God's gifts from lessons in Jesus gratitude
I found myself complaining this morning... About our dog... our sweet, old dog we discovered has epilepsy and has been on medication to manage his seizures. We are so grateful that the medication has controlled his seizures almost perfectly. The drawback has been that the medication makes him ravenous and causes him to drink excessively. Consequently, he wakes us in the middle of the night to let him outside and then wakes us up an hour before we usually get up to feed him. If we don't respond, he starts whimpering before escalating to barking. He also steals food from my children's hands when they are at the table. I've been feeling frustrated over the lack of sleep and have struggled with a way to be grateful. So I started praying, asking for help to be thankful, even in this. And thanks be to God, He knows how to change my attitude, even if the situation does not change. Even writing this now, it is obvious that if this is my biggest complaint, I have so many blessings, so many things going smoothly. I have been blessed with a faithful dog, these fruitful years. I was blessed to find his blood tests show he is otherwise a very healthy dog. I am blessed that he did not contract ring worm this year (first year in several years!). I am thankful for what God is teaching me through this.
As Ann Voskamp (author of One Thousand Gifts) was commenting this week, gratitude is not just a passing fad, "This world doesn’t need trendy gratitude like it needs Jesus gratitude." (Read more from Ann at www.aholyexperience.com.)
I have been on this transforming journey towards gratitude for nearly a year now. Yet I feel like I am still at the tip of the ice berg. I am still just beginning to see the why and the how. I am beginning to understand that if we do not see all as a gift from God, we see nothing as a gift from God. If we do not praise Him for the good, the bad, the each and every thing, then we praise Him for nothing. Gratitude equates to praise -- proper praise in the proper place -- thanking the Creator for His gift. Complaint equates to complete disregard for the gift. If "every good and perfect gift is from above," how dare I choose which I will accept and which I will decline? (James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.)
Boy, I certainly have much to learn. I am so grateful for His patience in teaching me, and that I can be "confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in {me} will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).
- Fighting/praying to get Adrianna healthy and stable, and her doing better and better, and acting like herself again
- Abel eating strawberries whole (stems and all)
- Looking out the front window to see our neighbor kids (Jack and Jenny) out on their own parade
- Abel getting his hand stuck in his cup
- Abel bringing Jack (age 11) nearly to tears just because Abel was sad
- Practicing for Adrianna's school fun run with our own fun runs around the block
- God's leading about something that was not clear to me
... The rest of my list and pictures will have to wait until another time; my time is up for tonight.
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