I thank God for you

Riley comes home from work happy, initiating this, “Hey mom? One of the patients was so kind to me today.”

She unloads her arms of purse and coffee cup, then unclips the badge from the collar of her shirt, and I wonder what it is about coming in from a day that we somehow also wear the day on our skin, in our hair.  We have the look of wind traveling, even on a still day, as though we’ve come along carried by something or someone else.  Riley looks this way now, swiping an invisible clinging away from her cheeks with one hand as she sits to untie her shoes and peel off her socks, which are printed all over with cupcakes.

“Oh yeah, how?”

It feels like an inhale, deep, to know that somewhere along the way as she worked today, my Riley encountered God in a hospital room, felt Him cupping her tender cheek, Him seeing and knowing and loving her, Him giving grace through the kindness of another.  Kindness, as an expression of God’s nature, is among the best gifts.

“One of the patients, when I delivered her meal to her, said,” Riley takes a breath, like a holy pause, ‘I thank God for you.’”

I pause too, for a moment, appreciating the reverence of her words, the way she holds the syllables out, like shining things, her voice all full of wow.

In the pause, I am thinking, that as encouragement goes, those five words should have a precious luster, should be received exactly this way, as a kindness, even an extravagance.  I am realizing, now tugging my own set right out of that treasuring-up place in my heart, that I have received the same kindness today myself.

This morning my friend, sitting beside me on our couch, had said in open-hearted prayer over me, I just thank you for her, Lord, and I just want you to bless her so richly.

I remember how often the apostle Paul repeated those words, I thank my God for you, in his letters to the churches.

Suddenly, they’re falling fresh.  A kindness.

Riley beams, falling silent, wide grin spreading, her two-sentence story done.

This was enough, more than enough, for her, being, as it was, not merely about considerate friendliness, but, to Riley’s heart, a commendation of the highest order to the highest power.  It was the kind of comment that ties two people together, which gets at the heart of what kindness means, from God’s mouth, another way of describing His own hesed, or attachment love, and even way back in our own Old English, referring to natural affinity in families.  Kindness once had to do with kinship more than polite consideration, still does, when it comes to God, still does—I can see it lighting her eyes now, when it comes to Riley.  She felt embraced, warmed, held, as though those five words spread out to engulf her, like two strong arms pulling her in.

I had felt exactly the same way this morning as my friend prayed them over me.

I thank God for you.

Could encouragement really be as simple as this, a five-word blessing?  Could it really be so protectively powerful?

To know that I have brought gratitude to God, that, as Paul once wrote, God’s grace to and through me has caused thanksgiving to Him to overflow, to His glory, is suddenly and completely to comprehend my true vocation, to know that God uses me to tie others to Himself. Not much could be more spurring on than that.

Those words, when famously and repeatedly written by the apostle Paul, I thank my God for you, included among them eucharisteo, a word in Biblical Greek made by compounding the word eu, meaning good or well, with the word charis, which means, significantly, both thanks and grace, because thankfulness is always a response to grace.  So, to use those words as God inspired them is to say that I give thanks to God for someone because I recognize that He has sent them to me as a carrier or expression of His grace, as though they hold in their hands the very cord of love that will tie my heart to His, the cord that then ties all of us to each other.  This, Riley already seems to understand, should be aspirational for those of us who love God, and is in expression not merely complementary but truly kind.

“Well, that’s just beautiful,” I say to her, offering up my own wide smile.

She beams, still brighter, officiously tugging her pants back down over her now bare feet.

I think of my friend, how her voice had slipped over those words, how as she’d prayed I’d felt as though we were touching God together.  She’d crowned me with a crown she held in her own two hands, her own crown, maybe, telling God with a vulnerable tremble, how she really just wants Him to bless me. Bless me, that I might be a blessing.

I imagine Riley in that hospital room today, her eyes traveling over a sky-blue hospital blanket, the lifted rails of the bed, to a kind, if ailing, face.  I imagine she offered up that same wide smile, said, as she often does of such things, “Oh thank you, I appreciate that so much,” before turning to go, wearing her own invisible crown of everlasting kindness, and winking, just below the hem of her black uniform pants, those wild cupcake socks.

“You know, Miss Riley, I thank God for you too,” I say, absorbing, still, the light of her face.

She glances up, sparkling, laughing–an overflow of joy, saying only, “Yes, you do, Mom.  Yes, you do.”