Lessons in Thankfulness
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| A Thanksgiving Past. Pictured Jeff Knight and Johnny Givens |
So often in our lives we become thankful for something “after the fact”.
After something is gone—or the crisis is over, then we realize its importance in our lives. I am still learning this lesson in all the changes of our lives.
The future looms large and often dark while the past although fading, feels more familiar and we cling to that familiarity. There are no surprises there. No unknowns. We can look back and see all the things we should have been more grateful for—mentally promising ourselves that we will be much more thankful in the future.
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, it came at the most inopportune time in my life. If it had to be part of my story, a few years earlier or later would have been better. You know, so that I would have all the necessary strength needed for the arduous journey, both mentally and physically. Oh, but where would all my life lessons be if it happened in a way I could orchestrate? I mean, if it had to happen at all, and there was no way around it, I surely would have done all the things I needed to do and then allowed “it” to pop in for a visit. But who in their right mind would want cancer as a life lesson visitor? Not me.
Think of the timing of your life lessons and how you might change things around if you could. We think knowing what would happen in advance would help us be more equipped to handle the life lesson. If I had known how many needles I would encounter through having cancer, or how many times I would be in a sterile operating room, I think my anxiety would have risen to untold proportions. I may seem super brave—but the fact is, needles are my kryptonite. Knowing in advance wouldn’t make me more thankful—just more anxious.
Today, my heart has so much thankfulness from the path God walked me through—there are innumerable lessons that, while I really don’t want to walk that journey again, I am forever grateful for what I saw Him do in my life.
All the early mornings between two and four o’clock in the morning when I would slip out of bed and meet Him in the living room in my praying place—He was always present. However, I wasn’t very thankful for the journey while in the middle of the trial. I’m still finding places where my gratitude for the difficulties are now larger than the difficulty. Because it’s there where I learned to be thankful.
Many years ago, our niece, Anita wanted to adopt a tradition from someone else’s Thanksgiving traditions. (If my memory serves correct, it was Lynn Donovan, an online friend who I was blessed to meet in real life!) A table cloth of thankfulness. Anita brought a new white sheet to serve as a tablecloth for one of the food tables at Jeff’s mom’s house. As she laid out permanent markers she gave brief instructions:
“Write something you are thankful for on this cloth and every year forward, at thanksgiving we will add to it and be reminded of what we were thankful for in the past.”
Anita knew that the permanent ink wouldn’t wash out and she was going to be responsible to bring it every year. What we didn’t think about in advance was the ink going through the sheet to permanently mark the tablecloth underneath. When the meal was over and table cloth removed—there it was, our marks of thankfulness. The handwriting of all the adults, teenagers and even kids that bled through the top cloth to the bottom one underneath--and there was even a few marks that made it into the top of that table. The lesson of thankfulness for that time in our lives is seeing the handwriting of each one, and even though there are now empty chairs at the thanksgiving table, we recognize all the lessons of thankfulness God blessed our lives with-in the people surrounding the table.
I wish I could always embrace the lesson of thankfulness in the middle of the journey rather than the end—years later. That’s where full-on trust in God comes. If we can get to a place—even in the middle of our difficulty, where we can look up and say—"Father, I may not understand, but I completely trust You to get all this worked out”, and really MEAN IT...then I think we will have learned the lesson of thankfulness in the unexpected times of our lives.
There is a lesson to be learned in every detail of our lives.
Let it be thankfulness.
© Angie Knight. All rights reserved.
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