Thankfulness

Is there any cure for attitude struggles as strong as a good dose of thankfulness? When we’re overwhelmed, discouraged, and disheartened, wallowing in a pity party, or pouting, can anything snap us out of it as quickly as thankfulness? Is there anything more odious than unthankful children or more disheartening than an unthankful husband?

Thankfulness is the key to unlocking delight, cheering strength, merry durability, and creating a truly nourishing and cozy environment. Thankfulness. Write that down, ladies. If we’re struggling in our marriages, our homeschooling, our church, or in our homes, we must go to war against unthankfulness. Weed it out of our hearts.

Thankfulness is the rich soil in which we plant quick-growing beans and long-lived trees. But we have to develop that soil. It doesn’t happen naturally. We have to practice and train. Almost every situation, no matter how difficult, can produce thankfulness or have an element to be thankful for if we’re trained in it.

Since it is the time of turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, and so much more, since it is the most wonderful time of the year, now is the perfect moment to repent of complaining and the bitter anger we feel at the providences in our lives and start practicing being thankful. Start now, today, at weeding from the garden of our souls murmurs and complaining. All they produce is proof that we don’t believe God loves us and that He is good. Is this really what you want the atmosphere of your heart and hearth to be? Suffused not with good smells and warmth, but with the chill cold of distrust and bitterness?

Four things we can be thankful for to start with:

Big-Picture Thanksgiving: We must not ignore the “Big-Picture” things simply because they’re so big that we take them for granted: God, Jesus Christ, Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, the gospel, the means of grace, our pastors and deacons, our fellow church members, and, if so blessed, our husbands, children, our extended families and friends, and our homes. Sometimes we take these wonderful gifts—which should be enough to keep us thankful for eternity—for granted simply because we shrug and say, “of course we’re thankful for them.” But let’s stop for a moment and allow ourselves to feel a sense of awe at how amazing they are and how unworthy we are to have them.

If we cultivate this thankfulness, we’ll be able to humbly tend our homes even though they are filled with sinners. It will allow us to accept both critiques and praise with a quiet heart. It will empower our submission. It will help us to quietly carry on, but also tenderly love our people. Practice Big-Picture thankfulness.

Small Things Thankfulness: Practice being thankful for little things, be they oh so temporary and ordinary. Be thankful for the spray of freckles across your daughter’s nose, the mischievous twinkle in your son’s eyes, and hugs from your husband.

Be thankful for soup, bread, flowers, candles, coffee, and wine. Our favorite shirts, the art on the walls, lamplight, heaters, and houseplants. Go back to the Hygge articles and be thankful for all the little things. (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.)

Talk about praying continually. If we’re practicing thankfulness for the little things, we’ll be praying a lot. Plus, it will help us notice the little things more. Things being common and temporary are no excuse to ignore them! Each one is a gift from our loving, triune God.

Art Thankfulness: We tend to think of art as some Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo thing, too high and too holy to be anything we can ever reach. But we are made in God’s image and thus we all create. Every human creates. Oh, ladies! We should embrace all the domestic arts with merriness while also delighting in the high arts like painting, sculpting, storytelling, and more! (Have you ever thanked God for your favorite book, song, or other artwork?)

We should be thankful for these high expressions of creativity, but don’t forget the domestic arts. Cooking a tasty and nourishing meal, crafting to beautify our homes or gift someone we love, decorating, organizing, houseplants, fabrics, and seasons all play into being domestic artists. Home is a playground of creativity. We should take time to train ourselves to notice the opportunities we have every day to be creative, and then be thankful for them! Rearranging furniture, teaching ourselves crochet, mending, weaving, cooking, brewing, all these and more are domestic arts that we should treasure. And! They all have rich, earthy histories we can plug into to ground our hearts and hearths to past generations. There is so much to be thankful for when it comes to the art and creativity we can engage in in the home.

Chore Thankfulness: This is both a no-brainer and also an area we all tend to struggle in. It is important to be thankful for work. Work is good for the human psyche. We were designed to work before the fall when sin entered our world. We thrive on work. Be thankful for the work that is before you. Be thankful for all the repetitive chores. If we’re bitter about doing the laundry yet again we’re not looking at it right. Our husbands poured out their blood, sweat, and tears to provide that clothing, we have children to wear it, and it is a sign of God’s continued faithfulness and promise keeping. We must be hard on ourselves to not allow bitterness to grow in our hearts at the chores that all have to be done again, because those chores are faithfulness.

Use this in your battle against your own heart. Are you complaining about your husband’s provision and God’s faithfulness? How easily we all do this and how sad it is that we encourage it in one another. No wonder our daughters flee home for what looks shiny in the career world when we complain and whine all the time about our chores instead of being thankful we have chores to do. No wonder our husbands don’t want to be home. We are the homemakers and we are making a home no one wants to be in when we don’t guard and garden thankfulness in our hearts.

Ladies, attitude is everything as homemakers. We can make poverty an adventure, water into broth, cold nights cozy, husbands into courageous warriors, and children into men and women. We do this. Us. The homemakers. But we can’t do this if we’re not thankful.

This is the time of year to start practicing, go to war, man our shield walls, weed our gardens, and enforce a strict rule of thankfulness. It will fill our homes with a warmth and delight that will shine out into the dark world and welcome in friends and strangers alike.