"Now this is my joy and my great thanksgiving..."

I found the "Thankful List" icon and idea to find something ever day throughout the month to be thankful for, on Holly Ward's website (I steel things from her a lot). But I thought that it was a fantastic idea and wanted to participate.

It reminded me of something I did on my mission. For those of you who know me well, my mission was pretty rough on me. There were some very odd circumstances that I was thrown into and it got really hard for me. There was a point where I felt very much that I was not going to make it through what the Lord was asking me to do. I wanted to do his will so very much but for some reason my best efforts just didn't seem like enough. One day I was reading in the Book of Alma, chapter 26, and came across these verses. Ammon has just come home from his mission which was incredibly difficult on him too. (See verse 27.) He says:

1. …behold I say unto you, how great reason have we to rejoice; for could we have supposed when we started...that God would have granted unto us such great blessings?
2. And now, I ask, what great blessings has he bestowed upon us? Can ye tell?

This struck me. Here I was, on a mission, struggling, and I felt Ammon was asking the question right to me. "How is the Lord blessing you Chelsea, even though your struggling. So I answered him. I started a "grateful journal" where each day before I went to bed I wrote the things I was grateful for so I could remember. Some days it was honestly only that I didn't get accosted by any drunks...but other days...most days, it was amazing to see the hundreds of little ways the Lord blessed me, even through the pain I was feeling. I still have the journal and pull it out to add things once in a while. Things on my mission didn't turn out the way I expected or even wanted. But almost 4 years latter I'm grateful they didn't. Time and distance has taught me much more than a "normal", complete, and healthy mission ever could have. I'm sure that 4 years from now I will be able to say the same about what we are going through today.

I'm not grateful for grief and loss. I'm not grateful for pain and hurt. I am grateful for the growth that God grows out of those things...and sometimes despite them. I know many of you have worried, prayed about and even sometimes questioned the struggles that Ty and I have been going through. I want to thank you all for your support. I want you all to know that I am not a huge ball of depression every moment of every day. I do cry a lot and will continue too for as long as I need to. But I laugh too and think about how this experience is changing me. My faith has grown not fallen (even though it may seem like that's the case at times). Our baby died but it also lived. It lived for three months inside of me and that three months has changed me more than any other period of time in my short past. I want it to change me. I want it to make me a better person, a better friend, a better mom...or else that little life was in vain. Thank you for being patient with the changes and the process. As hard as the past year has been on us it's been sacred too. I wouldn't want to re-live it but I would never give it up. I never would give up the three months we had with my little baby.

So in honor of my little life changer, I want to pick up my "grateful book" again and ask the same question of myself (and you too if you would like) that Ammon asked me several years ago. "What great blessings has he bestowed upon us? Can ye tell? And as I begin my thanksgiving prayer, I quote Ammon's own answer to this question:

36 Now if this is boasting, even so will I boast; for this is my life and my light, my joy and my salvation, and my redemption from everlasting wo. Yea, blessed is the name of my God, who has been mindful of this people… yea, I say, blessed be the name of my God, who has been mindful of us, wanderers in a strange land.
37 Now… we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy, and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever.

Alma 26


(If you want to do this too you can click on the icon and get the link so that you can start your own list on your blog.)