Eucharisteo, even when we don't want to

The other day, I was all set to write a totally different post for this blog. A post that might have included some whining and complaining selfish reflection on some recent events. Then, on Tuesday evening, The Daddy Guy sent me out the door to take The Big Guy to swim practice. Shuttling a kid off to an activity may not seem like a big break, but when I get to go sit alone in a quiet waiting room for an hour, it's like a mini-vacation. I grabbed my Nook, my journal, and a small Bible and off we went.

Over the past couple of months I've been reading One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. It's not one of those books that I can devour in one sitting. It's not a particularly long book. It is, however, a deep book. The kind of book that makes you want to take notes and highlight and savor bits and pieces. The author of the book started an experiment in gratitude and being thankful to God. She describes this gratitude as eucharisteo, Greek for being truly and fully grateful. Anyway, I won't keep rambling about this book because I want you to read it for yourself.

So, Tuesday night, I'm sitting in the waiting room, watching The Big Guy reach his arms rhythmically through the water, listening to the swish-splash of many kids' feet kicking in the pool, and I open One Thousand Gifts for the first time in a week or so. As I read through the next chapter, I feel my heart softening  the emotions I had been feeling in recent weeks. I begin to wonder if I've been truly thankful for the events that have transpired. In practicing eucharisteo, have I been thankful for everything? I mean, really thankful? For everything? It's easy to be thankful for the happy and the pretty, but life isn't all happy and pretty. There are parts of life that can be ugly, and hard, and disappointing. Am I thankful for that? Should I be thankful for that? Yes.

Have I been thankful for the wait? Have I been thankful for the uncertainty? I won't lie. No, I haven't always. There have been times of impatience and aggravation. I have wondered about the purpose of our son sitting in an orphanage instead of in our living room. I've gotten tired of filling out forms. I've gotten mad at government agencies that take fourteen weeks to fill out a single form of paper. What should I have been gaining through all of this? What should I have learned? Well, one thing I have learned is some gratitude. We have rejoiced in this house over every completed paper that has gotten us one more tiny step closer. I'm grateful to God for sustaining our baby in the orphanage. I'm thankful for the unknown nannies who care for him until I can get to him.

I've taken a closer look at the simple things that fill our days and become grateful for them. Home schooling, housework, and cooking have never looked so good.

Here comes the honest, nitty-gritty truth. The day after I was filled with all of this eucharisteo, we got an e-mail from our awesome case worker. Our paperwork was being reviewed! Yippee!! Except that there was a huge, glaring error smack in the middle of the paperwork. An error that the Daddy Guy and I should have seen. One that we probably overlooked dozens of times. One that could set us back for weeks in our process. Did I practice thanksgiving and gratefulness, especially over the chance to fix this error and move forward? Um, no. I reacted rather badly. And then I started remembering what I had read the night before, and I looked back in my journal at previous entries and found this,

"Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has his ear to our hearts... Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love beat of a Father's heart." - Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

Um, wow. Do I have a reason for unbelief? Has He ever given me a reason not to believe?


 *Oh, and by the way, the error, while bigger than I could have imagined, is not going to stop us from getting our boy. It is not even going to delay us as much as we were originally told, and for that, we are thankful.