Give Thanks!

This past Thanksgiving week, I was given the opportunity to apply

1 Thessalonians 5:18.  It started Monday afternoon when our youngest son came home from a friends’ house saying he didn’t feel well. It didn’t take long for his complaints of a stomachache to come to full fruition. I will spare you the details, but our poor son spent the next ten hours expelling whatever virus had invaded his body.

Now, I don’t know if it’s because I’m a mom or because I’m me but whenever our kids get sick, worry immediately takes up residence inside me. My thoughts always go to worse case scenarios, and before I know it, fear sets in and I can’t think straight.

So as I lay next to our son in his bed praying, I decided to change how I was praying. I decided that instead of asking God (out of a worried heart) to bring healing, I would begin to give thanks.  And so I did. I found things to be thankful for and expressed that to God.  And as I began to give thanks, God’s peace came and settled deep within my heart.

I found ways to give thanks as we decided to drive him to Urgent Care and I found ways to give thanks as we drove him from there to the ER because the Urgent Care doctor wanted to rule out appendicitis.  I was so proud of myself! Despite not knowing what was wrong with our son I had peace because I was giving thanks and trusting God.

I would love to say that this 1 Thessalonians 5:18 attitude carried over right into the ER, but as soon as I took one look at the overcrowded waiting room filled with sick people, my close-to-being-a-germaphobe brain kicked in and my thankful attitude flew out the window. But that’s okay. God understands our weaknesses and that sometimes we can only handle baby steps as He matures us.

Before I close, one important thing I want to point out regarding this particular passage is that it does not say, “for everything give thanks” but “in everything give thanks”. There’s a big difference between those two words and what God is calling us to do. I’m happy to say that our son is doing well and has fully recovered from what turned out to be a bad case of food poisoning.

Dina Pugh