Thankfulness When Life Stinks – Part 2
Last week you learned my word of focus for 2021 is thankful, and heard part of my story about the end of 2019 and first part of 2020 where we learned that there was mold in our home making me very sick and that we decided to move out of our dream home and property. This entailed us also having to get rid of nearly everything that was special to us and the life we’d built together over 20 years. It also left us homeless and living with my in-laws in their two-bedroom home and cut off from our church, where there was also mold. It seemed like we’d lost everything except each other and our extended families in the span of a few months.
Loss, so much loss. Grief, deep grief. So how do I get from there to thankfulness?
As part of my recovery from mold, I took a 3-day brain training program that has shown excellent results and is recommended by top medical doctors that teaches a person how to retrain the limbic system (found in the brain) so that it no longer over-reacts to toxic stimuli such as mold, chemicals, etc.
Summarizing 3 full days of training into a couple of sentences will over-simplify it, but here we go. It basically taught how to be very intentional with one’s thought processes in a specific way, basking in positive thoughts and experiences of the past and future (before and after, but not during, illness) and dwelling in those thoughts and emotions for a significant amount of time each day. This changes brain connections as well as body chemistry. Again, a massive over-simplification, but that’s the gist.
Does that at all sound familiar? It brings to mind Philippians 4:8, “And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” And it’s preceded by verse 6 & 7, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” (NLT) Did you catch that, “Fix your thoughts...” also translated, “dwell on”, “consider” “think about”. This isn’t a passing thought. This is a park it and sit there for a while.
That’s exactly what the brain training program was telling me to do too. Think these (very specific, prescripted) thoughts. Dwell in them. Fix your mind there. Sit in them. Feel them thoroughly from the top of your head to the bottom of your toes. Every day. For an hour.
Considering the options available to us in our circumstances, we decided to get a new travel trailer (free of mold and furnished) and travel the country for a year while continuing to work and homeschool fulltime (no, not a year-long vacation).
Being as astute as I am, I realized that going from 2,000+ square feet and 4.5 acres of space to approximately 300 square feet of space was going to come with some adjustment for our family. Knowing that we were all struggling with what we were giving up and what we were going to, I resolved that stepping through the door of our new home, there would be NO complaining. I would choose to be thankful for what I did have.
I knew there would be hard times ahead where I would be tempted think about what I wished I had and I resolved that I would redirect my thoughts to thankfulness for what I did have here and now and I intentionally chose decorations to help in that endeavor and remind me on those hard days.
I bought a grand total of 2 wall decorations for the main area and 1 for each our bedroom and the boys’ bedroom. One in the main room is a white pumpkin and simply says, “thankful.” It’s my favorite and I don’t really care that it’s a pumpkin and will be out of season most of the year. It’s going to be the permanent decoration there (unless I happen to stumble across an even better thankful sign). The bedroom sign says, “Forever thankful, Always grateful, Abundantly blessed” which is absolutely 100% true, but it can be easy for me to dwell on the other parts of my life and this serves to quickly reset my mindset. The other in the main room says, “happy campers” and the boys’ room is painted on a bear and says, “hungry for adventure”. All of them are intended to direct our mindsets and thought processes and set the tone for our home.
We may be houseless. We may be in transition and not know what is next. We may have rough days where 300 square feet seems REALLY small. We may miss friends. We may have issues with the camper as most all campers do, especially new ones that are getting broken in and lived in fulltime. I may be too tired some days to go on an adventure we had planned and it’s our only day to do it. BUT, I will choose to not just not complain, but to be thankful. And there is SO much to be thankful for! And that will change everything.
Because I still have plenty of room to grow in this process, and I haven’t come close to perfecting it yet, my word for 2021 is, “thankful.”
What is your word for 2021?
P.S. Understand that I’m NOT saying I didn’t need to grieve. Or if you have gone through or are going through a hard time of loss, that you don’t need to grieve or that you won’t need to revisit that grieving process ongoing at times. Do understand that I’m saying, at some point, after expressing and working through grief, we need to transition to looking at what we do have and what we can be thankful for, while at the same time acknowledging what we have lost.
Written by Sarah McGuire
