Thanks

Thanks for the things you have allowed me to go through
They have brought me Savior much closer to You
Thanks for the heartache, thanks for the pain
Thanks for the sunshine after the rain


Poverty, blindness, alcoholic parents, being orphaned, a child with a birth defect, widowed young, an alcoholic son, cancer, spinal cord injury. These are just the things I know about. Mom wrote this song in 1981 when she went deaf. She didn't know it wouldn't be permanent. Her faith challenges me.


Thanks for choosing one such as I
Thanks for being willing to die
Thanks for going to Calvary
Just so I could be happy and free


Happy? Really, with all she went through? Yes, I believe she was.


Thanks for Your love and thanks for Your care
Thanks for always being right there
Thanks for being my companion and guide
Thanks for always being by my side


She KNEW He was right there. I struggle to feel Him near. Her faith challenges me.


Thanks for things I don't understand
Thank for lending a helping hand
Thanks for strength each days tasks to do
But most of all Lord, thanks for You.


So many things we don't understand. Yet First Thessalonians 5:18 tells us to give thanks in ALL things, not just the things we understand, or the pleasant things. If I still had Mom's Braille Bible I would no doubt see her fingerprints on this verse. It may even be worn down a bit. She certainly lived it out. Her faith challenges me. 


She sang this song just 2 weeks before her passing. The previous 7 months she had suffered the spinal cord injury that would make her bed bound with pain as her constant companion. Yet she sang. She couldn't read her Bible, her source of strength, anymore. Yet she sang and meant it. 

Her faith challenged me.