Being Thankful

I did something last night I have NEVER done before, I spoke at our ladies ministry group. I wanted to speak on being thankful, but I wasn’t sure exactly which direction I needed to go in. I used the concordance in my bible to look up scripture about being thankful. The first verse was 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. I had thought of doing a group discussion , and the question I came up with relating to this verse was, “How can we be thankful during hard times”. The next verse I looked at was Colossians 3:15-17. I didn’t come up with a discussion question for this one. The next verse was Psalms 138:1 I give you thanks, O Lord, with all my heart; I will sing your praises before the gods. My discussion question for this verse was “when do you feel like you are giving thanks to God with all your heart”. I wasn’t sure where to go from there, so I went to a folder I have in my email that I save inspirational emails. I get daily verses from KLOVE, and if they mean something to me I will save them. The very first email I pull up is from KLOVE, and guess what verse it was???? 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18. Oh my gosh, I was shocked that this was the very first email I opened and it was the first verse I had written down. The next email I opened was an email that I received from a co-worker, and you’ll never believe the title of the email, “how to be thankful in tough times”. God just confirmed to me that this is what he wanted me to speak about. It is awesome when we get confirmation from Him. I was sharing how hard it is for me to be thankful now for not being able to have children. I should be thankful because this is God’s plan for my life. Once we get our baby it will be so much easier to be thankful, but I need to be thankful now. Several years ago I felt that God wasn’t going to give us our baby until we got right with Him. If we already had a baby, I wouldn’t be blogging , I wouldn’t have started our women’s group at church, I wouldn’t have spoken to that group last night, I wouldn’t be making jewelry and sharing with people about our journey and giving them my blog address to read our story. I have heard from people how they have been touched by my blog. So yes, I am thankful for not being able to have children and for this journey we are on. I’ll still have good days and bad days. I’ll still grieve the “loss” of my own child. But ultimately I have to remind myself that this if God’s plan for my life and He has his reasons for putting us on the path we are on. We may never understand why we have to go through the tough times God puts in our lives. As hard as it may be, we need to be thankful for those tough times, it is His plan for our lives. One day you may be able to look back and see his hand in a difficult situation and realize how blessed you were to have to go through what you went through. A project I had for the ladies was to write a thank you note to God for something difficult they are going through. I want them to be able to look back at that card once they have gotten though their difficult time. Sometimes we focus so much on the negative side of these situations, and we have to be reminded to look for the blessing. I am hoping the card will remind them to look for the blessing in their difficult time.