Thankfulness: why is the key to our contentment so elusive? Why is it easier to complain than to be grateful? Why do we embrace negativity, the poverty of our souls, with such a firm grasp? Many of us walk through life with our eyes shut tight against the multitude blessings we experience and choose, instead, to focus on the circumstances we deem negative. Our souls cry out, there must be more! And there is. There’s so much more.
I just finished reading a provocative book by Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are. In this memoir, the author describes her journey to discovering the contentment that thankfulness brought to her life. She discovered that the secret of contentment isn’t found in the ease of our circumstances or in acquiring more but in recognizing the blessings all around us.
We always want more, don’t we? We’re driven by the consumerism of American culture and clever marketers do a fine job of playing on our insatiable appetites for excess. I’ve learned that the nagging desire for more isn’t limited to opulent Americans—this disagreeable side of human nature can be found just as readily in the rural Kenyan bush. It’s harder to identify at first, but it’s the same self-entitled quest for more and better, the same ignorance of the ordinary gifts of everyday life.
The challenge we face is how to embrace a spirit of thanksgiving when our circumstances are less than agreeable and we don’t have as many toys as our neighbors. Voskamp was challenged to keep a list: to count and record one thousand gifts. Does that number stagger you? Do you wonder if you could record 1,000 things for which you are thankful? Voskamp wasn’t sure she could complete the challenge; what she discovered changed her life. The more she opened her eyes to the simple gifts around her, the more gifts she discovered. My human experience is the sum of what the soul sees and I see precisely what I attend to and what the eyes focus on is what the life is (P. 133). We need only learn to redirect our focus, to look at the positive instead of the negative.
Is your habit to dwell on the things that haven’t turned out the way you wanted? Perhaps it’s time for a shift in perspective. Why not start a list? What harm could it do? As we open our eyes to the gifts God gives us, our sense of pride and entitlement begin to be swallowed by gratitude. For what type of things can we be thankful? Here are a few entries from Voskamp’s list:
Laughter at twilight
Salvation of sinners, me, chief
Glow of the front porch light
The last cry of geese
Steam rising off barn
Do these items seem mundane, ordinary? That’s precisely the point. As we learn to marvel in the small things a shift occurs—it’s gradual but not subtle. We become grateful. Stress slips away. We recognize our blessings. Our difficulties are less obtrusive. Our step is lighter. Our negativity silenced.
Freedom or bondage? Joy or stress? Complaint or thanksgiving? The choice is ours. I’m learning to choose the path of gratitude.
