Unthankful, adj.: not feeling gratitude

Well, it has been a while! I sat down at least three times to write a Thanksgiving post. It is my favorite holiday, the one with absolutely no controversial pagan underpinnings. 🙂 I love the traditions of turkey and cranberries and family. This year we had our traditional meal almost a week early to include two of my siblings as well as two of my aunts and their husbands.

The actual Thanksgiving Day found me cooking a birthday breakfast and playing Catan with my husband and little boys until I had to stop and cook up some delectables for an early afternoon supper with the aunts. No turkey at all, but such a fun day. Camaraderie with loved ones, good food (possibly the best date pudding ever constructed in Osterburg, if I do say so myself) and good cheer. Do you ever feel like you are so blessed, it isn’t fair? It is easy to list all the cozy things, the smiley things, the kindnesses.

I set myself a challenge, every year, to find the things I am most tempted to grouse about and be thankful for them. The list is both revealing and embarrassing. Also private. But I will give you one example.

A few weeks ago a bunch of us ladies from church were polishing fruit for baskets to distribute to our neighbors. My nurse friend who works nightshift and I were talking about how nightshift just stinks, me from my perspective and her from hers: how the rhythms of normal life get so mixed up, the social life withers and all but dies, etc, etc. Someone else observed, kindly and truthfully, “There are probably worse things.” I suppressed the sudden urge to lob an apple across the room and we dropped the subject.

But it kept coming back to me, “This is your unlikely thing to become thankful for.” Okaaay. I started thinking about it. I write in the evenings when I am alone, after the bedtime drama is over and I don’t have my husband to converse with. Without so much night shift this past year, the blog would probably only have half the posts, or fewer.

Nightshift means much less cooking for me, since “the rhythms get all messed up” and my kids think Ramen noodles are a party. It means long evenings to read stories to the children and play games and having all the pillows and the bed to myself. 🙄 Nightshift is mostly calmer for the nurses and pays a teeny bit more.

It is easier for me to be thankful for nightshift, since my man now has enough time at his job to state his preferences for next year, and he stated his preference to be day light hours. Oh glory! I think I can stay thankful for the month of December, yet.

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is

To have a thankless child!”- Shakespeare

Just Do Something, But How?

“We should be humble in looking to the future, because we don’t control it; God does. And we should be hopeful in looking to the future, because God controls it, not us.” (pg. 47 of Just Do Something)

So… how do you make your decisions? I think honesty compels us to say it is usually how we feel that helps us decide things. This is not wrong, necessarily. (What would women be without their marvelous intuition? 🙂 ) The problem comes in when we say, “God told me…” because we feel one way or another. It isn’t really fair to blame God, now is it?

When Gabe got terribly sick during nursing school, we wondered if this was God closing a door, or whether Gabe’s resolve and determination were being tested. There are endless second guessing conundrums like this for people who make all their decisions by their feelings.

If there is one overarching theme in the book Just Do Something, it is that God wants to show us His will in His Word.

Let’s take a look at the Proverbs, specifically chapter 2.

1 My son, if thou wilt receive my words,

and hide my commandments with thee;

2 So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom,

and apply thine heart to understanding;

3 Yea, if thou criest after knowledge,

and liftest up thy voice for understanding;

4 If thou seekest her as silver,

and searchest for her as for hid treasures;

5 Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord,

and find the knowledge of God…

9 Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment,

and equity; yea, every good path.

Proverbs is full of cautionary statements about those who just do life all wrong and the contrast with those who live in wisdom. I quote DeYoung, “In Proverbs, a fool is not an oaf or a moron. He is a person who doesn’t live life God’s way. Wisdom is knowing God and doing as He commands. Foolishness, on the other hand, is turning from God and listening only to yourself… God doesn’t expect us to grope in the dark for some hidden will of direction. He expects us to trust Him and be wise.” (pg. 89)

If we could open the Bible and find information about what we should work, or who we should marry, or which house we should buy, things would seem so much easier. God doesn’t find it necessary to give us such specific information. His will is that we love His Word, become infused with it, and be transformed into the image of His Son.

When their are choices to make that could affect our lives drastically, DeYoung says we need to walk the way of wisdom.

Read the Scriptures.
Listen to wise counsel.
Pray for illumination.
Make a decision. (in faith)

Do you see how this approach could be more restful than worrying that you might end up living in Tallahassee when God really wanted you to be in Boston? What if you broke this down to praying about whether you should pick up a sandwich at McDonald’s or Wendy’s. (Probably neither one of those is wise. 😉 ) Of course, you don’t obsess to that extent. What God really cares about is that you are His representative wherever you go, and either place you go for your sandwich is going to have people who need to see that He is a beautiful Savior.

Is it really so much different whether you live in one geographical region or another? And what about jobs? Marriage? I laughed out loud when I read DeYoung’s recommendation for finding the will of God in marriage. He is speaking to men who are afraid that they are stepping outside of God’s will unless they have it nailed down who is the right one before they ever ask the girl out. I will tell you, I would have hated this when I was twenty, but now it amuses me with the ring of truth.

“Men, if you want to be married, find a godly girl, treat her right, talk to her parents, pop the question, tie the knot, and start making babies.” The thing is, from my lofty perch of nearly twelve years of happy marriage, I can tell you that any way you tie the knot, living with the love of your life is going to involve some hard work. There are no short cuts to great relationships, so you might as well spare yourself the angst of finding the One Soul in the Universe that completes you. Relax and trust that the God who starts a good work is able to finish it!

I will close this with one concluding quote:

“God gives His children the will to walk in His ways– not by revealing a series of next steps cloaked in shadows, but by giving us a heart to delight in His law.”

“Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Ecc. 12:13

Why I Don’t Pin my Interests (Much)

The simple truth is, I can’t handle Pinterest. That takes some courage to admit, since everyone knows that you consult Pinterest to find out what is going on, you know, to see what the latest in trends are.

When I start sniffing around Pinterest, I become gripped in a strangle hold of fascination. All the beautiful people with their beautiful ideas and beautiful lives in beautiful pictures. Suddenly I realize that I must be the world’s most un-creative person ever.

For starters, my house is all wrong. Not only is my decorating sooo 20th century, but my house isn’t big enough and the windows aren’t big enough, and all the furniture is arranged around the walls. In fact, it isn’t even the right house.

I move on to the food pins, and find that I can no longer cook. I thought I nourished my family fairly well until now, but I am paralyzed by this vista of foods I never even heard of. Apparently my life will always be incomplete until I have mastered the art of sushi. I humbly acknowledge that I am in culinary preschool.

Neither am I a good mother anymore. I haven’t ever made a lollipop bouquet. I just hand out the lollipops. There are days and days worth of fun activities to do with my children. What is wrong with me that I never thought of this stuff? Boring old Peek Around the Corner and I Spy, that’s what we do.

The photo shoots… well, suffice it to say that my photography skills stink. I really should learn to edit my pictures so that we would have beautiful memories too. Yes?

I don’t repurpose old tee shirts, except as rags. Who knew that you could do so many different things with them? And my fashion sense? Well, let’s just say I feel fairly confident that I can tell when an outfit works versus when it looks tried, but my style is pretty understated and I don’t tend to wear orange stripes with purple plaid and a green scarf.

I emerge from the dark hole that swallowed me and realize that I just swallowed a bunch of lies. I have not been able to scoot around Pinterest without comparing myself and my life with all the other lives. The Apostle Paul has something to say about that. He says it is not wise. Then there is the indisputable fact that, having been given 5 precious children, I am called to be a keeper at home. I cannot afford the time it takes to gallivant through everyone else’s houses every day. Nor can I indulge myself in the twin sins of ungratefulness and covetousness. When I have a specific thing to research, like a birthday cake for a small boy, or what to cook with kale, then Pinterest is a great tool. Otherwise, it is better for me to stay out.

I found this bit of meaningful advice for people like me. It is the counter balance on the Pinterest scale for me.

“Learn to like what doesn’t cost much.

Learn to like reading, conversation, music.

Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking.

Learn to like fields, trees, brooks, hiking, rowing, climbing hills.

Learn to like people, even though some of them may be different…different from you.

Learn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction doing your job as well as it can be done.

Learn to like the song of birds, the companionship of dogs.

Learn to like gardening, puttering around the house, and fixing things.

Learn to like the sunrise and sunset, the beating of rain on the roof and windows, and the gentle fall of snow on a winter day.

Learn to keep your wants simple and refuse to be controlled by the likes and dislikes of others.”

-Lowell C. Bennion