and so, be thank-full
My friend steps in the house quietly, glancing toward the desk where Riley sits taking an online college course, slipping her arms around me to pull me into a hug.
“It’s good to see you,” I say softly over her shoulder, thinking that there’s nothing quite like feeling your arms full of friendship.
She draws back, her eyes sparking, and glances again at Riley.
“Can we?” She whispers, gesturing deeper into the house. “I’m gonna need to be loud.”
Once a month, this soul-friend and I meet to share our lives in Christ and talk about what God’s doing, so I know already what she means, that her joy is brimming with praise for Him, that she doesn’t want to worry about her volume when it overflows, flooding us both with thankfulness. Meetings such as ours have been happening since the Kingdom of God came, and Word is that heaven records them in a book of remembrance. In other words, God’s heavenly scrapbooks swell with memories of His people having conversations about Him, His people tasting His goodness together.
I can’t help but think about that word—thankful, especially this month, in the Thanksgiving season, although in reality God has been inviting me to return to practicing intentional gratitude for at least half a year, and I’ve yet to actually move from spiritual agreement to actual obedience except in conversations like this one, when I step away from the fullness of responsibility to sit with a friend and feast on the fullness of God.
This is the time of year when Zoe and I send each other the link to Carrie Underwood’s Stretchy Pants song and laugh about filling up on holiday yumminess. In this country, we all think about being full because we fill up our Thanksgiving plates more than once, because maybe we’re unable to sample everything wonderful the first time through, and we think about feeling thankful too, at least for a few minutes while we take note of good things in our lives, or maybe for a week or two, or even four, for the overachiever, while we post online about our gratitude. But God’s goodness follows us all the days of our lives, not just in November when we’re paying close attention.
At least once, as it’s recorded in scripture, the apostle Paul spoke to people who did not know God about how God had preserved a witness to them about Himself by blessing them even though they did not acknowledge Him. Our national Thanksgiving traditions double underline this point, that God sends rain, something that has always represented abundant blessing, on the righteous and on the unrighteous, that it is not His nature to withhold good from anyone, regardless of how they feel about Him. This truth must be celebrated heartily, lest we become like the older brother in the prodigal story, while we recognize that the greatest blessing of all comes from knowing and acknowledging continually, as part of a lifetime of living with God, that the goodness we know is actually God and comes from Him.
That’s what my friend does immediately, the moment we step out on the back porch and close the door. She flops down into a rocker and exhales, her eyes radiant, her cheeks flushed young in the deep autumn of her life, lifting a hand to count off her blessings.
“I need to talk to you about Wendy and Shirley and trees,” she says, bending down a finger for each one, that hand waving a little with excitement.
Being thank-full all the time can amount to something as simple as this, a beautiful childlike finger-counting of gifts of every kind—people, experiences, blessings we see and those we can hold in our hands, all of them an acknowledgement of God’s goodness.
“Let me tell you first about trees,” she continues, touching that finger lightly, her smile stretching wide, “and what God’s shown me ever since you told me how He uses them to remind you about Himself.”
I sit back, matching her grin, thinking about this fullness we know and want to share with everyone, this understanding that all our thanks is thanks to God, that His goodness and presence are the strength of our hearts and our portion forever. Being thank-full is really about dwelling with God and noticing the gift of His coming into everything, every day.
“Appreciate everything,” said a character in a sweet little book I read recently, before recounting all of the psychological benefits of gratitude, and I sat back, recognizing the paraphrase of something God told us long ago, that in every circumstance we should give thanks, recognizing also that the book had stripped this idea of it’s most powerful implication, that thanksgiving is really the acknowledgement of God in everything, that God Himself is the blessing, no matter what is happening in life. It makes us happy to give thanks for the good, but it fills us with all the fullness of God, with joy that never fades, when, in our thanks-giving, we actually celebrate the witness of the with-ness of God.
God wants this for me, this life filled full of Him, welling up within me like the nourishing core of water stored up for every season in the trunks of the trees, and thus, a life continually replenished by Him. He wants my joy made complete, and so, he urges me to a life of thank-full-ness, not just a holiday every year. He is patient with me, and so he keeps on inviting me to a pervasive awareness of His grace.
My friend stops, after talking excitedly about what she remembers about God when she hears the rustling of the leaves of the trees, in the middle of saying, “I’m just so thankful–,” to say, “You know, I had a thought: Have you ever asked Riley what it’s like to be a person with Autism who loves God? I’m just wondering what she would share herself about that.”
She pauses, watching my face light with the inspiration of her idea, with thanks over something I know she has only said because God gave it to her to say, because this is how He often interjects while we’re sitting in conversation with Him with each other, giving us yet another way to celebrate His goodness, even while our bodies and souls still feel full of Him.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever asked her that question directly, but I will,” I say, already anticipating the moment, like the opening of another gift, when later I will sit beside Riley in another of these meetings for the scrapbook of God and ask my daughter who is also my sister what it is for a person with her challenges to know Him.
“What it means to love God and be a person with Autism,” she will begin, imposing her own order on the truth of things, “is that God is my heavenly best friend.” She will say this and the joy will bubble over in musical laughter, and I will touch one of my fingers, bending it gently toward my palm, and give thanks.
But that deliciousness, that second–no third, no fourth—helping of the goodness of God, will come to me later, filling me full all over again. For now, my friend, whose presence on my porch reminds me thank-fully of the ever presence of God, returns to her fingers.
“Now, Shirley—I’m going in reverse order, see?—let me tell you what God did with Shirley and me,” she says, and we laugh at the joy of it all, as I sit back again to hear her story.
