1,000 Gifts on Christmas

There weren't 1,000 gifts under my tree on Christmas morning, but I did receive 1,000 gifts.

After months of collecting blessings, on Christmas Day, I logged my thousandth gift: light into darkness, God moving into the neighborhood to be with us.

It was August when I took Ann Voskamp's Joy Dare and began recording daily gifts.  While my original intentions were to keep journals close at hand throughout my day and record blessings as I noticed them, I have gotten into the habit of storing them up and ending my day by reflecting back and recounting the blessings.

While this sounds warm and fuzzy – and it can be – it's also soul exercise for me. It can be work to figure out how and why to be thankful on tougher, or even ordinary, days.

#963: A kind Santa visits Urgent Care
 and gives Josh a puppy and a prayer

When the flu and multiple ailments hit our house Christmas week, I had to remind myself to be thankful for (976) a new bottle of carpet cleaner, (977) cuddly kids, (984) cancelled plans and slowing down. On another sick day, I had to twist my negative thoughts to record (945) disinfectant, (946) vacuums, and (947) antibiotics.

On an average day I feel the tap of God's grace when I remember (671) a shooting star during my morning run, (692) bedtime kisses, (687) teaching grammar – embracing my inner geek, (712) cold toes and warm blankets, and (782) my newly-walking little guy's dirty socks.

Voskamp often repeats the Erasmus quote: "A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit."

And it's true – being thankful – takes my attention, takes discipline. It's pounding out my natural tendency toward stubborn selfishness; it's looking for the miracles in the messes, for the divine in the daily.

I'm still learning, and I'm not always very good at being deep-down grateful – sometimes I record a gift that I don't truly embrace as such, but with the assurance that God can turn it into grace anyway.

Voskamp writes, "This is how Jesus, at the Last Supper, showed us to transfigure all things – take the pain that is given, give thanks for it, and transform it into a joy that fulfills all emptiness. I have glimpsed it. The hard discipline to lean into the ugly and whisper thanks to transfigure it to beauty. The hard discipline to give thanks for all things at all times because He is all good."

The Christmas gift that will truly keep giving is the way deliberate thankfulness continues to make way for a new awareness of God with me.