I like to think that I’m a thankful person.
Don’t we all hope that others can see the joy and gratitude overflowing from us?
Yet, in all honesty if someone had the task of following me around all day and recording my expressions of thankfulness, I am sure their journal would contain a few scribbled words of gratitude, with more intense full-descriptive chapters of my honking, eye-rolling and sighing when someone cuts me off in traffic.
In a recent Bible study, part of the homework was to write down five things we were thankful for. I immediately jotted down: Family, friends, God …
Since that lesson three weeks ago, I keep returning to that page in my mind and continue to add to it. I feel like my daughter Phoebe when she was 4-years-old. When she prayed, she did so with her eyes open and just started thanking God for everything she saw: “thank you for the trees outside, our warm house, our cups, my spoon, my sisters, Daddy, Mommy, Grandma, Grandpa, the yucky green beans …”
Sometimes Phoebe would continue until her older sisters dropped their heads onto the kitchen table with a thud, sighing loudly from hunger pains. Early on we learned how to time our “Amen” in between her prayers of thanksgiving and her needing to take a breath of oxygen. But she was always quite adamant: “I wasn’t finished thanking God.”
I suppose I was in this ‘express-your-thankfulness’ mindset when I quickly wrote a note to the president of Phoebe’s university recently. After I hit “send,” Phoebe happened to call and I mentioned that I sent President John Pistole a note.
“That’s funny,” she responded, “I just saw him after we left chapel this morning and on the walk to the student center he asked me about my plans for Thanksgiving.”
Twenty minutes after I got off the phone with Phoebe, I received an email reply to my thank-you note:
Thanks so much for your note Janet (and Steve). That’s a great testimony to Phoebe and the others and for AU overall! And in the small world department, I just happened to be walking from chapel to the student center an hour ago and struck up a conversation with a student who happened to be Phoebe! Thanks again for sharing and for your positive feedback about AU. Enjoy your time together the rest of this week.
Blessings, John Pistole
Phoebe has always been correct in that we’re never “finished thanking God.” And it’s rather delightful when you experience the contagiousness of thankfulness.
