In "One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are", Ann tells of grasping how to find joy in Christ in her life. She examines the word eucharisteo meaning "to give thanks". The root word of this charis meaning grace and the word chara meaning deep joy. And so, Ann comes to find that an attitude of continual thankfulness allows her to realize the small gifts of God, allows her to experience so much more grace which in turn results in grasping so much more joy in the Lord! But she came to realize that being thankful for the hard things: divorce, death, cancer, it doesn't come easy. How do you have an attitude of thankfulness during these hard things? She determined that thankfulness was learned as Paul indicated. Building a foundation of being thankful for the small things, an attitude of thankfulness, allows for a truly thankful heart during the hard things.
I'm thankful for:
the morning sun shining through my bedroom window
the smell of pages in a new book
being reminded of a song i haven't heard since elementary school
bursting out into song loudly and happily
making my roommate laugh by singing random songs into my hairbrush/conditioner/hair dryer/curling iron
chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven
hugs from friends
laughing until your stomach hurts and tears are streaming down your face
11 pm ice cream sundae McDonalds runs
getting to McDonalds at 11pm to discover they've already closed and shut off the ice cream machine
Sonic happy hour - 88 cent medium coke!
Pepsi
learning more of God through friends!
twilight - the temperature is just right and the sky is just shy of getting dark
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