Some belated Thanksgiving thoughts...

Okay, so I am extraordinarily blessed. Even when it doesn't feel like it (which has kinda been the last few days). God has been indescribably good to me, but I'll try to describe at least some of it in honor of Thanksgiving, and so I can look back and be reminded when life gets crazy and I forget.

I am so thankful for.......a God who KNOWS me and LOVES me. I'm realizing more and more how incredible that is. Humans love so imperfectly, and humans hurt each other so much. But God loves me perfectly, and God heals me. That's pretty incredible.

I am so thankful for.......all the saints God has brought into my life. "A saint," according to Frederick Buechner, "is a life giver. A saint is a human being with the same hang-ups and dark secrets and abysses as the rest of us. But if a saint touches your life, you come alive in a new way." I am amazingly blessed to have saints in my life, and I would not be who I am today without them. To have a safe place to be vulnerable about my "hang-ups and dark secrets and abysses," to have people who trust me with theirs, to have people who love me for who I am regardless of what I can do/be for them, leaves me at a loss for words. God has been doing an amazing work of healing in my life, especially over the past few months, through these saints, and I am in awe of that.

I am so thankful for.......my past. At times it's been an insanely difficult path, and there have been moments of staring into the pit and realizing that God was absolutely waging war for my soul - and He won! :') - but still, God is good. There have been so many trials and battles and hurts, and there still are...and I have done a lot of stupid things, and I still do...but God has absolutely made beautiful things out of brokenness in my past, and by His grace, I'm struggling and growing and learning to trust that He's gonna do it with the things that are currently broken, too.

"Only if we trust God to turn past calamities into future comfort can we look back with gratitude for all things." -John Piper

God, thank You for who You are, and how You love me. Help me to trust You with my brokenness and my scars. Make them beautiful, God, and make them a thing of worship. Amen. :')