My Thanks

I think a lot when I drive. While driving home for Thanksgiving this year I thought a lot about what I am thankful for this year. For the past three weeks I have talked to the kids on Sundays about being thankful in all circumstances and we had many discussions of the various things we forget to be thankful for. And so, with 10 hours of driving ahead of me I started praying about consciously being thankful in all circumstances, and therefore being thankful this year in these circumstances. About halfway through North Carolina I determined what I am most thankful for this year. And so I offer up my thanks for 2010...

I am thankful for my family, my friends, and my church. This year more than ever before I could not have made it without them. I am thankful for a Dad who even in his greatest moments of grief asks my sister about me, because I am and always will be his little girl. I am thankful for a sister who laughs with me in the good times...and the bad, stands beside me no matter how bad the storm gets while we are standing there, and reminds me to keep my head up when we both just want to curl up in a ball and call it quits. I am thankful for aunts who send me poems to make me smile in the morning, grandparents who send me their tithes to support my missions trips (even before I'm sure that I'm going again), and friends who let me tell the same story 10 times and act like it's the first time they have heard it. I am thankful that I have a church family who treats me like real family, kids at church who when they are asked what they are thankful for say they are thankful for me, and a church that seeks God in all they do, not tradition or convenience or prestige. But most of all I am thankful that God has given me all of these. I am thankful that God has given me a purpose and a place in the body of Christ because more than ever I understand how worthless life is without these.

Somewhere north of Richmond I was talking to my dad and he read me this from my mom's journal he has been reading through: "Your purpose is about Him. Get serious about your purpose! Loving and serving." So, apparently, had my mom read this post tomorrow she would have told me to get serious about the purpose I am thankful God has given me :)

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
- 1 Thessalonians 5:18

Happy Thanksgiving.