Desert Song

This is a day late, but I'd rather do it now than wait another week... I am reading Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts, and it is messing with my head in beautiful ways, and challenging my attitude to the life I am living. She talks of learning how to give thanks to God and find His grace in the bad times, the hard times, the dry times. I feel lonely and spiritually dry right now. I do not feel known, and I had not realised quite how much comfort there is in a feeling of knowing that you are loved, regardless of how you feel about yourself. That you are loved by someone who knows your brokenness, knows you at your worst, and still finds you beautiful. My family home is defined by caprice and quick offence; it is uncertain ground. Sometimes, there is beauty here. Too often, however, there is not. 


I am lost in a desert. I cannot find peace in Daddy, I do not feel safe and loved by those around me and, in turn, I cannot love others. I am not doing well. Yet at the same time, these feel like First World problems, vanities, and I do not want to validate them. I have food enough, and a roof over my head, and my health... I have so much. And so I am going to learn thanksgiving. It is going to be a discipline and I am going to be aware of living under Grace in the face of all the lies the world tells. (Please God?) I am going to fall on my face and weep and intercede for this world and the brokenness I see. I am living in the victory won by Jesus, and I cannot afford to ignore that, for there lies the path back to depression. I will find the joy in the small things, and know that there is joy and love in my bones, even while I grieve for the friend who died yesterday. I will count one thousand gifts. And then I will keep going.


A Thousand Gifts (1-24)


1. reading my seventeen year old sister to sleep with Shakespeare and Jane Austen
2. a phone-call with a best friend
3. the watery gold of autumn's evening sunshine
4. forgotten music found on the ipod
5. a small girl's smile through a coffee shop window
6. fluffy clouds and sunshine painted on nails
7. dreams of being a Mumma
8. old men politely trying to let each other on the bus first
9. young men giving up their seats on the bus
10. chocolate fudge brownie with ice cream
11. getting to pastor and speak peace and see a new relationship flourish
12. making lil sis laugh by being a hungry laptop monster
13. Wispa chocolate
14. Caffe Nero coffee
15. new black pumps with flowers on the inside
16. Arun
17. conkers!
18. one red-leafed tree when all the rest are still green
19. Pride and Prejudice
20. pulling a gorgeous-looking pint of Guinness
21. home-made triple-chocolate cookies, a blessing from the adorable Lana
22. windy, rainy days when I get to stay inside and snuggle on the sofa with cosy blankets and all the weekend television I missed by being at work
23. lil sis' giggles
24. apples from my Grampa's tree