail and cry that it's His fault and He did it, he holds. He soothes. His ways are not our ways. He gave the manna. He gives the life-sustaining mystery.

Sometimes it takes time to answer the hard eucharisto. 

It's just our eyes that are bad. 

When I realize that it is not God who is in my debt but I who am in His great debt, then doesn't it all become gift?

For He might not have.

Christ comes to earth, dies on a cross, and all humanity recieves the biggest blessing of all.

Life, through death,

Through pain.

Through hard eucharisto.

Through a Savior who recieved the hard with open hands.

"It is suffering that has the realist possibility to bear down and deliver grace. And the grace that chooses to bear the cross of suffering overcomes that suffering"

"This is the hard eucharisto: The hard discipline to lean into the ugly and whisper thanks to transfigure it into beauty. The hard disciple to give thanks for all things at all times because He is all good. "

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Here are a few questions for you to think about and answer. Nicole has shared with us her answers.

What circumstances/situations have you seen the hard eucharisto?

It was through several tough relationships that I saw the hard eucharisteo.  I always found myself asking "why, why, why", but God was working all the while.  There was GOOD happening in the midst of all the ugly.

How have you seen His goodness in the hard eucharisto?

I think His goodness is even more clear through the hard eucharisteo.  It's not easy seeing the good when all you feel like you see is the bad.  While our feelings see one way, our hearts can actually see clearly.  In the hard times that I have chosen to pick out the blessings in what seems like the curses, is when I see the Lord's goodness the most.

Heart of Thankfulness Chapter 4

 Hi friends! Welcome to Thursday. Nicole has chapter 4 for us this week

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“Can our time-crammed lives handle yet one more thing?”

 

We race from place to place, from moment to moment. 

 

Hurry get your things together.

 

Talk fast I don’t have enough time.

 

Come on, we’re going to be late.

 

We’re always rush, rush, rush.  But, in the midst of all this running, hurrying, and rushing, we miss our lives.  In the midst of all this rushing, all we can seem to fix our eyes on is the next minute.  The next thing we can rush to.

 

a career, a husband, a baby, a bigger house, a faster car, a better vacation… more more more.

 

In all the rushing we forget the most important thing.  The only thing that can give us more time.  And, truthfully, don’t we all just want more time?

 

“Give thanks and get time?  Give thanks… slow time down with all your attention- and your basket of not-enough-time multiplies into more than enough time.”

 

Taking moments to see and be thankful for the small things…

 

ice on trees

 

a butterfly floating by

 

a baby’s cackle

 

allows those moments to linger for just a little bit longer.

 

Yesterday morning it snowed here in Oxford.  It was a big surprise waking up, peeking through my window, and seeing a steady flow of snow falling from the sky.  I smiled.  My next instinct was to check the weather and see how long it was going to last.

 

I just had to know how much time I had left to watch it fall.

 

But, why?  Why do I have to know when it’s going to stop?

 

I decided to not check, and just to enjoy it while it lasted.  I sat outside on my balcony with a cup of coffee and watched the snow create a pure, white blanket on the ground.  Every once in a while the wind would pick up and the snow would blow inside my balcony, right on my little head and into my hot coffee cup.

 

I laughed.

 

I sat and savored the moment.  I didn’t rush towards the next one.

 

I created time.

 

You stop for a few minutes and giggle at something silly, or smile at something simple and create time. 

 

I dare you.

 

“It takes a full 20 minutes after your stomach is full for your brain to register satisfaction.  How long does it take your soul to realize that your life is full?

 

*All quotes from 1000 Gifts

 

Heart of Thankfulness Chapter 3

Last week Nicole shared about Eucharisto, and this week we’re focusing on what is means to DO Eucharisto.

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Eucharisto: thanksgiving. Grace. Joy. Full life.

But how do we take the word and turn it into what it means? How do we find the thanksgiving, grace, and joy that the word itself promises?  Voskamp talks of using eucharisto to “overcome my one ugly and self destructive habit of ingratitude with the saving habit of gratitude” It sounds great.

I, Lauren, am a woman of the fall.  I am bitter, hateful, and resentful. I have a critical eye, am hard to satisfy, and am continually discontent.  How can I change? 

When we thirst, we drink.  When we hunger for eucharisto, we give thanks.

Jesus gave thanks at the Last Supper: “He took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to them”

Jesus gave thanks.

Jesus gave THANKS.

He took the bread, received it, and gave thanks.

These are the gifts God gives, and we can receive them with thanks. Paul also speaks of Euchariso:

“I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little” Philippians 4:11-12

There it is. We can LEARN Eucharisto!  We can know how to be thankful, empty or full. Rich or poor. In the midst of death, divorce, debt and unemployment. It is still there.

Sips of coffee in white mugs

The sound of waves crashing

The thanks is the miracle. It multiplies the joy and makes any life large. This is what I am hungering for. There is the joy, in the middle of the thanks. But I have this habit of discontentment, and it can only be driven out by the greater and better habit of contentment.

The naming of the gifts fills the emptiness of the space. Naming the gifts. Writing them down. It changes my habit of discontentment into contentment, one gift at a time.

Friends that encourage

A bagel and cream cheese

“A name reveals the very essence of a thing, or rather its essence as God’s gift. To name a thing is to manifest the meaning and value God gave it, to know it as coming from God and to know its place and function within the cosmos created by God. To name a thing, in other words, is to bless God for it and in it.”

Bosses full of grace

Flan at a favorite restaurant

“In naming that which is right before me, that which I’d otherwise miss, the invisible become visible.”

God’s in these details, in these gifts, in every little moment of our lives.  I want the fullest life, yearn for the joy and the happiness. Some days, in the midst of the ordinary school/work/cook/clean, it’s hard to think that writing these silly little things teaches eucharisto. But I keep writing them. I want to learn.

Christmas cards

Running

“Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the first gift given: joy”

Texts from old friends

Three day weekends

“Gratidude for the seemingly insignificant plants a miracle.  The miracle of eucharisteo, like the last supper, is in the eating of the crumbs, the swallowing down one mouthful. Do not distain the small. The whole of life—even the hard—is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole”

Weekends full of rest and fun

Cuddling and dreaming about the future

The list is God’s list. The way He loves me. And in writing it I enter His throne room and fall more in love with Him.  

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*all quotations are taken from Chapter 3 of 1000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp 

Here are your questions for the week, and Nicole’s answers:

What are you thankful for?

I am thankful for grace and the holy fire that the Lord has put inside my spirit. There is no greater feeling in the world than to be abandoned to him! 

What gifts have you been given? 

Flowers in winter

Fired up friends

Sweet texts

Warm sunshine

The sound of the coffee maker

How have you been able to learn Eucharisto?  

I have been able to learn eucharisteo by remembering to give thanks for the little things as well as understanding thanksgiving is a CHOICE. Thankfulness isn't just going to flow because that is not our human nature. I have learned that you have to train yourself to have true eucharisteo, true joy. 

thanksgiving giveaway

Happy Monday, friends!
I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving full of food, friends, and laughter.

Today, Nicole and I have a big THANKSgiving surprise for you.

We each are giving away a copy of 1,000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp!

Two lucky readers will be able to read along with us in our Heart of Thankfulness series!

This book has been such a life changer for both of us, we want as many people to read it as possible.
For me, it's been a heart changer as well.

 

to enter:

--leave a comment with something you are thankful for (and an email address where you can be reached if you win!)

Then, head on over to Nicole's blog and do the same!

This giveaway will end Thursday night at 8pm CST!