15 QUOTES THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING YOU THINK ABOUT GRATITUDE

I was given "One Thousand Gifts" by a man at church on a random Sunday, for no special reason at all. He simply tapped me, and the woman sitting on the other side of him, on the shoulder and handed us each a copy. When this happened, 2016 was wrapping up, and I had been on a nearly year-long quest for "full". So, please understand, that I have no doubt in any part of my soul that this was pure God-grace. 

The book is written by a Canadian farmer's wife who is searching for joy and fulfillment in a life of homeschooling six children and preparing three meals per day (plus snacks). She decides to make a list of 1,000 things she is thankful for...1,000 reasons to be joyful in the mundane tasks of everyday life. Not 1,000 huge, massive miracles. No. 1,000 moments of light shining through windows, children laughing and grace being poured out in the most simplistic and beautiful ways. 

She writes and prays and focuses on the word "eucharisteo", a Greek word that literally means "to give thanks".

I ain't a Canadian farmer's wife, and you probably aren't either (unless you are, in which case, heeeeey), but her words and her heart are every single thing. 

​I don't want to be a cheeseball, but I have to be real with you. This book completely destroyed the way I look at being "thankful". Thankful is not something we should do. It isn't something we should snatch out of our back pockets for the last Thursday in November, to discuss over turkey and stuffing. It isn't a thing we should only be able to speak about when everything is going exactly the way we prayed it would. 

Reading this book, praying Ann Voskamp's prayers and really taking the time to abandon my way of seeing "thankful" and picking up hers made me realize that "thankful" isn't a thing, a thought or a sensation- it's a necessity and a state of being. In fact, it's a necessary state of being if we ever hope to soak in all of this beautiful life stuff that we're promised in the books, movies and inspirational quotes.

This book never says that adopting to the state of being "thankful" in all situations is easy. In fact, it straight up says it's hard. It's just hard sometimes. But so is life. Life is hard sometimes. It feels complacent sometimes. It feels impossible sometimes. And sometime it feels like no matter how hard we work up a sweat trying to piece together the good things, do the math to figure out how to factor up the joy or work our hands and hearts to death trying to get it right- we just can't. 

This book and these prayers and this heart revealed the simple truth that, maybe...just maybe (but actually, for sure) the key to all of that good stuff isn't in working for perfection, but rather working to allow ourselves to be THANKFUL in every season. 

I picked 15 quotes that made me catch me breath when I was reading this book. 15 quotes (though there are a zillion more) that really made me say "Wow, dude, something's gotta give cause you're doing this all wrong. It could be so much better than this. Let it be so much better than this."

So, here they are. 

1. “When we find ourselves groping along, famished for more, we can choose. When we are despairing, we can choose to live as Israelites gathering manna. For forty long years, God’s people daily ate manna- a substance whose name literally means “What is it?” Hungry, they choose to gather up that which is baffling. They fill on that which has no meaning. More than 14,600 days they take their daily nourishment from that which they don’t comprehend. They find soul-filling in the inexplicable. They eat the mystery.”
2. “But how? How do we choose to allow the holes to become seeing-through-to-God places? To more-God places? How do I give up resentment for gratitude, gnawing anger for spilling joy? Self-focus for God-communion. To fully live-to live full of grace and joy and all that is beauty eternal. It is possible, wildly.”
3. “The only real fall of man is his noneucharistic life in a noneucharistic world. That was the fall! Non-eucharisteo, ingratitude, was the fall- humanity’s discontent with all that God freely gives. That is what has scraped me raw: ungratefulness.”
4. “We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks.”
5. “Twice Paul whispers it: “I have learned…” Learned. I would have to learn eucharisteo. Learn eucharisteo- learn it to live fully. Learn it like I know my skin, my face, the words on the end of my tongue. Like I know my own name. Learn how to be thankful- whether empty or full. Could the list teach me even that hard language? Over time? Gratitude in the midst of death and divorce and debt- that’s the language I’ve got to learn to speak- because that’s the kind of life I’m living- the kind I have to solve. If living eucharisteo is the key to unlocking the mystery of life, this I want. I want the hunt, the long sleuth, the careful piecing together. To learn how to be grateful and happy, whether hands full or hands empty.
6. “And when I give thanks for the seemingly microscopic, I make a place for God to grow within me. This, this, makes me full, and I "magnify him with thanksgiving" (Psalm 69:30 KJV), and God enters the world.”
7. “Time is a relentless river. It rages on, a respecter of no one. And this, this is the only way to slow time: When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of all me here. I can slow the torrent by being all here. I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment.”
8. ““Wherever you are, be all there” is only possible in the posture of eucharisteo. I want to slow down and taste life, give thanks, and see God.
9. What in the world, in all this world is grace? I can say it certain now: All is grace. I see through the woods of the world: God is always good and I am always loved. God is always good and I am always loved. Everything is eucharisteo.
10. Eucharisteo is how Jesus, at the Last Supper, showed us to transfigure all things- take the pain that is given, give thanks for it, and transform it into a joy that fulfills all emptiness. I have glimpsed it: This, the hard eucharisteo. The hard discipline to lean into the ugly and whisper thanks to transfigure it into beauty. The hard discipline to give thanks for all things at all times because He is all good. The hard discipline to number the griefs as grace…”
11. “How we behold determines if we hold joy. Behold glory and be held by God. How we look determines how we live…if we live.”
12. “The art of deep seeing makes gratitude possible. And it is the art of gratitude that makes joy possible. Isn’t joy the art of God?”
13. “Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love? That Satan’s way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily life than Jesus’ way? Why else get angry? Isn’t it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want? When I choose- and it is a choice- to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness? Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective-more expedient- than giving thanks?”
14. “Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks. Remembering frames up gratitude. Gratitude lays our the planks of trust. I can walk the planks- from known to unknown- and know. He holds. I could walk unafraid.”
15. “Though I cry, this I know: God is always good and I am always loved and eucharisteo has made my truest self, “full of grace.” Doesn’t eucharisteo rename all God’s children their truest name: “Loved one.””

 
I truly can’t say enough to express how much this book made me think, how much it made me dig deeper into the way my heart works and how I seek out joy and fulfillment. I finished this book right as 2017 was starting, and I haven’t been able to stop going back to some of these words since I first started flipping through these pages.
 
Once you start to understand that there is an abundance of joy and peace to be found by simply pausing long enough to just say “thank you for this; this is enough”, it’s nearly impossible to not come back to that place.
 
I don’t know what season of life your walking through right now, but I do believe with every single bit of me that it’s a season you should say “thank you” for. I think you should believe it’s enough and be grateful for exactly what it is.
 
You are enough. You are loved. You get to live in that, and it’s awesome.
 
With Love & Glitter,
 
Morgan 

(PS- If you're down to snatch this little babe up, click the photo.)