will & t +1

I’m in a book club. First time ever. So far it’s been wonderful. I’ve read books that I wouldn’t have picked up otherwise, and have been extremely blessed by these books, and by discussion with about 6 other women.

The most recent book we read was One Thousand Gifts. It’s a bestseller, has a website and quite the following…I would have never read it. I always think, “If everybody likes it, it obviously aims to please, not to teach or convict.” 

Insert foot in mouth.

This book has changed my life. Really.

I started a list of 1000 gifts, gave the book to my sister-in-law with a journal to write her 1000 gifts, and wrote her a poem. 

I’ve never written a poem. I trembled as I read it out loud to our book club and my family. Nevertheless, I found the inspiration and process incredibly powerful.  

Naomi, mother of four, living three,
would you write with me?
Will you take up pen
and recount what has been?
Would you detail one thousand gifts
until your heart lifts
up and eyes and ink
make time slow and think
how this could
change us, seeing the good
gifts that were always there;
we’ve long been taught not to stare.

But now stare! Look! Stop! Write!
We’re needing changed, divine sight.
One thousand graces.
Let’s trade places
with the women we once were, numb, blind,
as if he made his love hard to find
in laundry and dishes and disasters and daughters and fuss,
so much lost in the rush.

It’s there,
his fair
love shining through his blood-spilled son,
and in Christ we won
One thousand, endless gifts like suds and tea
and banged-up knee
needing a mother’s kiss. 

We’ve only to stop, look.
It’s detailed in the Book,
how giving thanks in and for all things
there you find the soul that clings
to God though we see him not.
Countless graces have been bought
with nails and blood and tears and rod;
we do not know the wrath of God. 

All is grace.

These pages are space
to stretch and run and grow young
in the search for one thousand gifts among
pots and pans
and plans
unraveled. 

Let ink and lead and paper be
a stake in time for now we see.