Holding My Hands Open

A hammock. A good book. A beautiful view. Swinging back and forth in my happy place. That's what sticks out most from the last few days we had in Tela, one of the beach towns in Honduras. Experiencing places like this in Honduras just makes me further question, "Why on earth am I LEAVING?" Well, as much as I love you, Honduras, you won't last forever. No place will. And I'm grateful. The only place I want to last forever is in Heaven with my Jesus.

I was able to really quiet my life down while we were away by disconnecting from the internet and (most) t.v. Hey, I still had to keep up with some soccer, alright? Truth is, the times I'm most alone are the best times for Christ to speak to me. There's this seriously fantastic book, A Thousand Gifts, that I can't keep my hands off of, and yet it's still taken me forever to devour. Probably because I'm a notetaker and half my notebook is now full of Ann Voskamp's challenging and encouraging words. In other words, I could very well have rewritten the entire book with the amount of notes I took, but hey, when something's that good you have to do whatever you can to remember it!

Being in a good hammock is easily one of my happiest places on earth.

Ann Voskamp, the author of this book I can't seem to finish, talks on every page about being thankful. The word for it is eucharisteo. See, she found out she had cancer as an adult- a mom with 6 kids (I think?) and a farmer husband- and this is after she watched her younger sister die right in front of her as a child because of a truck not paying attention on the road. She had to watch her parents hold her little sister as she took her last breaths in a pool of her own blood. They all chose, at first, to curse God for allowing this to happen to such a young, lively child. How do you find a way to be thankful in that? A way to eucharisteo? I am sure we all have our own versions of cruel things God "has done to us" that we have found hard to accept and forgive, or maybe some are still dealing with those issues with God. Whatever it may be, Ann had a really great idea once she found out about the cancer. She started a list of all the gifts God gives her in a day. She was challenged by another to list 1,000 things she considered a gift. It was in this time that she finally learned true eucharisteo.

Dirty laundry
Kids yelling at the top of their lungs
simple beauty of the moon

These were some on her list. I decided to make my own list because of how encouraging it was to see the change God caused in her by slowing down and considering everything a gift. 

To be honest, one of my favorite things, that I find a lot of joy in, is doing the dishes. (I guess the only time I hate it is when they've piled up for days and it is NOT my fault. I hate people being lazy, so I clearly understand how my mom felt the entire time I was growing up. Sorry, mom.) There is no thinking involved in doing dishes, and many times I find it an easy time to use to pray about my day. It's something simple. Nothing fancy. And then I came to the beach. I had these incredible views everywhere I went. I don't think a single thing during my time away didn't cause eucharisteo. It was just easy. The whole scene was just breathtaking for me. Yet, as much as I love it, what will happen now that I am back in Sigua, with more mundane, less obvious grateful moments for me to seize? THEN, what will happen when I go back to Springfield, away from the mountains and the beauty and my students and my friends here? Will eucharisteo still be as easy to find?

No. There's also the hard eucharisteo:
"This is it. The hard eucharisteo. Now I know that I don't want to know it yet...Ever. How to lay the hand open for this moment's bread-when it will hurt."

Oh, Lord, awake my soul to Your goodness and mercy when all I will want is to indulge in the pain I feel from leaving. Help me find the hard eucharisteo and embrace the simple miracles of everyday.

Life is not nearly as much about the places you go as it is the people you meet. You carry them with you wherever you go - and they're usually no more than a Skype call or email away. Technology is pretty great these days.

"All gratitude is ultimately gratitude for Christ, all remembering a remembrance of Him. For in Him all things were created, are sustained, have their being. Thus Christ is all there is to give thanks for; Christ is all there is to remember. To know how we count on God, we count graces, but ultimately there is really only One."

"The quiet song of gratitude, eucharisteo, lures humility out of the shadows because to receive a gift the knees must bend humble and the hand must lie vulnerably open and the will must bow to accept whatever the Giver chooses to give."

Please, just take in that beauty. Only God could create a sky and mountain backdrop like that.