What's with the "Appreciation Post" theme?

You may have noticed there has been a theme in my blog posts this time around. Appreciation posts. Where did that come from? I’m glad you asked!

The theme of appreciation comes from my year working through the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Yes, it did take me an entire year to read through a 240 page book. It honestly might have been more than a year; it was a very, very hard read for me. It held the answer to the biggest struggle in my soul.

Bitterness. Resentment. Anger. Feelings like these raged inside of me, trying to poison every interaction I had. My life has not been especially hard, but I had a list of every single grievance. Every perceived slight. Every single way someone had hurt me - especially God. My list of ways He had wronged me had grown large, and loomed over me with an oppressive weight.

I have never once doubted that God is real. I’ve known Him too long and experienced Him too vividly to ever doubt that. But it turns out that did not make my faith impregnable; there was still room for doubt. I just started doubting that God is good.

The classic questions that keep people from God started seeming more important to me, I couldn’t ignore them anymore. “How can a good God allow evil in the world?”, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” “Were we put here just to suffer?” Maybe that last one isn’t as widely asked, but it was certainly asked in my heart.

I’m going to take a pause here because I need it. I just want to mention that writing some of these posts has been terrifying. For one thing, there are people in my life reading this who deserve to have instead heard it in person. For another, the idea of my non-Christian family and friends reading these things and judging me by them intimidates me - even the idea of my Christian friends and family reading something I said but didn’t articulate well and misunderstanding who I am or how I think about God… It’s all scary. The level of vulnerability God has asked of me in this season is… a lot. But a model I long for and crave in my communities. So if you don’t find this level of honesty elsewhere, find it here.

The answer to my bitterness was found in every page of One Thousand Gifts. Thanksgiving. Gratitude. Appreciation.

In focusing on the big existential questions I listed earlier - which often have simple answers - I had made the classic mistake of looking at the giant in front of me instead of God. In the book Facing Your Giants, Max Lucado talks about this. When faced with Goliath, the Israelites saw a giant. When David saw him, he saw something God could handle. David’s eyes were always set on God! (At least, until the whole Bathesheba thing.)

Gratitude is how you fix your gaze. Whatever you are looking at grows in your sight. With gratitude for all that is good in creation you can set your eyes back onto the Good Creator. Looking at the troubles of the world and the hardships in it is how we shrink God in our eyes and grow the hardships into inconquerable giants.

I had to start small. I wasn’t grateful for many things in life; I could find flaws in even the good things. Like, why does eating a lot of ice cream have to give you a stomach ache? So I looked to nature and started trying to actually appreciate the variety that flowers give us. Big blooms, small blooms, bold and subtle colors, small plants, to massive trees. And then I could eventually give thanks for more things more naturally. A good meal, a relaxing shower, the opportunity to take a nap.

These appreciation posts have been a natural extension of that gratitude. It wasn’t planned or calculated or contrived. I just wanted to share my love of jellyfish, hydrangeas, etc. with you as I was sharing about our travels. Because now I see them. And I see Him. And I am grateful.