“You know what I like best?”, she asked.

“What?”, I responded, wondering what it could be. 

“I like singing songs at church.”, she said with a big smile on her face.

“Oh ya, why do you like singing?”, I pressed for more.

“Cuz they have guitars and they’re pretty.”, she said cheerfully.

“I like that too.”, I replied with a giggle.

It was amazing to see how this one little moment of thankfulness over something so simple could make my daughter completely light up. It gave her such pure joy to share her gratitude with me. She may struggle more than most when she is feeling frustrated or disregulated, due to Autism, but she sure has a tender heart and seems to be drawn to giving thanks. She’s always thanking someone for something or somehow showing her gratitude for the things she has. She’ll give her brother a big hug and say, ” Thank you for helping me.”. She’ll tell her dad with a giggle that he makes her laugh. And she’ll exclaim to our respite workers as they leave, “Thank you for coming and playing with me!”, even on her tougher days. And she often thanks me for the “cute” clothes I buy her, or for something else I did that she likes. The other day she told me, “Thank you for making the pretty roses grow in the garden.” It doesn’t matter if she is having a hard day, or if the thing she gives thanks for is big or small. She just seems to delight in being thankful. 

Thanksgiving. Webster’s dictionary simply defines it as “the act of giving thanks” or “a prayer expressing gratitude”. 

Let’s face it, sometimes it can be hard to be thankful. Sometimes in life there are just situations and seasons that can be so overwhelming that they make it seem impossible to feel thankful for anything at all. Raising a child with special needs is not easy. Sometimes it tests you to your limits. But the truth is that even in the midst of the hard things of life, “There is Always Something to be Thankful for”, a truth we have explored before. This is because being in pain and being able to give thanks are not mutually exclusive. We can be in the midst of hard circumstances in our lives and still be thankful for what we have been given. My daughter has taught me allot about this. 

My daughter is my hero. She is more brave then I will likely ever be. All her life she has had to deal with a world that is overwhelming, confusing, and even frightening to her; and yet she takes it on with this amazing heart of thankfulness. Whatever comes to the plate she swings at it. Actually she swings for the fences. That girl has got spunk. She is AMAZING to me. She has delays in speech and language; which means that she does not have the same level of vocabulary as her peers and she cannot always understand the how or why of conversational skills. And yet I have seen her struggle to speak, then turn around and thank the other person for a conversation they barely had, and contentedly walk away. She cannot always grasp the social cues of those around her; which means that when she is actually trying to converse with someone she may not understand that they don’t want to talk. And yet I have seen her strike up a conversation with a simple compliment to the grumpy person in the line next to us and in no time she is thanking her new friend and leaving them wanting more. She has had many difficult and frightening medical procedures over the years. Ofcourse, there is lots of prayer and support from us when this occurs, but it is she who has to take the needle, she who has to sit still for the test, she who has to keep her hands to herself when she is scared and in pain. And even though she cannot always understand her own emotions and regulate her responses, I have watched her lay there in pain on the examining table and look over and actually thank the nurse for helping her feel better, almost bringing that nurse to tears. Then there is school. How many years has she spent struggling to read and write and do math. But she comes back to it over and over again working so hard to commit it all to memory. For several years we homeschooled and so I have seen up close how hard she works to relentlessly pursue a skill, and I have also seen her turn to me and say thanks for helping her with it, all the while acknowledging out loud, “My Autism is hard”. I’ve seen her take on a great many things that were frightening and confusing to her and yet she did it and somehow still showed thankfulness while in it. She is just amazing to me.

And she doesn’t only give thanks for the big things in life. Oh no, she often shows her thankfulness for the little and seemingly insignificant as well. She is an absolute inspiration to me. I want to be able to look around and give thanks for the sunshine that day, the sweet smelling roses in our garden, the roly poly bug that crawled across my path, and the glitter on a favorite tee shirt, like she does. Its clear from watching her that giving thanks and being thankful for even the littlest of things can bring allot of joy. And I want that don’t you? 

So on this Thanksgiving and every day may we all be inspired to “Give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess 5:18a) and in all things, whether big or small.