This Piece of Time

I love Thanksgiving.  It marks the beginning of all things "holiday".  I love the lighting of Christmas lights downtown on Wednesday night, the day of family and food on Thursday, and 12 blissful hours of shopping, and just being, with my mom on Friday.  But my favorite part of Thanksgiving has become the counting of blessings.  The focus on gratitude.  The intentional listing of both great and small.  This has become my joy. The simple act of choosing thanks can transform perspective.  The hardest of thanks can lift a spirit out of the trenches that engulf.  And while I cannot begin to explain this phenomenon as eloquently as Ann Voskamp has in One Thousand Gifts , I have been profoundly changed by it's reach.  For more than five months, I have been marinating in these lessons of gratitude and working to find grace in the hard.  And then yesterday, she spoke straight to my heart. "If I close these fingers, try to hold, hoard the river - dam up the grace- won

It's hard to say just how I feel.  After eight months of living in limbo, we are still waiting.  Nearly all of our belongings are in storage, our dog is living with our family, and we have no address to forward our mail.  This is hard.  The waiting. Even still, I am grateful.  For an affordable furnished apartment.  For a school our daughters love.  For the comforts of "home".  For the time to find our next.  For a God who provides beyond our needs.  The waiting has left me tired.  The urgency of my prayer is gone.  I cannot will a house to list, so I have thrown my hands up in surrender.  "Do you know I'm worn out?"  Lately, those are the only words I have to speak.  I have quit asking.  Quit pleading.  Quit hoping.  I just wait. I know He can.  I believe He will.  But do I matter?  Maybe this is all part of the waiting.  For a house, for a child, for a spouse, for a job, for a change for healing.  Maybe we all struggle with the asking.  Like ou