Oxygen for the soul

     Just thought I would include today an excerpt I just heard from an interview on Revive our Hearts with a woman, Kate McCord, who has written a book entitled, The Land of the Blue Burkas, about her time as a foreign aid worker in Afghanistan.  Fascinating and beautiful to hear about these women and their incredible challenges and their courage.  But one of the things she talked about was teaching, largely just by example, about the practice of thanksgiving.  Here's what she said:

...she [one of her Afghan friends] learned from me the practice of thanksgiving. What I mean by that is to just step back and say, “Okay, I’m in a bad mood right now. Let me look around and thank God for everything He’s given me.” Maybe you start with the tree and the wind and the roof over your head. Then I thank God for my family, and I thank God for my healthy son and my healthy daughter. And she began doing this.

I didn’t know she was doing it, but I knew that she and her husband weren’t fighting as much. Over several months, I found out that every day she was practicing this thanksgiving. And what she said to a group of Afghan women—not to me; I just happened to be there—“This is a great thing to do. I used to be angry with my husband all the time, and we used to fight all the time, and I would stay mad at him, and I was never patient with my children. And then I started giving thanks every day, and now I’m calmer. I’m happier. My husband and I laugh together. Our children are happier.”  I just wept. I thought, “Yes. That’s discipleship. That’s people coming to know God and His ways, and it changing their lives.”

     I (this is me again!) should add, this is in light of the unbelievable difficulties women face in this nation.  As Kate had shared earlier: "In America this manifests itself in, “Well, God doesn’t love me, clearly, because He didn’t give me an excellent, American life." In Afghanistan it manifests itself by, “Well, clearly God doesn’t love me or see me because I’m a woman. Because I’m in this horrible situation, God is far from me. God doesn’t care about me.”

     Kate closed by saying that "gratitude or thankfulness became the means for keeping my heart and mind sane in a very difficult place."  And that's true wherever we live, whatever we face. "The oppression that's around us, or the frustrations, the things  that we can't accomplish weigh on us, and they wear us down. [Amen to that!]  Our problems wear us down, and often with very, very good reason.  But when we step back and we practice thanksgiving, or we practice praise, we're reminded of the blessings we have, and we're able to breathe again.  I don't know any other way to say it.  We're just able to breathe again."  

     "It's oxygen for the soul."  

      Isn't that so true?  I have found that to be the case in my life over and over again--thanksgiving and praise are the bridge from our troubles and sorrows and frustrations to the other side where we can breathe deeply the air of God's grace and goodness.  It frees us of ourselves and our constricting fears and provides "oxygen for the soul."  

     I've quoted her many times, but I love Amy Carmichael's statement: "I sing the doxology and the devil flees."  For me, it's blast some great Christian music and sing at the top of my lungs. And start counting the blessings.  Start thanking, even when I don't feel like it... especially when I don't feel like it.  And what can I say?... it's exactly as Kate McCord put it, "I can breathe again."  The fresh breath of His grace and strength and love infuses and frees my heart.  

     So today, choose to thank and praise Him, whether you feel like it or not.  Just begin--even if it's just thanking God for that hot coffee or that hot shower or that hot bagel.  And before you know it, you'll be breathing deep into the God of all provision and power.  To God be the glory.