Giving Thanks

I started cleaning in an area of my apartment last night and found some things that stopped me for a little while. It’s hard to describe the feeling – I was going through a pile of things that I thought pretty much I’d be able to put into recycling or throw away, but then I came across a folder with the beginnings of a short story I’d never finished and a poem I had finished and some notes for other stories and then I found a pile of papers that had transcripts from college and in that pile were some old love letters. I had thought that all of my stories and files for my writing from the past were in one specific place, so finding this folder where it was seemed really strange. Why it was there with files from my work in recent years I have no idea. And finding the love letters was doubly strange – I had gone through what I thought were all of my old love letters and thrown them all away last winter. Someone had come into my life who the Lord had spoken to me was the one, and I didn’t have any need for the memories of old love stories any more. Over the years I have gotten rid of gifts and other things that held those memories, but for some reason I’d hung onto the letters – letters I’d had since I was a teenager all the way through to more recent years. And then one evening last winter, the Lord said to get rid of those too, and so I did. Not in any kind of angry or bitter way – it was simply cleaning house and letting the past go where the past needed to go. Finding the letters I found last night was very strange, because at the time when I was tearing up and throwing away the other letters I couldn’t find those letters, so I thought that I must have already thrown them away. But there they were last night in a completely different place than I had thought they would ever be.

I read through the part of the story and the poem and the other notes and didn’t really know what to do with them. I threw some away, and may do that with the rest although that may happen on another day when I go through all of my old writing. After I had read through the letters I tore them into bits and threw them away – I did that for the privacy of the writer and myself, not for any kind of negative feelings for the past. It’s so hard to know what to do with these things from the past – they really are from a different life – from a different person it seems. Even before I met the man that I met last year I had already changed so much that the life that I had in the past seemed really like someone else’s life. Reading these parts of stories and the poem, reading those letters, I almost felt like I was eavesdropping on someone else’s life. But it was different even than that – I don’t know how to describe it. It was my life, so I have a right to read these things, but I am so happy that’s not my life any more that I get such a strange feeling when I read them, almost as if I wished it wasn’t ever my life at all.

I was talking to a friend about gratitude yesterday – I don’t remember what story it was, but I used that line in a story once. “I was talking to a friend about gratitude . . .” If I used it once upon a time it makes a kind of time-continuum sense that I’m using it now. I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude lately because I know there are so many things that I take for granted every day. The fact that I have my health, a roof over my head, delicious food any time I want it, a lovely place to live in a peaceful and enjoyable area, beautiful clothing and jewelry, my debts being paid off, some good friends who are good people, family that is growing in unity and love, work that is fulfilling, and a beautiful man who came into my life just when everything else was becoming fulfilled. The reason I need to clean my apartment  and why I was sorting through things last night is because I have so much that it won’t fit into my apartment easily, even after I have given so much away. I had lost so much over the years, but it has all been restored and more and even better than I had ever had before. But it seems as if there is always so much more that we want, no matter how much we have, and so there are times when I am sorry to say that I forget to say thank you to God for all that He has provided. I say thank you and ask for a blessing over my food, and I do say thank you at other times, but I’ve been realizing that I don’t say it enough, and that I complain more than I give thanks and praise, and reading those pieces of writing and the letters last night made me realize just how much God has done in my life and how much I have to be thankful for.

2 Corinthians 5:17-19 tells us, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” Not only has He made me a new creation, He has given me – has committed to me – a ministry of reconciliation. He has asked me to share in spreading the great good news of His love and His grace and His mercy with others. I feel as the Apostle Paul did, that, “Although I am the least of the Lord’s people, this grace was given to me, to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ.” (Ephesians 3:8) Who am I that God would give me that grace? When I look back on those notes and pieces of writing, when I look at those old love letters, I am overwhelmed with the thought that He thought I was worth enough to reach out His hand in love all the way from the cross on Calvary.

There is a beautiful song by Casting Crowns, “Who Am I?” that He gave to me last year just about this time. I had heard it before, but He brought it back to me at a time when I needed to hear it. “Who am I, that the Lord of all the earth would care to know my name, would care to feel my hurt. Who am I, that the bright and morning star, would choose to light the way for my ever wandering heart. Not because of who I am, but because of what you’ve done, not because of what you’ve done, but because of who you are. I am a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow, a wave tossed on the ocean, a vapor in the wind. Still you hear me when I’m calling, Lord you catch me when I’m falling. And you’ve told me who I am. I’m yours. Who am I that the eyes that see my sin, would look on me with love and watch me rise again. Who am I that the voice that calmed the sea, would call out through the rain and calm the storm in me?” When I ask the question “Who am I?” He answers that I am His. When I ask why, He says because I am.

There is really no understanding the fullness of the love of God until we continue to walk with Him every day for a lifetime and beyond. There is really no way to experience His love without walking through all the different days of our lives with Him. There are so many things that He does for us that we don’t even think about, and so many things that He does that He doesn’t even have to do. There are so many ways that He is there in every moment, and so many ways that He helps us to continue to walk. I know the person that I was once upon a time, and it’s there when I read the letters and stories and poems. It all comes back in a rush of experience and memory, a reminder of a completely different time and place that gives me a mirror to look at and know that the only reason I have changed is because of His reflection in me. The fact that He made the choice to call out through the rain and to light my way, the fact that He cared enough to go after this lost sheep, the fact that He didn’t see me as a waste of a life even as I wasted my life, is astounding and astonishing and miraculous. If I were to write that story now it would start out something like this, “Once upon a time there was a woman who was lost, but now she is found, there was a woman who was empty and hurting who was healed and made whole, there was a woman who had nothing left to give and who was given everything.”

Blessings,

Jannie Susan