Old rags...

Thrown in a dungeon.  Sinking in mire.  Without water or food.  Suddenly, old rags are lowered down to you in your misery.  Hallelujah for old rags!  I can just picture Jeremiah, how grateful he must have been for those old rags that became his salvation. 

These have been full days- full of ministry, glory, highlights.  But the in-between days have been a blur.  I've faltered in my gift-listing. Blazing through each day,  I've grabbed at highlights for my Monday posts.  And missed the small moments- the real eucharisteo- living attentive, being all here, giving thanks for each moment, good or bad, as gifts from His hand.

I can swipe broad thanks across my life- but that doesn't change me.  I can gather round the table this Thanksgiving and share what I am thankful for- but it isn't transformational.

"But in this counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life... I testify: life-changing gratitude does not fasten to a life unless nailed through with one very specific nail at a time." -Ann Voskamp

You'd think that after all this time, two years of gift-listing, that I would just breathe gratitude, without having to list it.  But I can't.  It's in the naming, the writing, the nailing thanks to a page, that I am changed.  I'm picking up pen and camera again to start hammering gratitude back into my life.

Grateful for these old rags, that just might be my salvation:

#5108.  "We've never had lunch in a storm before" -Seth
#5109.  Some shelter from the rain.
#5110.  The only time it rained on retreat.

#5111.  Safety on our journey home.
#5112.  Not being the driver in this weather
#5113.  Boys getting good naps on the drive home.

#5114.  African men cooking, laughing, lounging, challenging, learning. true fellowship.
#5115.  ants in my kitchen, because we have food to eat.
#5116.  the aroma, and color of fresh food. even though flies like them too.

#5117.  toys spilled all over the floor- evidence of life
#5118.  boys bickering- we are blessed with boys.
#5119.  Tim and Ben- we have family in Uganda!
#5120.  babysitting the nephews for two nights- Scott and Meg will reciprocate in December :)

#5121.  heaps of dirty laundry. we have clothes to wear.
#5122.  a washer and dryer in Uganda.
#5123.  yellow sweatpants :)

#5124.  in the midst of the mire, there shines beauty, if I will pause and receive it.
#5125.  the sun rises every day.
#5126.  You "paint the morning skies with miracles in mind"
#5127.  I get to live this life in Africa.  Sunrise over Lake Victoria, really?  amazing.



"And in the dungeon there was no water, but mire.  So Jeremiah sank in the mire... Ebed-Melech took from there old clothes and old rags, and let them down by ropes into the dungeon to Jeremiah... So they pulled Jeremiah up with ropes (and old rags) and lifted him out of the dungeon." -Jeremiah 38:6, 11, 13