It's November, and an amazingly beautiful one at that.  Today as I took my walk I was thrilled by all the colors of my surroundings:  bright, vivid reds; glorious oranges; cheerful and unstoppable golds.  Everything seemed to shout in full voice, "There is a God!"  Dare I admit that I stopped under a red tree and exclaimed that very thing?  Yes, I dare!

I love the fact that we set aside a whole month of the year to focus on thankfulness, but I read this in Daniel and it truly made me rethink Thanksgiving:
  Three times a day he (Daniel) got down on his knees and prayed,
giving thanks to his God,
just as he had done before."
(Daniel 6:10b)

Giving thanks was a habit- not a dull and boring habit- but a discipline.  A three-times-a-day discipline.  He started his day with thanks, interrupted the flow of his day with thanks and tied together the loose ends of the day with thanks.  A habit that forces one to focus on the good things that a good God has placed in our everyday moments.  Everyday moments...

Some days are beautiful, filled to the brim with joy and you can't stop the overflow of your heart from just bursting out of you with shouts of thanksgiving.  Some days are normal days, nothing extraordinary, just your basic day.  And other days...well, those days are hard.  And scary.  And sad and depressing and stressful and they try to steal your joy and your sanity and it's all you can do to just get dressed and out of bed and not snap at everything and everybody in sight.  I have been there and had more than my fair share of days like that. 

"I will sacrifice a thank offering to You 
and call on the name of the Lord." (Psalm 116:17)

A "sacrifice of a thank offering."  I love that visual.  It's so easy to get wrapped up in the drama of what is not right with my world.  Someone who is supposed to love me has hurt me deeply, and continues to do so with the absence of actions or words.  I focus on that until my heart is twisted in pain and my bones hurt and my mind goes over it again and again.  What can I give thanks for here?  "Thank You, Lord, for ALL the people who do love on me, who are consistently there and solid and do respond with love.  Thank You for the memories I have with this person and for the fact that I believe You can breathe life into lifeless things.  Thank You for being that kind of God.  For being a Father to the fatherless and the Restorer of wasted years.  For "rebuilding ancient ruins and restoring places long devastated." (Isaiah 61:4)  Thank You for the promise of a place where there will be no more pain, no more tears.  For being my Abba."

Thus the sacrifice.  To get the focus off myself and the "depths of despair" and the situation and shift that focus to my Solution, my only Hope.  Somehow just letting that praise fall from my lips makes Him seem bigger.  When my parents divorced I was...there are no words for what I was.  "Small" is the closest thing I can come up with.  Broken, hopeless, ruined, spinning, lost...these also come to mind.  My mom gave me a giant Rubbermaid tote filled with pictures of our family life together.  Their wedding pictures, my baby pictures- snapshots of a world I loved and depended on, gone with one decision.  I had no clue what to do with all those pictures.  Looking at them shredded me.  So they sat.  In that green Rubbermaid tote.  We moved it from one place to another to another until finally I felt the urge to open that tote and put those pictures into a scrapbook;  pretend it was somebody else's life.  It was fantastic therapy.  When I reached the end of putting that book together, I was able to see it as a celebration of what was.  Able to celebrate that I had a wonderful, loving home that was fun and solid and warm and my parents had loved me and we had played and laughed and cried and LIVED together.  What a blessing!  Putting that book together was not easy, but the payoff was truth- and the truth will always set you free from something.  A "sacrifice of thanksgiving" that led to a true confession of thanks.  And a bit of freedom in the process.  So here I go.  Leaping into this sixth month of motherhood determined to pass this habit, this discipline of thanksgiving three times a day to my daughter.  So that she will grow up focusing on "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy." (Phillipians 4:8)  "Think about such things!!!"  Pay attention, O my soul!