Heart to Heart from Cheri

Thanksgiving isn’t just a day in late November when we gather around our tables to eat a great meal and talk about our blessings. It’s way of life.

Thankfulness does great things for our emotional health. Recent research shows that cultivating gratitude can reverse negative emotions like anger and anxiety. That grateful people have more energy and vitality, suffer less stress, depression, and anxiety, and are less materialistic. A study of college kids who kept a journal, recording their blessings on a weekly basis, were found to be more optimistic and physically healthier than other students.

Having an attitude of thanksgiving has spiritual benefits as well. Gratefulness is a key to connecting with God and for many of us, a missing link in living a fulfilled, joyful life in the midst of challenges and hassles that beset us all.

Gratefulness ushers us into God’s presence. All through the Bible we’re encouraged to come into God’s presence with thanksgiving, to proclaim His unfailing love in the morning and His faithfulness in the evening (Psalm 95:1-2). Not just because God needs it (He is certainly worth of it) but thanksgiving and gratitude does something in us and opens up our hearts to Him.

R.A. Torrey, the great British evangelist, said that the two words we often overlook in approaching prayer is the “with thanksgiving” part of Philippians 4:6-7: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

How often we forget to thank God for blessings he’s already given us when we are coming to ask him for something new, Torrey observed. We’re like the nine lepers who didn’t take time to go back and thank Jesus for their miraculous healing, since they were so busy trucking on down the road (Luke 17:17).

Thanksgiving is a key to power in prayer because God loves a grateful heart and abides, or hangs out with, those who have one. Gratefulness also helps our faith grow—whether we are praying for our marriage, our children, or a friend. Thanking God for who He is or what He’s already done encourages our hearts that He is able to handle this problem too.

It helps to remember that God is the source of all the gifts in our life, first and foremost being the gift of life itself. I read recently of a businessman who survived 9/11 and speaks to groups around the nation about the heroism he witnessed on that tragic day. He has a vivid sense of the gift of life: “I feel that each day is Christmas; each day is a very, very wonderful gift.”

Marriage is a gift, our spouse, children, sisters, parents and friends are all gifts. The beautiful creation around us—deep green forests, yellow and bronze mums of autumn, a cool breeze, starlit skies at night and mornings to awaken to a blue sky or rain showers—all are gifts.

But we often are so focused on the problems at hand—I know I sometimes do—that we forget to acknowledge the precious gifts we’ve already been given. Especially in regard to our closest relationships. I love what Rabbi Harold S. Kushner said, “Instead of wishing that your mate (or adult child, sister, friend) could read your mind and fulfill all of your wishes, be humbly grateful that there is someone in the world to love you and put up with your quirks.”

Each day in the season ahead comes bearing its own gifts. Let me encourage you—untie the ribbons!

 

Quotes to Ponder

"There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy."

                                                    ~Ralph Blum

"In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more
 we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich."

                                 ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"The prayer of real faith is the prayer of joy that sees and knows the heart it rises to greet and that is so sure of a glad response."

                                                     ~God Calling

 

Parents Toolbox: Positive Connections with Your Kids’ Teachers

Here are some ways to help kids experience and express thankfulness:

~Have a “What Made Me Happy” time. At bedtime or mealtime, go around and have each family member name something that made him or her happy that day.

~Say thank you, parents. Kids imitate what parents do more than what they say. Research shows that when parents regularly express appreciation for and to each other, to their children and others, children follow that model and are more likely to express thanks. A short, simple “thank you” when your husband or child helps you or does something kind makes a difference.

~Make a Blessing Basket. Designate a small basket and put sticky note size papers in it. Encourage family members to get a piece out, write (or draw) something that is a blessing, and put in the basket. Take them out and read once a week at dinnertime.

~Say Wow! Prayers. Kids often notice sights, smells and little blessings better than adults. In fact, up to age seven or eight, kids’ prayers are mainly prayers of thanksgiving and praise, so you can join in by saying “Wow, thank you, God for …” when you see a flower, tree, color or food you love.

 

Book & Movie Reviews
 

The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls

One of the best memoirs I’ve read in a long time begins with the author as a three-year-old, dressed in a pink dress, cooking her own hotdogs for lunch when her dress catches on fire and she is badly burned. The next six weeks in the hospital were some of Jeannette’s happiest because she never had to worry about running out of things like food or ice or chewing gum.

“I would have been happy staying in the hospital forever,” she says.

Throughout the next riveting 150 pages, Walls pens a remarkable story untainted by self-pity or bitterness about how she and her siblings raised themselves in a family that was dysfunctional, loving, and colorful at the same time. With a free-spirit mom who didn’t embrace motherhood (an understatement) and an alcoholic father who when sober schooled his kids in physics and geology, they found their own food and clothes, protected each other, and sometimes made it to school as they moved from place to place in the U.S.

In the midst of poverty and walls falling in, Jeannette and her siblings’ resilience, resourcefulness, and intelligence propel them all the way to New York City where she finished high school, worked at a newspaper, worked her way through Barnard College, became an accomplished journalist and a regular contributor to MSNBC.com. Her honesty and storytelling ability make this book a distinctly American story and a great read.

Recommended Resources

Great Small Group Resource
Discover how to overcome obstacles,
discouragement and busyness to connect with God and experience the blessing of prayer.
Questions included in book and a guide will be available
on Cheri's Website at www.cherifuller.com