Everything is grace

The month of May was insane. As I started counting of gifts and reflecting on God's blessings, everything started getting really crazy. Mark had surgery, he lost his job, he found a job (which are old fear issues from my first marriage), my neighbor called the police on us for a completely ridiculous reason, my dearest friend's brother died....

And through it all, I didn't panic. There was that sweet voice in my head saying, "everything is going to be okay." And, at the beginning of June, I can honestly say that "everything is going to be okay." Perhaps all of the drama of the last 5 years has finally convinced me that in the midst of the drama is that steady voice of the Savior saying, "Yep, I've got this."

One thing I am sure of, as Voskamp muses, that everything is grace. We breathe in and we breathe out, the eucharisteo, as she describes it, a constant giving and receiving of grace that begins with Thanksgiving. But, the one thing that I still struggle with is being thankful for tragedy or evil. Not that I don't see the blessings that can come from such events -- but I have a hard time being thankful for the event itself.

I can be thankful for my divorce. I can even be thankful for the years that seem wasted when I was married to my first husband. I am thankful for the pain. I am thankful for the lessons learned and the new life I found. I am thankful for the change in my relationship with God as a result of my divorce. I get that.

But, to be thankful for the actual loss of a young life, for example, that is hard. Maybe it is something that comes in time. Or, maybe we remain thankful for the fruit that comes from pain and we are never thankful for the event. And, yet, it seems somehow if our God is the Giver of the best gifts, and understands the infinity of time -- even allowing tragedy in this world that is so short-lived -- then thankfulness for all things is the only response. I am not there, yet. I am only pondering.

It is for this reason, that I am so grateful for the gift of counting gifts. For the opportunity to acknowledge and develop a free flow of Thanksgiving to the One who loves us enough to give us gifts that are in our best interest. We just don't always see from His perspective -- and we never will at least until we no longer plant our feet in clay.