an invitation

God gives me books sometimes. i'm pretty sure i've blogged about that before, but i can't seem to find the post--or the patience or time to hunt down the post. often, these book-gifts seem to come in waves: book after book after book that i pick up, usually for some very insignificant reason, and each one speaks to my heart in a way that makes me think, "why didn't someone tell me to read this before?" maybe this sounds strange to you, the idea that God might show up at the library, there between the stacks, whispering read this one, trust me. and that's okay if it sounds strange to you. it sounds strange to me, too. but all the same, i have no other explanation for how i happen upon books that speak to me so clearly, sometimes, and often all in a row.

as you might have guessed, i'm on one of those reading jags right now, having just landed on divinely-sent book #3.

(let me interject here: none of these books, divinely-sent or no, is gospel. they're not even necessarily all that well written sometimes. but each one has some lesson for me, each time. disclaimer finished.)

anyhow, #3 on this current jag is one thousand gifts, by ann voskamp. i'm only about 60 pages into it, and who knows if i'll love it by the time i reach the end, but for now, i'm learning a good lesson from it: gratitude. she says it so much more eloquently than i will be able to--so if this post piques your interest, go check it out of the library, or at least check out her blog: a holy experience--but she talks about how gratitude is a habit that must be cultivated like any other good habit. to that end, at the encouragement of a friend, she took on a challenge: making a list of one thousand gifts from God for which she's thankful. i've only gotten to about #200, but i'm already thinking about what a great exercise that would be, noticing things i'm grateful for every single day.

so i shared that with luke, and i told him that i thought i might start blogging about something i'm grateful for every day. he's eager to do it with me, perhaps more because he's excited about blogging than he is about being grateful. but whatever gets him there, i think, is worth it. i'm quite sure my--that is, our--list of things we're grateful for won't make it to one thousand; luke did the math pretty quickly and declared that we would have to keep it up for three years to get there! and wouldn't it be great if we did? but i'm going to try to jot down something i'm grateful for each and every day. some days, that might mean nothing more than a sentence--gasp, even a sentence fragment--because these days are hectic and full and distracted. and luke is going to share something with me every day, too. some days, i hope, those things we're grateful for will inspire me to have something more to say, more to write, which has always been good therapy for me, but which has been hard upon hard these difficult days. i'd rather be blogging about things i'm grateful for than hard things, anyhow. or maybe i'll be able to think about the intersection of the good things and the hard some days, too, which might be the best of all.

so luke and i will start tonight at dinner. but for right now, luke is at soccer practice and anastasia is asleep, so i have a moment to make my note for the day: today, i'm grateful for sheer curtains in open windows.

(for the record, anastasia is delighted by billowing sheer curtains in open windows, too, as they slip through her almost-seven-month-old fingers--which is a sweet, fresh reminder of how much i love them. and that's a picture i want to take now, so maybe when she wakes up from her nap, i'll see if i can capture it. or maybe by then luke will be home and it will be time to make dinner, and anyhow, the breeze has died down now...and soon it will be too cool out and i'll need to close the windows. but today has been a day of billowing sheers in chubby fingers, and i'm grateful for that.)

you're welcome to join me, if you'd like, in this journey of gratitude, either by commenting here with what you're grateful for or linking to similar posts on your blog or whatever. if i were one of those mega-bloggers, i'd probably have a special icon for these gratitude posts and some sort of system for linking and all that. but i'm not, and i don't. so be grateful with me, organically, if you'd like--as organic as a blog can be. you're invited.

(and if you have a book title to whisper to me to help me sustain my current jag, whisper away. you never know when you might have the words of life to speak to someone, even if it's just through a book recommendation. you might be one of the people who already has.)