The life I wanted to live

My fingers formed a tightly held fist around my plans, my version of the way life should be.  The narrative I had come to believe said: “When this happens, we will have arrived.”  When I get married, life will be good.  When we move or have children or when I get this job, life will settle down.  Somewhere along the way, I told myself that you could live life to the fullest when you achieved all the goals. God was always nudging me to release my grip, but I was stubborn and deaf to His gentle whispers—slow to believe God’s ways were far better than mine.

A gratitude journey

After realizing my efforts failed to achieve the life I imagined, I began on a new journey of seeking out what it looked like to live fully present right where I was.  Along that journey, I began allowing God to loosen my tightly held fist.  Years later, when I read Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts, I began to understand the connection between a life well lived and gratitude.  In her book, Ann invites us into her journey of learning to count each gift.  Counting blessings does not mean living in denial of what is hard.  Instead, it means allowing joy to transcend the hard, choosing gratitude in the midst of hard. It’s practicing the art of naming the hard and releasing it, then allowing the gifts to linger on the page each day. 

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life; it turns what we have into enough, and more.  It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion to clarity.  It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.

Melody Beattle.

Like any habit, gratitude is something that can be developed and strengthened with intentional practice.  Practicing gratitude and naming the gifts in our day teaches us to slow lives down and live fully present in the moments.

In those moments, we notice all the good, even the smallest of blessings.   Physically holding hands open, palms empty, we release control.  We release what is not ours to carry. 

We give God the grief and the pain of the day and then take pen to paper, naming all that has been good: The birds singing, the yellow and orange painted on the trees outside my window, the rain that quenched the dry ground’s thirst.  Sometimes the gifts look like the laughter of children at play, music to our ears.  The smell of dinner cooking on the stove, candles flickering, and light of the day fading.  Gifts come in all different shapes and sizes, and as we begin to notice the good, we see the world is a better place. 

There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.

Ralph H Blum

How gratitude can change a life

Over time, the practice of gratitude begins to change our hearts and calm our minds, but it also starts a giving journey.  When we fully embrace a life lived in gratitude for what we have, we can more freely give.  We understand the concept of enough, finding a renewed desire to share what we have with others.  We see our neighbors as friends and our friends as family.  What once felt an inconvenience now appears as an opportunity.  What once looked half-empty is seen as almost full.  Perspectives change—not that we no longer experience what is hard. Instead, we know what is hard and live fully in that moment. We do not deny what it is, we lean into the journey, asking God to walk the path with us.

Gratitude helps us surrender the need to do it all, be it all, and handle it all. 

Gratitude allows us to know God as the gift giver, the one who provides all that we need. As we walk through the hard, we count the blessings, and we look for the gifts, the small miracles that sustain us along the way.

Meet Joy Marker

Where to find her . . .

• Random Reflection
• Instagram @joy.marker

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Begin Within is a series to inspire a year-round lifestyle of gratitude that will impact not only your own life, but the lives of your neighbors as well. Gratitude is a theme we talk about often around here because it ties so closely into other missional living rhythms. Practicing gratitude reminds to keep our hearts soft and expectant and our eyes open. Therefore, the more we embrace gratitude, the easier it becomes to truly see our neighbors and where we can join what God is already doing in our neighborhoods.

If you would like to contribute to Begin Within, you can find the submission guidelines here.

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Creating Ripples

If you would like to cultivate rhythms in addition to gratitude that will empower you live on mission in your neighborhood, check out Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors. This small book will help you make a big impact in your neighborhood as you learn to let missional living flow from the inside out. Get the 30-day missional living challenge free when you purchase the book.