Post Script | November 22, 2022

A Thanksgiving letter—and giveaway!

This is a special Thanksgiving letter to the wonderful community of Post Script readers. Next Monday, I’ll be off!

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In preparation for Thanksgiving—(my first American Thanksgiving in eleven years, woot-woot!)—I’m thinking, of course, about the practice of gratitude. Culturally, gratitude is in very much in favor. I wrote about this in A Habit Called Faith:

On the one hand, our cultural practice of gratitude is expanding as we’re urged to be mindful and give thanks. On the other hand, I wonder where all our vague “thanks” is actually headed. I imagine gratitude lists being cut loose like helium balloons, drifting with the wind, aimless and errant.

Believers in a good and generous God practice gratitude—but not in this vague way of “counting our blessings.” Instead, we name our gifts as a way of turning our attention to the Giver. Gratitude, for example, is implied as the only proper response when Israel took possession of the promised land. In Canaan, they would possess a previously inhabited land. They’d populate cities established by other people, reside in homes built by other families, drink water from cisterns dug by other men’s hands, eat produce planted by other day laborers. They would put on prosperity like another man’s coat, and there could be no crediting their own hard work or skill.

Gratitude is the only proper response to grace.

Take care, Moses commanded, to remember God’s grace once the wilderness is behind you. Otherwise, the blessings of the land might become a curse. Because when life is moving placidly along, when the diagnosis is negative and the mortgage is paid, we are easily lured into habits of self-reliance and self-congratulations. Without clouds in the sky, we are lulled into forgetting that every ray of sun, every hint of spring is a gift from the Creator and Sustainer God.

Day 7: “Practice Your Lines”

I suppose I was thinking about this reflection on the reading from Deuteronomy 6:1-25 because, like Israel, our family is now settled into a new land. We’ve walked some wilderness miles, and now there is so much to thank God for.

It was August 2021 when, in the dim light of the early mornings, I was leaving my campus dorm at Seattle Pacific University in search of coffee. Before this 10-day MFA residency, we had visited our families in the States for the first time since the start of the pandemic, and it had quickly become clear we might need to return permanently to care for our aging parents.

I spent those early mornings listening to Psalm 25 on repeat: “O Lord, I give my life to you. I trust in you, my God. Show me the right path, O Lord; point out the road for me to follow. Lead me by your truth and teach me.”

I remember thinking how big the decision was to consider. Would we really leave the city in which we had raised our children, the only school our children had ever attended, the church community we’d loved and served, the house we’d just remodeled, the neighborhood we’d walked countless times? What would leaving mean for our older children, attending university in Canada? What would it mean for our two youngest boys, still in school? Where would we go, and would Ryan find work?

I wrote a list—because of course I did. I wrote a list of the prayers we would need to see answered by God, because these were not circumstances to manage. We needed to see God at work, providing things we could neither ask nor imagine. That list included big ticket items like selling a house and buying a house. It included choosing a school for our boys and finding a church for our family. It included Ryan’s work and my writing rhythms. It included, as well, all the transitions that we needed to help my mother make.

I am not here to report that God answered every prayer as asked. But I am here to say: we’re in the land and seeing God’s goodness. My mom has a new apartment she loves. We’re growing to appreciate our quirky old house. We’re receiving generous kindness from our new church community. Our boys are happily settled into their new school, and we’ve even made some fast friends.

This isn’t to say that there are pangs of grief at what we’ve left behind. Like yesterday, when my copy of Imprint arrived. I remembered a good work I’d loved and left into capable hands. Like this Thanksgiving holiday, for which none of my three older children will return to celebrate. I’ll remember how much I hate feeling so distant.

I heard someone say recently that walking by faith is like driving at night. You can only see as far as the headlights allow—and yet you can make it the whole way, just like that. For the last year, we’ve been driving at night—and around every blind corner, we’ve seen, in that small field of light, the goodness and provision of God.

It reminds me of telling a friend, last fall, that we would likely be moving. “I’m going to pray that you see God’s goodness in the land of the living,” she told me, quoting from Psalm 27:13. And this is my testimony to say: we have.

We have.

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I am grateful that so many of you choose to read these letters and continue to invite your friends to subscribe as well. As a way of saying thanks, I’m offering to mail 10 free copies of In Good Time to commenters on today’s post. On Friday, I’ll draw 10 names, then email you for a mailing address. Those books will arrive next week, before the release date, December 13th!

A few more things I don’t want you to forget:

1. There is a Goodreads giveaway for In Good Time that you can sign up for, but you have to do it by November 28th.

2. There are two great bonuses for anyone choosing to pre-order In Good Time. Find both here. One includes a Good Time Habits PDF to download, which suggests daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal habits for living in time-faith, rather than time-anxiety. The other bonus is an invitation to a free workshop I’m offering on Sunday nights in January. Together, we’ll learn how to write a rule of life.

3. If you’re joining the January workshop, you’ll also be receiving a code for a free download of the audiobook of In Good Time.

4. If you’re interested to receive a monthly What I’m Learning letter, I’m going to send my first one this month. It’s an option for people who don’t want a weekly Post Script letter. You can subscribe on the homepage of my website where it says, “Subscribe for Updates.”