Thankfulness post 2023

It's my annual Thanksgiving week post!  This year, there's been two themes that keep popping up for me, and they seem wildly different, but they were joined last week, so I'm also going to join them in this post.  

The first theme is hope in the middle of doubt and discouragement.  Often in the fall, I struggle with feelings of self doubt.  These feelings pop up in my parenting, homeschooling, relationships with friends and family, trying to write these blog posts, you name it.  Even as I've learned to expect them, I can't seem to fight them off on my own.  But my gratitude is for the promises that in my weakness, God is strong.  That my identity isn't found in what an amazing job I'm doing (or failing to do) with my life, but rather it's found in being a child of God, which is something that I'm not powerful enough to mess up.  I'm grateful for these promises, and I'm grateful for anything that can remind me of them in the middle of weakness.

The second theme - taking a 90 degree turn - is gratitude for music.  So much of adult life is work and responsibility - but this is why moments of fun and joy and abandon are so wonderful.  For me, music and dancing often brings these feelings.  Upbeat music on a run, new songs sent by friends, Kenny playing guitar, singing worship music at church; dancing around the campfire or the living room, line dancing (badly) at the country western bar, seeing live music at a show - the joy that comes from music feels other worldly.

These two themes united when we went to see Lauren Daigle in concert last week.  The big theme of her lyrics touches on exactly the things I struggle with; lyrics like, "I keep fighting voices in my head that say I'm not enough" or "When I'm not somebody I believe in".  And then she proceeds to sing the promises of God that reminds me how God loves us through these doubts, how God is our strength, and how to pray in these moments when you're feeling so weak.  And when you experience these beautiful promises in combination with her amazing voice and band, and with an arena of 10,000 people singing along, it feels like a foretaste of heaven.

So this year, I'm grateful that we got to have this concert experience.  I'm grateful for the transcendent joy that can be felt in music.  And most of all, I'm grateful to have Someone so much bigger than me to help as I grapple with my struggles.  

Happy Thanksgiving all!  I would love to hear any of your own stories where you felt transcendent hope and joy while listening to music.