In 1 Thessalonians, it says we are to give thanks in all circumstances. There is always something to thank God for. In a trial, what we are learning. In ill health, we are still alive to share the love of God. At the pinnacle of blessing, because we know every bit of it comes from God.

There are so many things we forget to thank God for. This Thanksgiving (tomorrow as I post this), I challenge each of you to write a Thanksgiving to God. Thank him for what you usually discount as unimportant or overly obvious. Thank him for things you think you shouldn’t be thankful for even. Thank him for things that are beyond you, as well as tiny things that you think you can handle. An example follows:

All-wonderful God, thank you for giving me life. Thank you for the thoughts that dart about my head. Thank you for the neural connectors and other intricacies I don’t understand that allow me to think, pray, plan, and dream.

Thank you, benevolent Lord, for giving me the things I need--which are not always the things I want. Thank you that I am not tremendously successful for you know that it would go to my head. Thank you that I do not have wealth as this country defines it, for I am already too wealthy as the rest of the world defines it. Thank you, too, that you even allow me some of my wants and allow me extra to share with others.

Thank you, Abba God, for giving me people in my life who rub me the wrong way or oppose me openly. Their presence refines me, makes me sharper and increases my reliance upon you and your truths. If all loved me and adored me, when would I turn to you?

Thank you, oh so very much, for allowing me to fail. I would be lying if I claimed I didn’t want to succeed every single time I ventured into something new, but constant success would swell my ego and take away the close dependence upon you. In the eyes of failure, you let me see new doors and windows open. In the eyes of failure, you redefine my worth as your child, not your achiever. Remind me, through the pain of messing up that you love me simply because I love you and nothing I can do, say, or live will add one iota to your devotion.

Thank you for creating time. It wasn’t anything you needed, but you began by creating morning and evening so that we could function within the scope of a day or a moment. You may, as C.S. Lewis said of Aslan, call all times soon, but we cannot. We call all times now. Thank you for the now, the moment, where I can work for you, rest in your presence, glorify you, or even, sinfully pursue my own way. Each now, that is the choice you have laid before me and I thank you for it.

Thank you for your great plan--and the wonder of wonders that you included me in it. As David said before me, “What am I that you are mindful of me?” Thank you that your way is not easy, for day by day I am getting stronger and more like you. And because of your sacrifice, the burdens are light--when I rely on you. Thank you that you give a way out of every trial, temptation and testing, even when I fully deserve the pain.

Thank you for the hints of your original, and perfect, creation within the world that I see daily. Thank you for the Fibonacci sequence that allows me to see variations of beauty. Thank you for the intricacies of my eye, that you created, which allows me to perceive the world around me—good and evil.   

Finally, thank you for you. Without you in my life, God, all the blessing I seek would be meaningless. As Solomon, a much wiser human than I said, it would be chasing after the wind. So, I thank you for giving me a second life—born into a life of purpose and You.

Today is my oldest son’s birthday. Next week is Thanksgiving. Yesterday, a dear friend taught a fun lesson about gratitude. You add it all together and you get the title of this post.

But I have a confession to make. I thought, while my guys were young, that I wanted them to have a younger sister. I prayed diligently to conceive again. Any time when my cycle was late, I imagined that this was it. This would be the little girl I was dreaming of.

But no.

I always assumed that I would have girls. I grew up with two sisters. That was what I knew. Granted, I was somewhat of a tomboy and had a fair number of male friends, but I had spent the majority of my formative years around females.

And while there are many young ladies whom I adore as a friend or friend of the family, I have to admit God was wise in giving me only sons. I don’t think I would have had the patience for a girl. Especially not for a girly girl.

I don’t do frills, lace, or princess outfits. In those formative years with sisters that I mentioned, I had a doll or two (a collection of a few dozen actually that sat on a display shelf), but didn’t play with dolls unless pressed into it. In fact, I cut the hair of the doll who grew out her hair and melted the hand of another doll. Both incidents happened because I was bored. What did I like playing with? Hot Wheels. My farm set. Being outdoors. My cageful of mice.

I loved taking a bath as a kid, but it predicated on the fact that I got filthy first. I enjoyed exploring the dirt in the neighborhood field, chasing grasshoppers, or shooting hoops until I dripped sweat.

God knew that I needed sons. Even more, he knew that I needed Erik and Karl in my life.

Each of them ministers to different parts of my personality. Each of them also challenges me in a different way to help me grow as a person and a Christian.

Erik gives the best hugs. Ask anyone. If you need a teddy bear, an Erik hug works better. He is also very calming to others, though he might (does) often stress himself out. He sets his sights high and exercises discipline to achieve his goals. He’s always been like that. It’s why, when he knew at 13 that he wanted to be a scientist, that he set a plan and an achievement timetable. In spite of delays by circumstances and the university, he still was in his 20s when he earned his PhD! We also have similar taste in music (though his is a smidge heavier) so we can turn up the volume together. The picture is from the recent Skillet concert we went to in Pennsylvania. But Erik challenges me in that he has a stoic Swedish side. I never know quite what to pray about for him, because he keeps the bad stuff and struggles buried and hidden. He’s getting better about that—slowly.

Karl is my debate partner. We can turn any subject into a discussion. We are not arguing, though people around us often get annoyed at the banter. He is my creative foil. Though he doesn’t pursue writing, (wish he would!) he has amazing ideas and can turn my plots from something mundane into something incredible. For those of you who grimaced at the ghost spiders in the Portal Watchers, you can thank Karl. We threw ideas back and forth, each increasing the creepy factor, until that one stuck. The challenge with my younger guy is that I never quite know which Karl I will get on any given day. He is quiet, but intense, and that reveals itself in teeny bits. He also feels things deeply, but pretends not to. That aspect of his personality does worry me occasionally. If you’re stressed, sit down near Karl and his guitar. The music he coaxes out of the strings will unravel whatever is tightly wound within you. (The picture shows how much his quiet friendliness is adored—here by his young cousins on a recent visit.)

In other words, I am incredibly grateful that our wise and loving God, gave Gary and me sons. Particularly, I am incredibly grateful that he gave us Erik and Karl.

It might be like God knew what he was doing or something?

Writing can be amazingly fun. You can create new worlds, meet new characters, and spout off about whatever is important to you. You can also dive down your personal rabbit holes of research and then write about them. It’s a handy way to justify getting obsessed about a topic!

But writing can also make you cry. It can make you downright miserable. People can despise what you write, they can make fun of it, criticize it, and reject it. And as much as you tell yourself that it’s the writing and not you, it’s hard not to take it personally when you put so much of yourself in it.

And writing can be painful. Sometimes, what you need to write, or worse, what God asks you to write is hard. Absolutely no fun. And you wish it didn’t have to hit the page. There are moments when each word must be yanked out like an abscessed tooth. They don’t want to approach the page and you have to drag them onto it kicking and screaming.

Or it can feel like you’re pouring words into a void. You can write for days, even weeks sometimes, with little to no feedback. I get it that everyone’s busy and that a lot of people, a consistently growing number of people, don’t like to read. Still, it makes me wish for some massive and bizarre power outage that forced people to read as entertainment.

In addition, much of the writing process is work. Do I like editing? Someone else’s stuff, sure, but my own? No. That’s like killing off bits and pieces of a dear child. And while composing dialogue or writing action comes easy (it’s why I started writing drama before I wrote fiction), good writing includes description. To include the description, I have to work hard because that’s definitely not my forte. To me, paragraphs that set a scene sound clunky and I want to get back to the action. (Probably why, when I read Dickens, I skim over large swaths of text.)

On top of that, being a writer can make you feel weird compared to most people. Non-writers don’t (usually) talk to imaginary people or become obsessed over a plot twist. When I try to explain what might be driving me crazy at a particular moment, the non-writer judges that I’m already over that border between sanity and insanity.

Story ideas don’t, as far as I know, keep non-writers up at night. Trying to figure out the perfect word in an opening scene doesn’t give them migraines. And characters don’t argue with them.

Sometimes, that sounds like bliss. Sometimes, it looks like life is better on the other side. You know the whole grass is greener thing?

But then, a new idea hits me. And it’s like love. I can’t wait to write about it. The character is near and dear to me and I want to share his, hers, or its story with the world. It becomes an obsession. I dream the character’s tales and imagine new dangers and disasters to plunge that victim into. Yet, I want to see how my creation triumphs at the end.

In truth, no matter how much I go through phases where I wish I didn’t write, I know God wired me to do just that. Over the years, it has been proven on multiple occasions where I tried to avoid writing and prove it didn’t exist. It made me miserable. It’s similar to the words of Jeremiah 20:9 Then I said, “I will not make mention of Him, nor speak anymore in His name.” But His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, and I could not. That’s not saying that everything I write is God-given, but the need to write definitely is.

And, in truth, I am grateful. As hard and frustrating as it can be sometimes, I know it’s how my Creator wired me. I love it when I reread one of my word babies and see God’s hand all over it. It’s crazy to see themes I didn’t intentionally put in, for instance. Or fall in love with my characters all over again.

So, no matter what, one way or another, I am a writer. And the next time I complain about it, remind me to take it up with the Potter.

And then thank Him… again and again.