Advent Day 19 - Thankful

I saw it.  A word.  People had words for the year.  I had a word for this year alright..... I envied them, their happy word and all that went along with it.  My word actually found me.  It was everything I was not.  My writing felt more like vomiting my emotions on the page at that point.  They would come at the most inopportune times and I needed to desperately get them out.  And one day while writing, I felt empty, hollow, like I got it all out.  And I typed thankful at the end.  Because I was.  Because it felt like that was confirming my choice.  I wasn't thankful about my situation or what was happening all round, but I was thankful that I could convey that.  That tiny seed was planted.  And as I was deliberate about it, it began to take root, began to grow.  Thankful is a choice.  It's where joy is accepted from the Hand of God and put into purpose.  It's the unwrapping of His grace and goodness in the midst of whatever state we find ourselves in.  It would just take me a really long time to understand that.  And that was alright.  He knew it.  He knew when that word would take full bloom in my heart, my life....This road has not been easy.  This road has been long and difficult and painful and mind numbing at times, but this was the way.  This was the only way.  And as I come to this place yet again and I see His goodness and mercy all tangled up with the pain and the desperate and the death of it all, I understand something that I may not have ever come to know any other way.  I am learning to be, in any circumstance, thankful.