Four and a half months ago my husband and I got married. As some of you might know, one of the greatest parts about getting married is the end of your engagement. Seriously. Now I know why, back in the good old days, the man peaced out for a while to prepare, and just came back when he was ready to take his bride. It can be brutal.

One of the most popular questions we were asked during that 4 month period was:

What’s been the hardest part of being engaged? 

You know what our answer was? Registering. 

Super spiritual, right?

Registering. It’s like an insta-fight. Tell me you’re not going to get ticked off at your fiance when you’re standing in Bed Bath & Beyond at 8:30 pm after you’ve both worked all day, staring at a wall of silverware trying to pick one of the 3,457 options, while being ravenous with hunger because you haven’t eaten anything since lunch? Tell me. I mean, why can’t we just have one option for silverware? Then we can all be united, and not compare ourselves and the world would overall be a better place.

Anyways.

We pushed through. We finished the registry (praise all things holy). And then something crazy happened: people started showering us with gifts. It was like Christmas everyday for two months. The boxes at Taylor’s parents’ house just kept piling higher and higher, and every time we would visit there was something new to unwrap.

Then we got married. And the boxes.kept.coming. Our apartment had a never-ending tower of cardboard for a solid month.

When the gifts finally slowed, and everything was in its place we realized that our friends and family provided us with literally every single thing we needed. I look around our apartment and can count on one hand the items that we owned before we were married. Every other solitary thing, down to measuring cups and dishtowels and soap dispensers, was given to us in one way or another. And we didn’t earn any of it. During this time, it hit me that getting married is either the largest scam on the face of the planet, or an incredible picture of God’s overwhelming love and provision for his children. 

I choose to believe the latter, and am overwhelmed with thankfulness every time I walk in our home. It’s more than enough. We have been spoiled by an abundance of generosity. We want for nothing.

How much more so am I spoiled with the love of my Father? How much more generous is he with me, in giving me his Son Jesus? How much more so has he provided for me in simply giving me life, since I deserve death?

The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing. 

I love this translation of Psalm 23. It reminds me that I already have everything. If I truly believe the Lord is my Shepherd- that He is protecting me, guiding me, rescuing me, making sure I’m fed- then there is nothing in this world I could possibly need that He hasn’t already given me.

My only reaction to that is gratitude. Thankfulness that leads to worship. It can only be that.

My freshman year of college was the first time thankfulness really entered my radar. One Sunday night at Young Life club, our leader told a story of how he challenged a friend to write down five things he was thankful for each day for a year. No repeats. At the end of his four years in college, his friend handed him a notebook, with pages completely filled with things he was thankful for. Our leader challenged us to do the same.

So, I did. During my journals in college, you will find a list of five things I’m thankful for in front of every entry. Sometimes it was as small as coffee in the morning, and sometimes as big as seeing YL kids begin walking with Jesus. But every entry mattered. They mattered because God changed my heart through practicing thankfulness. I realized that even my worst day with Jesus still beat my best day without Him. That in the midst of hurting, God is still good and He is still on his throne. 

Then, the first two years out of college happened. I experienced heartbreak, failure and brokenness like I never had before. In my life, God has walked me through tough seasons. No one is exempt from those. If you follow Jesus, you will suffer.

But this. This was unlike any of the previous seasons, which is no way lacked significant pain and heartbreak. This type of brokenness was the I can’t bear to get out of bed in the morning because the ache is my heart is too great type of brokenness. I cried and cried. I wrestled with the Lord. I asked Him “Why?” over and over and over. I asked him “Why not?” even more.

“Why couldn’t I do this or that, or be with this person or that person?” “Why am I here, and not there? Why can’t I be there?” Why not?”

I was desperate for answers. I cried out, pleading, demanding to be answered. And the answer I received was,

Wait, trust me.

That was not what I wanted. I did not believe it enough for me, and my heart grew hard.

I felt abandoned, and like the Lord had failed me. I started to believe, although I couldn’t articulate this at the time, that God was punishing me for my failures. I started to believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection wasn’t enough, that I was paying my own price. 

If you look at my journals during that time period, there are no lists of how I saw God that day. You will find very few, if any, lists of things I’m thankful for. In the midst of heartbreak, I stopped practicing thankfulness and started believing I had nothing to be thankful for. That is not a good place to be.

It affected everything. How I thought about life, how I acted towards people, how I dealt with my work and home and friendships. Lies became so rooted in my brain, that I’ve just recently been able to identify them as such and begin the hard work of uprooting and replanting.

Thankfully.. yes, very thankfully, God finally said “That’s it” about a year ago. And to my surprise, he began unashamedly showering me with love from all sides. I began dating Taylor, which showed me a side of Jesus I’d never known before. Our community of friends blossomed, and he gave me an incredible group of girlfriends to live life with. You should see them rally when people are in need. It’s truly a beautiful thing. Taylor and I got engaged and the amount of love and provision we received only escalated. All the gifts, the showers, the parties, the friends staying up late to do wedding crafts, the prayers, the celebration. God shoved it in my face… in his ever-kind, gentle way… that I was loved, and lacked nothing. He reminded me that He had not abandoned me. That I am his child, and he never would. He was not absent during those two years, I just couldn’t see what He was doing. And probably because I’m stubborn, He decided to show me all at once. When He did, I could not deny his love. My heart began to soften, and thankfulness began to return little by little.

Last week, I got a letter from my sister. The letter’s only purpose was to tell me she loved me, and was thankful for me (She is awesome). Inside the letter was a list I wrote at the end of my freshman year of college titled “Thankful.” The list was 100 items long. She found it as she was cleaning out my old room, and thought I would like to have it. As I re-read the list, I was once again overwhelmed by God’s faithfulness. He is so good.

So I’m practicing thankfulness this summer. It’s the only appropriate response I could possibly imagine for the Shepherd who gave everything, so I would lack nothing.

*****

What are you thankful for right now? I’d love to know!