It is gorgeous outside and it is gorgeous inside, too.  There is a whole chicken roasting in apples and carrots and celery and lemons and thyme and there are white chocolate-pecan-pumpkin muffins cooling and my Bible is open to Isaiah and I have been studying a favorite word light and so you would think it would be alright.

In fact, I was able to speak with my brother this morning from Seville and husband brought home giant sunflowers at lunch and the cozy apartment is tidy, clean, sparkling.  I should be on my knees with thankfulness, I should be over the moon with gratitude, I should be so filled with joy.

But I am feeling a little homesick and a little tired and a little lost in spite of the gorgeous day.

We began a small group last Thursday and we are focusing on the discipline of thankfulness-- on the act of being deeply rooted and I left missing something because while we spent time talking of the seeds and the soil and the tree deeply rooted by the river I am sometimes not certain about how humanity mixes into thanksgiving.

I have tried to hunt it down.  I have practiced advice.  Make a list in the morning; before you get out of bed think of five good things.  Think on your past and of the way He has answered-- think of how thankful you are for that past and for those answers.  And it worked, a little.  But it did not seem big enough-- this concept of thanksgiving that Paul commands me to embrace completely.  I found myself wondering in the middle of my remembering and my lists of good things if what I was feeling was thankfulness.  I found myself wondering if it might be more than a feeling.  I wondered if I was feeling anything at all.

And if it is larger than that, if it is an act with feelings attached then there is some hope for me.  Especially if the act is not based on the good things alone. Maybe it is something like this: The assurance that He planned this moment full of beauty and sadness and longing and contentedness and wonderful smells and glory to be exactly as it is.

For that, my soul is thankful.