Making a Small Life Large

If I am painfully honest, I am one who so easily sees what others have.  Sadly, it is all too easy to fall into the typical mindset of the vast majority of us Western Hemisphere Dwellers. 

I eat, and yet I am hungry.   I am given, and yet I want more.

Isn't that the human inheritance?  The legacy of the Garden?  Our fall was and always will be that we aren't satisfied in God and what He gives.  I believe it is just that which is the catalyst for most sin - we continually seek more, bigger, better.  We have failed to see this earthly world for what it was intended to be, not a way to a bigger, better self, but the means to a deep relationship with a bigger, better, wholly satisfying God!

So what do I do about this?  How do I begin to unravel the twisted mess of the Garden, this all consuming lack of gratitude?   I think back on the Israelites and how for forty long years they wandered the wilderness.  They daily gathered the manna, the nourishment that fell from heaven, that they weren't sure what it was, but it filled their hungry stomachs and souls.

And I question - what is my manna?  What must I search out daily to sustain and fill me?

I believe the remedy lies in the aperture of my eye.  That thing that sheds light on life and gives new perspective,  lens I choose to see through.

My search is long and hard and I land in this place of grace and beauty and I discover eucharisteo.  A Greek word meaning thanksgiving with the root word chara tucked in the middle and that word means joy.  Is it possible that by giving thanks, I find joy?  Is the key to a full, joy-filled life to give thanks in all things, for all things?

So I begin to take pen to paper and list the gifts He gives, naming the ways He loves.

411. spring rain taps the panes
412. clean cotton to sleep in
413. birdsong seeps in through cracked window
414. soft snore of dreaming pup
415. cookies baking in oven
416. lunch in the middle of the day, because we miss each other

The list began with one, and now it's in the hundreds, and I'm pressing for thousands because His gifts are mesmerizing and His fingerprints are addicting!  I am a woman wooed and by listing the graces He pours over me, my seemingly small life is made large!  I am making the invisible, visible.  

Who knew, by this simple act, I would laugh deeper, hug my children tighter, kiss my husband's lips longer, discover a way to release worry's choking grip and be more able to give of myself?  All because I have listed the gifts, the ways He loves.

And before I know it, I realize that all I want... is all I have.

Blessings,
Kim