A Heart of Thanksgiving

My mom doesn’t talk much about growing up, mostly because it makes her sad, but what I’ve gathered from the few stories she has told me is that I am so very fortunate. I have never wanted for food, water, clothes, or shelter. I have always had extras and luxuries in my life.

I’ve also learned from my mom to give credit where credit is due. She thanks God all the time that she was able to move to the United States, and bring her mom and oldest daughter. She thanks God that she found an amazing man like my dad to help raise their four kids and love all of us equally. She thanks God. Period.

I think about my mom and I look around my life and I follow her example and give credit where credit is due.

I thank God for my family: my parents and siblings who have taught me so much about how to live, my husband who loves me unconditionally and has helped me to grow in so many ways, for my oldest daughter who has taught me what grace is at a different level than I ever understood and make me laugh with my whole heart, and for my youngest daughter who has taught me in her short little life how to have faith in God, let him have my worries, and treasure every minute.

I thank God for his provisions: shelter, food, and a job for myself and my husband.

I thank God for my friends: my elephant sisters who kick up dust around me when I need it most, my childhood friends who know my life and love me anyway, my motocross-sisterhood who I am lucky enough to go through wifehood with our crazy husbands and motherhood with our sweet babies, and the friends I’ve made at work who understand the season and the job and who are always there to talk.

I thank God. I thank him that I wake up each day able to thank him, praise him, and have a relationship with him. That I am able to get to know him. That he loves me so much that he allowed his very own son to die on the cross for my mistakes, my sins. That he was willing to show me grace despite not deserving a single drop of it.

Despite growing up in the church and having a close relationship with God as a teen, I never fully understood the concept of thankfulness until recently. In the last three years, I have spent countless hours in my Bible reacquainting myself to my one true God, and fostering a relationship with him that had fallen by the wayside in my late teens and early twenties.

Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.

Colossians 2:7

Because I have made an effort to spend time in God’s word on a daily basis, I have been able to let my own roots grow into God through his word. I have been rebuilding my life on him and his word. And by allowing my life to be rooted in him, I notice myself being so much more thankful for what I have.

I thank God daily that I have rediscovered a strong relationship with him as it has helped me to find a thankful heart because my thankful heart has helped me to be more content in my life, with want for little more.

This Thanksgiving, I turn my eyes to God and lift up my thanksgiving and thank him one more time for all my many blessings.

Where does your thankful heart lead you?