Living Thankful...And How It Changed Me

 If there's one thing I can point to that changed how I live my life on a day-to-day basis in the last decade or so, it's this: living thankful. 

When I look back on my lifetime and think of how I eventually arrived at a place of intense disillusionment with my faith, doubts about God, and a life run by so many fears, it is simply that I didn't know how to live gratefully. I didn't know the art of thanks-giving. Of blessing God for all that life brought - of seeing even the hard things as good. 

I knew what thanking God for health, for food at the dinner table, for family, friends, and the like was... after all, my country has a national holiday for pausing to remember such things. But what I didn't understand was that, when you begin to live in a perpetual state of thankfulness, you begin to notice God's gifts in everything...you begin to see all of life as grace. 

Most of the pride, anger, bitterness, resentment, and darkness we harbor in our souls usually stems from the fact that we have forgotten to be grateful for something. Lose touch with the Giver, and you lose touch with what your true purpose is: to glorify Him and forever enjoy Him. To give Him praise in all our moments. A failure to remember this is a failure to live. Give up living thankful, and you die. 

Often, I get asked by people how I've come to deal with the horrors of my story, how I've come to accept and deal with my anxiety issues and my depression, how I've been able to heal after so many deep wounds. How I can embrace the scars I bear with such hopefulness. Simply put, I began to discover life again when I started to take all of my broken pieces and hand them back over to God and bless Him for everything...even my deepest trials. Healing came when I embraced the fact that a good God had embraced me and that I had way more to thank Him for than I had to complain about. 

Whatever God ordains in my life is right. My part is recognize and accept that fact. There is nothing bad that ever comes from the hand of God. Even the worst things that take place have been allowed because there's a story He wants to tell through me that only I can live out. I have been uniquely picked for this road, and I have nothing to be ungrateful to Him for. Because He knows best. 

When you begin to tell yourself in all of life's circumstances that God's got everything, it changes how you live your days. It enables you to find joy, even in situations that it would seem impossible to discover it in. It empowers you to turn into someone you never thought you could become. Grace is known to do that. 

As the season of giving thanks is upon us, as the harvest is gathered in for the year, as all things fall are celebrated and embraced, I find myself seeking God for new ways to live out my praise for all my days. There's a remedy better than medication, better than counseling, better than therapy for the soul-sickness...and that remedy is living thankful. In all things. At. All. Times. 

I admit that there are days when it seems like a sacrifice of gratitude in that it's not easy to thank God when everything seems to be crashing down. But somehow, I know I must find a way. I must keep thanking. Because when I cease, that's when it all goes wrong. 

There is always something to be acknowledged as gift. Always something to be seen as miracle. Always something to be noticed as blessing. Because that's how God loves. And all heart-forgetfulness is simply a blindness to the ways in which He demonstrates that He loves. 

So, when you're in a season of life where you're finding more wrong than right with your life, look around you and start finding something to bless the Creator for. It just might surprise you how it changes your life when you do.