Last year, I embarked on a multi-post gratitude series from
Thanksgiving until Christmas (really, New Year’s Eve!) for multiple reasons:
- First, because it had been many, many, many years since I had last done this exercise, even after having returned to blogging. Gratitude is always a good thing to practice at any time of the year, but with it being Thanksgiving yet again, at the very least it’s good to take the big honkin’ obvious reminders that are placed in front of me as an opportunity to do this.
- Second, I had had a lot of life changes since the last time I had shared the list of things I’m grateful for (including finally having a wonderful woman in my life!), that I was long overdue in sharing them. This included not only my now-wife but also so many other people that God had put in my life, including most of all, Himself. And some of the people I shared my gratitude for having them in my life were people that I was finding it quite challenging to have relationships with. Which leads to my last point…
- Third, I was still in the midst of a long season of mental, emotional, and spiritual suffering. I hadn’t yet broken from it (that would come some months later), so I was still fighting to repeatedly try to find good things to hold on to, yes, including God, but also other smaller things that I could perceive with any of my five senses on a day-to-day basis. Believe it or not, gratitude helps keep one sane. But it is a fight.
So I’m at it again this year because, while the trials that
marked my life a year ago have ended, I’m still struggling with their impacts.
And while I could share my gratitudes regarding specific individuals again (and
I will in a bit), I’m feeling prompted to share memories where I can name that
God showed up and/or came through, etc., because in spite of what I believe to be
many, many instances of this, my “prayers” in my worst moments have tended to
reveal that I forget about these things just as quickly.
My choosing to write about it will not and cannot erase any
future instance where I grumble and complain again. I don’t know how to change
that part of myself. All I have is the Law which says it is sin. But what I
hope to do is, by sharing these stories, open myself up to the Lord in other
ways that might allow me to receive things from Him that somehow I’ve been
resistant to do.
That will come in future posts in this set. Meanwhile, here
is a list of who and what I’m grateful for:
- Jesus (remember, I have to put Him first)
- My love, who is now my wife
- That my wife and I got married this year and it was a wonderful day for all who attended
- Our apartment
- My job
- My wife’s job
- My car
- My wife’s car
- Our church
- Our pastor
- My counselor, who I still see for individual sessions once a month (because I still need it)
- My dad
- That I am on good terms with my mom and stepdad
- That my love and I are now on good terms with her parents
- My best man Ty Rawlins (yes, continuing the pseudonym game) with whom we call, check in, and support one another weekly
- My other friend that I also call most weeks and we support each other
- A friend from college with whom we call roughly once a month (sometimes once every couple months) and we check in and support each other in a goals-oriented way
- A couple of other college friends that I recently connected with over the last couple months after being out of touch for years, and having an opportunity to really catch up
- A hope that next year my wife and I will be able to go to Minnesota to visit with the aforementioned college friends from the last couple bullet points, and I can introduce them to her and vice versa
- Anytime my friend Caleb Redding (pseudonym) is in town. His most recent visit, which took place over a week in late-October, yielded a couple wonderful dinners out, one of which included a series of laughter-bursting pranks as well as a “new” connection that could bear fruit in both the personal-friendship and professional areas of life
Speaking of the aforementioned “new” connection: I caught up
with a guy I kinda knew at my old church, but he was really more of a
friend-of-a-friend. That is, until he asked me at that one dinner if I still
wrote music, to which my wife immediately responded, “ohhh yeah! He sure does!”
Since then, we met up for coffee to lay the groundwork for a friendship as well
as a business connection, and next steps look promising. Back to the list of
gratitudes:
- My church band which allowed me to play and praise/worship God with them when my 2nd job let me go at the end of last year
- My off-and-on again band, Ring Shout (now going by the title “Sons of Ring Shout”) continuing to rehearse on average once a month since Mark the Drummer passed away last February
- The once-a-month music sessions with Songs by Heart at a nursing home not far from home
- God giving me new compositions, pieces, and songs to write
I’m sure there are many more, but those are all the big ones
I can think of that happened in the last year. One of the last ones I’ll mention
is that God took me through a successful reading through the Bible (chronologically)
from Genesis to Revelation. I had attempted to do so in 2022 but got waylaid
about 2 months in and failed to keep up the program. With God’s help I not only
finished it this time around but finished it about a month-and-a-half early, in mid-November. Every
time I read through Scripture I always pick up new things. What I have found kind
of disappointing is how unfamiliar I was with much of the New Testament, even
though I’ve read it all the way through before. Some of Paul’s lesser-known letters
that still made it into the Canons of Scripture addressed very specific
situations that would still apply to other situations today.
That said, I need to begin another read-through soon. There’s
really no prize for successfully managing to read through the Bible from
end-to-end except just that. The real prize is going back to the Word over and
over again to learn more about Jesus Christ and grow deeper in relationship
with Him. He is the prize.
I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:14, NKJV
