How to Live Grateful for This One Life I've Been Given

This one life of mine—I want to savor it fully, learn to live truly grateful for it. I want to see beneath the smudges on the wall the hands that were there to mark them, the dishes askew across the counter that people that were there to dirty them, the things forgotten out in play the creative minds learning to live their own life to the full. It’s one word: gratitude. But it holds so much, changes so much, though I am yet learning the art of practicing it.

Perhaps, like me, you see first what’s on the surface. The inconveniences, annoyances, and interruptions. The things that are not as you wish them to be. The people who are not as you wish them to be.

Perhaps you live on edge and lonely. Frustrated and disappointed. Overwhelmed and misunderstood.

I’ve felt it—this ache for more peace, more joy, more to be right, and all right.

And I’ve felt, too, my discontentment wash away as I curve lines into letters and number the thanks I’ve written. I’ve felt the gratitude-heightened joy as I notice in wonder the small and ordinary that become beautiful when I wrap them with thanks.

Practicing gratitude trains my eyes to notice what I often take for granted: two bags of my favorite tea when I thought I was down to the last one, still ample ink with one angle of my pen, this light here early, fresh lemon in cold water, finally peace over a decision that has caused so much angst, walking through the rain and enjoying it, peals of laughter at bedtime, a book read in a weekend.

These sightings of gifts disguised as ordinary things whet my appetite for more. For more seeing. For larger perspective. For more deep-seated peace and genuine joy.

Living this one life grateful

They are the baby steps that lead the way to grateful-hearted living. I behold good in the familiar and then I look for more. I find good in the way God sees me, the way His promises are sure, and the truths that describe His make-up.

I keep looking and find that all that I am is defined by all He is—that because of Him I have value, because of Him I belong to God’s family, and because of Him I have a mission to invite others into the family so they too can find themselves in Him.

When I know who I am I can fully live.

I need to know who I am to live my one life well.

And even one life lived fully alive creates ripples of life. What we live always ripples out beyond us, but the more I press into God, the more I want Him to be in the ripples. I want the scent of His nearness to linger wherever I go.

Missional living

Sometimes the going is the easy part, but missional living, the part about making disciples everywhere we go (Matthew 28:19 TPT)—is about the places we frequent, not just the infrequent but further out places we go. Where I so often go is home—even more literally in 2020.

We live on mission inside our homes as well as outside our homes, inside our neighborhoods as well as out in our communities, inside our communities as well as beyond our borders—because a missional life is our everyday life. We don’t embrace it and lay it aside at whim—we adopt mission as a lifestyle, let the rhythms become second-nature.

And gratitude—well, it helps all the pieces fit together.

Gratitude + mission

Gratitude helps me see how my home can serve others even if I need to train my eyes to see how my house is a gift. It shows me how opening my heart, home, and life to my neighbors often begins with opening my heart and life to those who share my home.

Gratitude gives me vision to see beyond the here and now—to see wonder in even the mundane, repetitious, and awaiting-completion. It helps me appreciate my various roles, lean into the ways they each grow me. It helps me to better listen and connect and engage—to live this one life of mine to the full.

Gratitude helps me welcome interruptions as gifts, see the good first in the people I love, and be present in today’s moments.

I have but this one life to live. And so do you.

Sit with gratitude and it will change you. The words are an invitation, but my heart still holds this question: How do I really begin to live this one life of mine with a grateful heart?

Think small

Perhaps the answer is small. Ann Voskamp discovered how gratitude for the small things is the way to grow gratitude for all things, but also how the opposite is true. She wrote in One Thousand Gifts,

But in this counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life.

If giving thanks for the things that seem small is the pathway to wholly living my one life, I want to keep practicing. Keep counting gratitude-gifts. Keep looking for the good and the wonder.

And where best is there to find wonder than to sit in God’s presence? To bask in His weighty glory?

Sit in His presence

My heart echoes the lyrics of Psalm 73:28 TPT:

But I’ll keep coming closer and closer to you, Lord Yahweh,
for your name is good to me. I’ll keep telling the world of
your awesome works, my faithful and glorious God!

I find more—promise and presence, mutual desire:

You comfort me by your counsel;
you draw me closer to you.
You lead me with your secret wisdom.
And following you brings me into your brightness and glory!
Whom have I in heaven but you? You’re all I want!
No one on earth means as much to me as you.
Psalm 73:23-25 TPT

The more time I spent near God, the more easily I see that He is the supreme Gift, and He gives only good gifts—how I , you—we each are a good gift too.

This spurs more thanks.

Give thanks

Yes! That’s how I live grateful: by giving thanks even when it feels simplistic. Even when it doesn’t feel natural. Even when I feel all the awkwardness of forming a new habit.

Because to be grateful I must live as if all is a gift. All is a gift, though I am yet learning to see it.

I read another Psalms, and the arrow yet again points to the giving of thanks:

We overflow with thanks, for your name is the “Near One.”
Psalm 75:1 TPT

And then I discover another treasure, an answer to why I need to be where gratitude leads me:

It’s here in your presence, in your sanctuary,
where I learn more of your ways.
For holiness is revealed in everything you do.
Psalm 77:13 TPT

I learn more of God’s ways in His presence—and gratitude brings me here, to sit at His feet. A thankful heart draws me nearer to God.

To live a life marked by mission in my home, to treasure my family and home as good, good gifts—to invite God into everything—I must learn the practice of giving thanks.

Giving thanks for the small things opens me to more God, and more God opens me to cherish my family and home with a grateful heart.

Pass the torch

I dig further into the why—why let gratitude lead me to the feet of Jesus—and I find this, right here in Psalm 78:6-7 TPT:

For perpetuity God’s ways will be passed down
from one generation to the next, even to those not yet born.
In this way, every generation will have a living faith in the laws of life
and will never forget the faithful ways of God.

This I want to pass on to my children: gratitude points us to the one who shows us the best way to live the one life we have been given. This life, this gift from Him, it’s best found in Him. May we never forget that He is a faithful God, a good God, and He is the Giver of all things that are good.

I read more, not wanting to end the discovering:

From my childhood you’ve been my teacher,
and I’m still telling everyone of your miracle-wonders!
God, now that I’m old and gray, don’t walk away.
Give me grace to demonstrate to the next generation
all your mighty miracles and your excitement,
to show them your magnificent power!
Psalm 71:17-18 TPT

Grace to show the next generation all I know of God—I want that too. Because, really, isn’t so much of our learning so that we can pass it on?

I count the good gifts from God’s hands, and let the small things lead me home. I hold gratitude in my heart and I keep giving thanks—for the small things, for God, for this space, for my family . . . because this, this is how I practice living life to the full: grate-ful.

Let’s end by putting words to a prayer:

Jesus, in the here and now and everyday and ordinary, You are good. If giving thanks helps me better see You, Lord, I choose to see. I choose to see how You are good, and how all that You give is good. May I treasure the people in my family and the home in which I live with gratitude-fueled awareness. May I cherish my family and my home. May I see them as gifts. In Your holy and precious name, Jesus, I pray. Amen.