Oh Father,

I thank you for You, first of all.

I thank you for your wisdom, your mercy, your forgiveness and your love.

I thank you for bringing me back to you, in your perfect time, in your perfect way.

I thank you for the multiude of gifts and blessings you have bestowed upon me and my family – a home, a car, jobs, our health, food to eat and share, our love for each other, our growing together as a family.

I thank you for my parents – who did the best they could, who loved me more than I can articulate, who worked as hard as human beings should ever be required to work to give me security, warmth, education, and trust that it will all be ok.

I thank you for my brother, who made me be a better person, one he could look up to, one he could emulate with pride. I thank you for the lessons he has taught me, the gifts he has given me, the pure and unabashed generosity of his heart.

I thank you for my children. I thank you for their health, their safety, their unique and amazing gifts. I don’t know who I would be without them.

I thank you for my husband. It has been a tough year, a tough couple of years, but I thank you for that, too, Lord. I know the best is yet to come, and I thank you for the gifts he brings to this world, the innate goodness that guides him, the love he has for his family and for all the children he sees, hears about, and imagines.

I thank you for my friends – those still in my life and those who have left it – I thank you for the opportunity to know and love such talented, giving, smart, loving people, and I thank you for sending them into my life at just the right moment.

I thank you for the new friends I am making at church – I thank you for leading me to the life I want and need to live, for you.

I thank you for your very real, very personal, very loving presence in my life. I thank you for your guidance, your assurance, your wake-up calls and your honesty.

I thank you for the last couple of years, a time when my life seemed to be in dissaray – my loyalties divided, my heart broken and battered, my love locked up in a little box, or aimed in the wrong direction – I realize now, Lord, that it had to be that way for me to return to you. I am stubborn and hard-headed and I can ignore a lot of things for a long time – and I see now that I had to be completely broken in order for you to fix me. So I thank you, Lord, even for the pain, even for the shame, even for the imperfect and incomplete way I tried to love and serve you – because those were the circumstances that had to be for you to pick me up, dust me off, perfect me and bring me back.

I thank you for the gifts I have – wisdom, encouragement, leadership – and I pray that you will use me each and every day to express these gifts for the building of your kingdom.  I thank you for the ability to write and to touch people, and I pray that I will be able to write things that inspire people to come to you.

I thank you for all of your servants, all of the people whose lives are ministries for you – bless them, encourage them, make them whole and love them.

I am thankful for so many things, Lord, that my heart is overflowing with gratitude and love and praise for you.  Thank you, for everything, everywhere, every day.  I know that your love for me was settled on the cross, and everything that you bring to me is brought in love, and everything that happens happens because of your love, and that it is in my tests and the trials and the tribulations that you wait, patiently, for me to see, the true power and glory of who you are.

Thank you.

Amen.