A Writer Counts her Blessings by Steph Beth Nickel

We writers include items on our Thanksgiving list that others may not even consider.

Sure, we're thankful for family and friends, for food and fellowship, but we're thankful for the following as well:

Thanks Giving—Carolyn R. Wilker

When was the last time you were told to give thanks? Could you do it when you’re going through some challenging times?

            I’ve struggled with this countless times, because, being human, I can always think of the negative and struggle to find the positive.  In 1 Thessalonians 5:18, I read, “Rejoice always, pray continuously, give thanks in all circumstances.”  I struggle with that, even when there’s good stuff happening in the middle of overwhelming tension, and I anticipate and await the outcome or the next big thing, just as in our recent experience.

Recently, my husband had surgery in Toronto. It’s not my favourite place to drive. There are so many cars and people to watch for. Streetcars picking up and letting off passengers.  Construction and too many one-way streets. Driving in a city often does make it more familiar, not that I want to do it frequently. Then the interweaving of highways to get there that my husband calls ‘spaghetti junctions.’ He couldn’t have phrased it better.

One needs to have wits about them to drive there. A carefully programmed GPS helps a great deal. My head filled with directions and I still had to pay heed to everything around me. Focus, focus. It’s just like my mother often said of parenting young children, “You need eyes in the back of your head.” I agree.

We made it, with the help of our GPS, Matilda, and my husband checked in for his surgery the next morning, with me there holding the bag of items he would need after surgery. The wait during surgery seemed long, and fortunately, with no undue surprises—always longer because it’s waiting time. And it’s not just the bag of stuff I was carrying; it was also the collection of hopes and concerns of how the surgery would help.

Post-surgery, my husband faced discomfort of grafts, stitches and swelling, and for me, it included anticipating the healing and the arms-length of instructions and details for recovery—read, high maintenance—for the next week.

Having made it through the surgery, two drives there and back in a short week and a half, and in spite of anxiety, there were good things: plenty of prayers, my trusty GPS to guide me safely through the maze of highways that surprisingly was now becoming more familiar, not meaning I want to drive it often.

Because this is Thanksgiving weekend, I will offer my thanks in the middle of all this commotion and the medical procedures.

For a large hospital, with a solid record

For medical specialists, whose education is used to heal and help, and the assurance that we’re in the best of hands

For nurses with a sense of humour as they go about their work

For the taxi driver who cared about what’s happened in my day

For the bed and breakfast owner who cared about our journey and provided a hearty breakfast for me

For a safe place to lay my head at night, even when my sleep is restless

For conversation with others who are also waiting while a loved one is in surgery

For such things as a GPS that helps us to get safely from one place to another

For a progressing recovery and antibiotics that support healing

For innovations that help patients to better handle conditions

And here I give thanks for the gifts God gives to us: friends and family, grace, forgiveness and the chance to start over each new day because of our hope in Jesus, our Saviour.

 Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving, or at least a grateful one in whatever you face today.

Carolyn R. Wilker, editor, storyteller and author of Once Upon a Sandbox

www.carolynwilker.ca

One Thousand Gifts - a review (Nesdoly)

Title: One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
Author: Ann Voskamp
Publisher: Zondervan, February 2011, available in hardcover and Kindle editions
• ISBN-10: 0310321913
• ISBN-13: 978-0310321910
 

“They say memory jolts awake with trauma’s electricity. That would be the year I turned four. The year when blood pooled and my sister died and I, all of us, snapped shut to grace” (Kindle location 45).

In this early paragraph from One Thousand Gifts author Ann Voskamp relates her first memory – a tragic accident that overshadowed much of her life. Then she whisks us forward to her adult self, the wife of an Ontario farmer, a mother of six, and a fearful woman on a quest to understand and trust a God who would allow a baby to be snatched from her family.

Through vignettes from her life she takes us with her on the journey. It begins when she discovers the Greek word eucharisteo which embodies "giving thanks," "grace," and "joy." At about the same time a friend challenges her to list one thousand things for which she is thankful. She begins keeping a gratitude journal.

Along the way we rush to the ER with her and her son the day he mangles his hand, overhear her dealing with a hurting child, and feel her toe-clenching fear as hog prices plummet. Intertwined through these and other stories is what she learns about God and trust, fear, beauty, humility, service, and more.

Voskamp’s openness and vulnerability are moving. She buttresses her vivid storytelling and poetic prose with quotes from sources as varied as St. Augustine and John Piper. The rich text begs to be read slowly and savoured.

One Thousand Gifts is a powerful and convincing apologetic for thankfulness. It illustrates how the practice of gratitude can morph from a mere exercise of accumulating items on a list to a trusting, joyful lifestyle.

Ann Voskamp is a member of The Word Guild and blogs at A Holy Experience.

© 2011 by Violet Nesdoly

This review was first published in the March/April 2011 issue of Faith Today.

Website: www.violetnesdoly.com

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Thanks be to God

"For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful: though Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." It's just a simple mealtime prayer. But our grandparents probably would not sit down to any meal, no matter how bland or meager it was, without saying those words, or words much like them.

It wasn't so long ago that Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Pentecostals, Christians of almost any background, would not sit down to a down to a meal without thanking God for the food. They also thanked the human cook, usually Mum. Even people who rarely attended church, at least said Grace to God and expressed appreciation to his human helpers. Now family meals are rare, grace is rarer. And God help the cook who serves the same thing twice in a week.

Not so long ago, most Canadians believed the thought, not the thing, matter when a gift was given. Now gifts are returned for cash by people of all ages. A sense of entitlement, no thankfulness prevails.

While some Canadians still say Grace at meals and, as a nation, we're often mocked by comics for being too polite, I doubt we're nearly a good at being thankful as previous generations. Worse yet, when we do say 'thank you', whether to God or a human being, we often really don't mean it. We really don't appreciate the love that goes behind gifts of any kind. Especially God's gifts to us.

We can rationalize our reasons: Perhaps,earlier generations remembered days when the platter on the table was nearly empty; when the crops failed, when the hunting was bad, and when the livestock died. Perhaps they remembered when shining up perfect Mackintosh apples or, heading to town for a box of exotic mandarin oranges at Christmas was a huge, much appreciated effort. They were valiant fights to create celebration when there wasn't much, materially at least, to celebrate.

Sometimes a bowl of porridge was a feast to a pioneer family. Fresh eggs may have been a nearly forgotten delicacy when a hen stopped laying. Not so long ago, many urban Canadians drank powdered milk. But they gave thanks and meant it: to God and to the human hands that brought those meals in front of them.

I think they knew something most of us have forgotten.

As the psalmist said, "Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks; yea, unto thee do we give thanks. Thy Name also is so nigh; and that do they wonderous works declare" Psalm 75:1.

Yeah For Contests - Mann

Maybe I should have titled this blog 'Protecting our Babies': Writing contests initiate celebration and isolation, ecstasy and sorrow. I have entered several contests in my life: The Word Guild, song writing, and a Miss Pilkington Township Century contest many years ago. I have to admit it’s been a little like the old saying, “Always a bridesmaid and never a bride.” I can honestly say that in all the cases I was content to be short listed and happy for the winners. And in all the situations, what I had to offer would have applauded and supported the winner’s offering in some way. I guess that’s a little like being in a group and having something important to say. In your waiting, someone else speaks to a similar issue and you sigh and say, “Point well said. I rest my case.” So we offer congratulations, accolades and best wishes for more of the same from those who won, especially at the recent Word Guild Contest.

What is maybe even more important is the fine-tuning our writing gets in the process of preparation for submission to a contest. The time we spend with it resembles intimacy with a good friend. We talk to it, about it and sometimes even with it. Stranger things have happened. We protect it, defend it and support it. We sidetrack any new initiative in our life that attempts to rob our time or distract us from finishing, polishing and reshaping our baby.

And when it comes down to the moment of putting that stamp on it and carefully placing it in the mailbox or sending it by email through attachment, we offer a sigh of relief. We have been like the mother killdeer that flips and flaps a few feet away from her eggs trying to divert unnecessary attention away from her yet-to-be-born babies so they can mature and have new life.

Donna Mann

http://the_meadows.homestead.com/mann.html