A Gift | Chapter 2, Receiving

I remember his words clearly. “God loves to give His kids good gifts.” I hadn’t ever thought about that.

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe that to be true, that I hadn’t read words in red ink that spelled that out for me. It was that I hadn’t really felt that. Maybe I had been immature once...when was that? I had grown up so fast - too fast; I had always been told I was an “old soul.” I had just emerged from one of the hardest times of my life.

I was still picking up the broken pieces of my family and heart, but I found myself somehow still in tact. My old Jeep barely ran, but I could finally put more than four dollars at a time in the tank. I had taken a new job that didn’t leave me emotionally drained and worn thin. I felt healthy, alive, free. My home was one in a rich community, something I had prayed for for years. And here was this handsome man telling me that I was a gift, and that I was a reminder to him that our Father wants to bestow good things on us. How was I a gift?

And yet, I found myself feeling, admittedly for the first time that I could remember, overwhelmed by thankfulness. I don’t know if deep gratitude had ever brought me to tears before (although pretty much everything else had), but here I was blubbering as I finally allowed myself to receive all of these good, good things

.

And I realized that we were made to receive, to allow ourselves to feel the weight of favor lavishly given. This felt foreign to me. I felt as if it was my lot to simply endure and bear all things, not to receive all things. It was my role to give until I was spent, not to throw wide open my arms to good things. And once I shed that fragile armor, I found myself like a child, moved by grace and generosity, tearing through to unwrap what I didn’t deserve.

This moment, ultimately a season, shaped my life. While my natural bent was (and still is) to see my responsibility, to carry a burden, I discovered the freedom in intentionally assuming a posture of gratitude, in opening my eyes to find and see the gifts in my life.

And so, as I sit on my thrifted couch, fire crackling, holding the handsome man’s hand as my own, pajamaed toddler in my lap, new babe growing inside of me, I remind myself of that feeling I first felt several years ago. I remind myself to be filled. It is a choice, after all, to receive a gift. And isn’t that the story that shapes this season? It’s beautiful how the image of a precious, gracious gift given to all is mirrored in our daily lives. I choose to see and believe in the “good gift.”

Article by, Meghan Miller | Photography by, LaRue