Tonight at Kairos Roots, the speaker talked about the importance of thanksgiving as a lifestyle. Thanksgiving is the antidote for anger, for bitterness, for discouragement (as I found out recently), and for doubt.

She reminded me that we’re not supposed to give thanks FOR everything, but IN everything. We should’t be thankful for tragedies and misfortunes and other bad things happening, but we can be thankful that God can work through even the worst of these times and turn them into something beautiful.

The verse says to give thanks to the Lord for He is good– not because we are good or that life is good or that the situation is good– but because God is good.

Another verse tells me “This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.” This day, meaning the terrible, no good, very bad day I’m stuck in. Not just the good days when my life is turning out the way I want and all my plans are falling into place, but the bad days when I have a headache and I feel like I’m completely screwing up everything I touch.

Thanksgiving reminds me that I’m not in this alone. It reminds me that God is with me even when I don’t feel Him near. As I heard tonight, sometimes the only way we know that God loves us when we don’t feel loved or see love is to know that He does because “the Bible tells me so.”

Thanksgiving brings us together in community and keeps us focused on the big story God is telling and not just the little stories we are living in. As the speaker noted, it gets me out of the me-story where I can only see at I-level and puts me back into the God-story where God is in charge and in control and is working everything together for good.

When we are thankful, we see once more that all of life is connected and that every part of life belongs to God. I see that what God wants from me is not the best part of me or the majority of me, but all of me, everything I have, everything I am, the good and bad and ugly and disturbing. He wants all of me.

Learning to be thankful takes practice and time, but the result is so much more than worth it. God deserves my thanks, even if He never does one more thing for me. Even if for no other reason than Who He is, He deserves every bit of thanksgiving I can give to Him (and then some!)