I am Grateful for 40
Tomorrow I turn 40. At the start of this year, I wanted to spend this weekend with my closest friends and their significant others in some cabin in the woods, laughing, eating, playing, praying, and being. The ‘rona put the kibosh on that plan. But the Lord, in his goodness gracious goodness, had a different plan. I’m not fully at liberty to share why that plan far surpassed my hopes, and how it’s not even about me at all, and it’s the answer to a prayer I’ve had more than half my life, but I just wanted to say the Father gives good gifts, even in a year where we’ve felt more coal than cheer in our stockings.
On my 30th birthday I shared 30 points of gratefulness, and so today seems like a good day to share 40 points. If, for any reason, your joy is lessened by my joy (and that’s okay, sometimes that’s just how life is), please look away now. For the rest of you, I hope even one of these encourages you.
I am grateful that on the cusp of my 4th decade, my 30th birthday, the Lord saved me. He dipped down and pulled up and enveloped and sheltered and showed me just how much he cared for me. I will grow only more grateful for that as the years pass.
I am grateful that six years ago, I stood in the foyer of my church and met a divorced, bearded, blue eyed man with a worn out Bible and a soft heart. And that six months later, we stood before God and covenanted ourselves to one another, and six years later, we love one another more, not less (as I feared was the fate of every marriage).
I am grateful for our home, small, warm, labored to become so under our very own hands (and the hands of others we love). It is the first place in my life I have felt completely at home.
I am grateful for the Church and the churches I have been a part of in my life. The smooth pews of the Catholic school where our non-denominational church met in my childhood, the plush pews of the small Mennonite chapel of my teens, the sofas and chairs and floors of the home-churches my parents frequented, the folding chairs of the charismatic home of my twenties, the stacking chairs of my years in a Reformed Baptist church, the benches of my first foray into Anglicanism, and the pews where we now worship. I once believed that if someone didn’t stay in the same church for their entire life, they lacked fidelity and true love for the family of God. But I believe now that God moves some of us through the full gamut of his expression of love on earth. That he wants us to see we are more alike than different and, for some of us, it takes an experiential journey to show us. I believe now, more than ever, that Jesus is central to the gospel, and he is at work in many lives and in many ways, and not limited to whatever way is my way at present.
I am grateful for the pastors who have loved me in my life, who have shepherd me and shown me God’s love in their varied ways. None of them are perfect people, but they all have done their best and I will never stop being grateful for that.
I am grateful for a friend who has known me longer, deeper, better, and more faithfully than anyone in my life. I am grateful that she knows the wholeness of who I am, and I know her wholeness, and there is still more to learn and love. I do not deserve her, but I will spend my life being made better by her and helping her to be better, too.
I am grateful for a career I love and a long, slow path to it. I am glad I paid attention to the check in my spirit about quick growth, that I said no to publishing offers that came in my twenties and early thirties. I do not think there is a magic number for someone to publish, but I felt in my spirit that I needed more time before I could handle the kind of work publishing a book and being in the public eye needed. I needed to be humbled, I needed to be disciplined, I needed to know my loveliness was not in the applause of men, but in the love of God. I am so, so grateful I waited and that God kept me, and that I could let Handle With Care simply be what it is without finding my identity in it.
I am grateful for my pup. If I’m honest, I wanted to make her point 3, but thought some of you might judge me for that. No matter. She is one of the best gifts of God to me.
I am grateful for four years of the Sayable Writing Mentorship. I hear from writers who’ve gone through it all the time how grateful they are for it, but I truly believe I’m the blessed one. Some of those writers have become some of my favorite writers and I will never get over how God uses them in my life regularly. It is the absolute JOY of my springtime every year.
I am grateful for many faithful friends in my life, from the Makeshift Family of college, to the Lifegroup of 57 Market, to the inhabitants of the Meadow Lane House, to the dearest friends in Denver, and to our HomeGroup in Texas. I am known and loved by many good, good people.
I am grateful for the Lord’s discipline in my life. Not all discipline is painful, some is gentle, but some is hard. And there has been some hard discipline in my life in the past ten years. I have been tempted to believe more highly of myself or others than I ought, and every time, the Lord pushed me away from that fire. It was painful every single time, but he did and continues to do it.
I am grateful for two years diet-free. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal to some of you or maybe some of you think it’s time for me to go back on a diet. But if you know what a harsh slavemaster yo-yo dieting can be, I think you will understand my gratefulness. I am grateful I finally began to learn that God called the human body good and my body good.
I am grateful for all my writing co-laborers and the various groups we’re a part of together. Writing can be a solitary career and I am grateful to not be alone. I’m grateful for editors and the work they do to make my work better and I’m grateful to edit the work of others and make it better. Not everyone loves their job, but I do, and that’s no small thing.
I am grateful for good poetry and books and great teaching and wonderful artistry.
I am grateful for Laity Lodge and all the ways that place has been a balm to me and other artists.
I am grateful for the cookbook Six Seasons because I have made almost every recipe from it and it never disappoints.
I am grateful that if you made it this far and you think I’m stretching for things to be grateful for, you’re wrong. These aren't stretches at all. I’m truly deeply grateful for small things too.
Like, I’m grateful to have given up my coffee habit and taken up Yorkshire Gold tea in the mornings. My heart doesn’t palpitate any longer and my stomach handles it much better than any cup of joe I’ve ever had.
I’m also grateful to be living in a place with four seasons again. People can fuss about the long winter, but I feel the need to simply say two things, “Climate change is real,” and “It’s December 7th, and there’s still no snow on the ground.” So. I love the seasons here. I love the green, the gray, the white, the orange, the blue. I missed it more than I can even describe and I’m grateful to be back amongst it.
I am grateful for my kayak. I am grateful for the specific means of grace it is to me and for the kindness of some anonymous friend who gave it to me.
I am grateful for the river our home faces, for the wildlife outside our windows at every hour of the day, the blues and greens and grays and browns of it all. I feel more blessed than I even know to live here.
I am grateful for Santa Fe and our week spent there a year ago. It was a holy week for us in so many ways, a healing week, a helping one.
I am grateful God did not move us to Portland, Maine, as we planned in March. I’m glad he had a different plan.
I am grateful that God is never only in one space or denomination or political party or marriage or family or organization. That he is at work in all ways and in all people and in all over the earth bringing everything under his dominion and into his blessing.
I am grateful that I have never been completely convinced of the merits of any one doctrine or theological position, that my mind will always see the merits of other sides and perspectives quite naturally. I am grateful for that because it keeps me engaged in thinking about it, instead of simply assuming something is true.
I am grateful for my thorn in the flesh of doubt because without my doubt, I would not try to know God more. Without my doubt, I would not ask so much of him. Without my doubt, I would not know his love quite so big as I know it now.
I am grateful that after more than a decade and a half of student loans, we were able to pay them all off with my book advance in one payment. That still feels like a miracle and I’ll never stop being grateful for it.
I am grateful for pre-marital counseling, the counseling we received and the counseling we’ve been able to give to other couples. Twelve weeks of in-depth work, consistent time spent with another couple—this can’t be replicated and can’t be overstated. I’m grateful for ours every day still.
I’m grateful for all the roommates I’ve had, 38 of them. There have been two or three who have been really significantly difficult for me, but overall, I have shared a home with some wonderful women who loved me and who I love with all my heart.
I’m grateful for my family. We are all grown-ups now, adulting along the eastern seaboard. We rarely see one another, but I am grateful for each of those brothers and the women with whom they share their lives. All my life I wanted sisters, and now I have a cornucopia of them. I have my brothers to thank for that.
I am grateful for the babies we’ve lost, even the ones unknown to us. They are known to God by name, and they are loved by him.
I am grateful for the childlessness we now have. That isn’t always easy to say and certainly hasn’t come easily to us. We ache for the children we don’t have, but God fills our home in other ways and we know his intention is to bless us whether or not we have children from our own bodies or not.
I am grateful our contractor busted a hole in our ceiling so we could see our home wasn’t insulated at all. And that he insulated it and then closed that hole back up. I think about that every day now that the temperatures are dipping into the twenties—and still lower to go!
I am grateful for you, dear reader. Yes, you! I don’t write for fame or numbers or an audience or social media numbers. I write for you. I envision you, opening your email and reading this missive from me to you, and that warms my heart a lot. Saying, “You too? Me too,” is important to me.
I am grateful for warm wool socks and warm wool sweaters and warm lined boots and hats and gloves and a job that allows me to work from home. I lived here for many years having to start my car an hour early, spend thirty minutes scraping ice off it, sliding off the road because I couldn’t afford snow tires, and envying all the stay-at-home moms who lit candles and made hot cocoa for their littles and waxing eloquent about the wonderful winter days. I know what it’s like to be out in the elements day after day and to envy those who don’t have to. And so I’m grateful that, at this juncture of life at least, I don’t have to.
I am grateful for Handle With Care. It takes a lot of work for me to say that because I lament a lot about the book. But I’m grateful some people have found goodness in it and they share it with their friends and put it on Best of 2020 lists. I don’t feel it deserves a place on those lists, but I’m grateful for it nonetheless. I do love the first chapter and the last chapter, and I hope that encourages me to keep on keeping on.
I am grateful that I learned to cut my husband’s hair this year and that even though I can do it, he still goes to our dear friend here to get it cut, not because he needs to, but because he wants to support our friends and small businesses. I’m glad I married a guy who cares about people and puts his care into action in so many small ways.
I am grateful for vitamins and supplements, massages, chiropractic care, baths, buying clothing that fits, and for learning to take care of my body in other ways besides just putting it through rigorous elimination diets every two months. I know that might seem related to point 12, but it’s not. It’s a different thing.
I am grateful for therapy, counseling, EMDR, anti-anxiety supplements, and other means of healing God has used to lessen my depression and anxiety. It still flares, but it does not master me, and I am grateful for that.
I am grateful to end my thirties. It has been a both beautiful and profoundly difficult decade. I know my forties may be more of the same, will be more of the same, because that is life, or at least it is my life. But I am grateful to end this decade—a full decade of knowing not just suffering, but knowing Christ shares in my sufferings. That will never cease to drive me to gratefulness. He shares in my joys, my pains, my fears, my delights, and my life. He loves me. And he loves you too.
I am under absolutely NO illusion that any of you made it through all these, but it was necessary for me to write, so thank you for letting it show up in your inbox. I am grateful for you.
