gifts that keep on

Before the sun, I’m up, roaming the kitchen. The vinyl tile faintly settles beneath my feet, lightly popping like my stiff knees, like that tight place in my neck. I gently twist, warming up for the day, turning toward the kettle spitting steam on the stove. The piping water gushes, splashing a little as I pour it into the French press. I dip my spoon down into the hot morning murk and stir, just to make sure the coffee’s incorporated well for steeping, then I replace the lid on top. I turn to the fridge and pull out a breakfast casserole–eggs, cheese, milk, sausage, something simple I made in advance that my sleep-rumpled people will wander in and reheat to begin the day. I collect the lunches they made yesterday, tucking chilled wraps, sliced apples, a salad for Kevin, into the bags they’ll carry out to the car. It’s not that they couldn’t do these things, just that I love them. I love them while yet they still sleep.

Satisfied that the stage is set for a good beginning, I gather up my journals–yes, more than one, my Bible, my planner, my pens, and wander out onto the back porch where I can hear the birds singing in the day. In the morning, I reflect plurally; it’s like standing at every edge of our flat front porch, my toes dangling off the edge, to take in a different perspective. I open up the one journal–the pretty grey one with the cloth cover, The Contentment Journal by Rachel Cruze, and I pick up my pen. Today, Cruze asks, “What do you love about your home?” I tap the question with the capped end of my pen; it hovers in the margin as though posed by a side-sitting friend. All week she’s been asking me questions about everyday things, routine things, the gifts that keep on, the things over which I sometimes forget my gratitude. I look around the porch, taking in the rockers with their plump pillows, the jute rug just big enough for my feet, the gather here sign that was a gift from a friend. From every hook hangs blooming or jingling things—chimes made from bits of worn glass, the fuchsia impatiens Kevin gave me on Mother’s Day. A beaded, fairy-style bubble wand made of curling wire and glass beads hangs nailed–as decoration now, the stick well-worn by my children’s hands–to a solid wood beam in front of me. Last summer, Kevin and I painted this porch, brushing it glossy white, talking and laughing while listening to podcasts. The rockers, each a gift from my parents in a different season, rock a little in the morning breeze.

I smile, returning to the page. Where to begin?

I bend and write, filling blankness with gratitude, thinking that sometimes I hardly look at this place, feeling now content just for the one room with all of its history. When I finish writing here, I’ll pick up a second journal, a thin one with a rainbow of stripes running over both sides of the paper cover; the one where I count God’s gifts. These everyday blessings will fill a page one by one, taking me to the next rounded hundred on my list.

I pause mid-sentence, suddenly aware of God the Father and how He loves, how His blessings may be new every morning but not different, like the everyday things I do for love. Jesus once pointed out that if I can give good gifts to my children, God is all the more able to give good gifts to me (Matthew 7:11). God sets His gifts before me in advance too, carefully preparing for my best, even before I awaken to it. I look around, taking up these gifts that keep on blessing me every day, and joyfully, I see the truth of it.