keeping count

For about the past month, I've been reading Ann Voskamp's book, One Thousand Gifts. A major premise of the book is that joy and healing arise from gratitude. A friend challenged Voskamp to enumerate gifts she received from the Lord until she reached one thousand, and this reorientation towards the world around her opens Voskamp to new experiences of His Love.

Voskamp writes in a style that is highly narrative, while associations break in periodically. Her frank revelations of her own sorrows, pain and failings, keep the book from cliched "count your blessings" territory, and I was surprised by how much I shared with this homeschooling mother of six living on a farm in Canada.

I've begun keeping a list of my own, though hardly as poetically as Voskamp. On the ride home form the beach yesterday, I wrote a few from the weekend.

- covenant grace in a baptism shared by family

- a good turkey sandwich to a hungry belly

- saltwater and sunshine

- playful dolphins sharing the morning with us

- familiar songs in a strange place

- friends who want to spend the weekend with me

- almond butter on toast