I Didn’t Feel Thankful, But Hope Found Me Anyway

The dark brown cracked linoleum floor stared up at me.

Taunting.

I could see the staples that held it down over the disintegrating particle board beneath. Quickly, I looked away and tried to fight back the tears.

Over the past 11 years, in this 800-square-foot, 75-year-old home, we have transitioned from a married couple to parents of five daughters.

What had begun as a fun starter home was now cramped and decaying quarters that felt more like a prison than a home. Would we ever move? Was this all there was? What would we do?

Circumstances for us were not easy. Five children, a single income and an expensive home all conspired against us.

I struggled with discontent, anger, covetousness, confusion, and anxiety.

Then, a moment would come.

The golden hour of the day when the sunlight would filter through gauze curtains onto that linoleum floor. When bare feet would scamper across the worn wood floors of those 800 square feet.

A hummingbird would pause at the window’s edge, a rainbow would arch across the backdrop of our house, and barefoot children would run across damp grass in sparkling raindrops, and suddenly God’s glory was everywhere.

Then there were the days when a storm would rage, bending the pine tree with its fierce winds, and my heart would swell with gratitude and a realization of how much I had when the wall heater pumped out warm air, the tea kettle sang, and a roof kept us dry.

There was plenty to dislike.

There were real struggles and difficulties in that home. Gratitude was hard fought in that season of never enough. The hope that lingered was sweeter for the struggle. An echo of Romans 12:12, “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer,” rang through those too small rooms.

The word rejoice became a practice that pointed me to God’s unchanging presence. That golden sunlight on a worn floor? That was His unchanging presence in an imperfect circumstance.

That hummingbird pausing with a crimson throat near the cracked plastic siding outside my window, a glimpse of His beauty in brokenness. That rainbow above the small space we called home?

A reflection of His promises, which never change and never fail.

Our circumstances were anything but perfect, but our God was perfection itself. He taught me to find beauty in the broken, rather than being broken by a lack of beauty. He is beauty itself. So, if He is there, then so is beauty.

You might simply have to open your eyes wider to find it. Hope that is hard sought is more precious, like a treasure.

When you can look past the superficial circumstances to find the supernatural ones, that is where gratitude is born.

That is when we can say, as Philippians 4:4 does, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.”