The Easy Things To Be Thankful For

Off the back of my previous post on the topic of being thankful, I mentioned going around my house and taking photos of the things that I was thankful for, in spite of how admittedly easy it was for me to do so because I have so many good things, obvious privileges. As adding the photographs that I took onto that post would have made it very long, I thought I would make a separate, shorter post here with little explanations under each one, my notes of gratefulness if you will.

Being mindfully appreciative of what you have cannot just be a one-off epiphany moment and I hope that my extending this theme over two posts it will get us all thinking, me included, over a long scale of time, about how much we really have, and how much we still crave for despite the many gifts, blessings and opportunities that are right in front of us.

Dad's roast preparation. Always thankful that we can afford this luxury of good nutritious meals, indulgent yorkshire puddings and lots of trimmings.

In the centre is one of my favourite images: my best friends and I on the last day of school before we commenced our GCSE's, reminding me of how lucky I was to receive good-quality education and find incredible, supportive and lasting friendships through those years. 

A place to rest my head each night, to sit on and ponder, to worry, to be comforted when ill. A place which some do not have due to war, seeking asylum, in cold hard prison cells for unjust accusations. Here, I can rest, relax, gather my strength for days to come and do it comfortably. That is a privilege.

A rail of clothes in a variety of colours which express my personality, keep me cool in summer and warm in winter, mixing functionality with human creativity. In my country I am not forced to wear something simply because I am a woman, a certain race, a certain religion. I can freely determine my own principals, and enjoy myself doing so.

The sunset outside my window, looking into London and beyond. The family home kept me secure for years. I grew up in a safe, nonthreatening area, albeit with a lot of hills! And cor, did I witness many a sunset from this window, forever reminding me how awesome nature is.

These are the simple things, the easiest things to be thankful for. Nothing heroic. But even they can be swept over by the current of routine.

What will you intentionally be thankful for today?

Kefalonia // Holiday Snaps!

To months ago, I returned back from the most relaxing and needed holiday of my life, and my first trip abroad in three years. It was one of those beautifully blissful periods of relaxing, catching up with my family, reading all the books I wanted to (I got through 7 in 12 days!), eating and a lot of swimming. We went to Kefalonia, a Greek island, and because it was slightly before school holidays we saw few tourists (and few people in general) and therefore it felt like a truly restful experience and a chance to really soak up the culture, Greek food and the island without feeling disturbed.

Our holidays usually revolve around beaches, but because we were on a island we really tried to explore all of it and did a few days spending hours driving along the vast coast, around mountains and hills, while I stuck my camera out of the window and snapped furiously away. I usually detest long drives, especially in the heat, but when you are surrounded by such vast beauty and have your headphones blasting out an anthemic Florence and the Machine song in one ear, you really are captured with a sense of the sublime and an awe of nature that in the everyday grind and self-absorption of life you completely miss, especially in London. The pictures barely capture it!

My family stayed in a villa, which felt extra secluded. We ate lots of bread and salad for lunch with feta, tzatziki and watermelon and swam in between reading chapters of books on our sun loungers. In the evenings we alternated with cooking in-house and going out to eat and experience food as the Greeks make it (don't bother with the Kefalonian meat pie: cheese and rice don't belong together!) before getting back and doing some crosswords while watching all the films that are too long to sit down and watch at home, my favourite of which was Cold Mountain. 

It was probably the best holiday I have ever had, and I am so thankful that we were given a gift which enabled us to have the break we all needed and remind me of the great scale of the created earth. Swimming in a sea with the backdrop of a misty mountain top was just magical.

What are some of your favourite holiday memories?

Helen Berhane's Inspiration

I watched a video not long ago that stuck with me like no other Youtube parody or fashion haul had. It was the story of a woman who was trapped in a shipping container day in, day out, enduring the suffocating heat by day and freezing at night. Yet, she was thankful: thankful for her beatings, the bugs that bit her, the fact that she was alive and enduring though despised and discarded, treated as inhuman.

I have had hard days these past weeks, and moaned within myself about them knowing that really, compared to so many others, I am incredibly blessed and provided for, that my life is sustained another day in a country that gives me so many freedoms and rights which allow me to live how I wish to live and give me opportunities I simply wouldn't get elsewhere. One of my passions in life has been supporting those who were persecuted for their religious beliefs because I am increasingly aware of the grace shown to me each week when I can walk into church and not have a care in the world apart from a few people slinging about the name of Jesus as if it were a swear word during my week. I do not suffer because I believe in something, and I am truly never thankful enough for that either. Yet this woman wasn't even thankful for the things which are obviously nice, which are obviously privileges and easy to be thankful for. She was thankful for things that would be daily annoyances, that would cause her pain and grief and leave her lonely, isolated. Her name is Helen Berhane, and she is inspiring.

This video also reminded me of a book I read a few years ago called 'The Hiding Place', in which Corrie Ten Boom writes the story of how her Christian family hid Jews fleeing from the Gestapo in Amsterdam before they were caught, taken to a concentration camp and split up, never to see one another again. While they were in these horrific conditions of the camp, she loses faith, becomes self-absorbed and discouraged, becomes bitter... a pretty natural reaction to what we now recognise as one of the most horrifying events in recent humanity. But her sister, on the other hand, has such a different attitude that at one point she thanks God for the flies that bite her in the night and keep her awake. We can barely deal with wasps in the summer - they spoil our barbeques! - yet she learns to love and cherish these beings though she was being torn apart by labour day and night, sleeping in a hot room with many others in inhumane conditions. Yes, she too was thankful.

And I suppose going round my house over the course of a few days is a pathetic attempt to instigate this sort of thankfulness in my own life. These are things to be obviously thankful for, to my shame. You don't see me taking pictures of the dust on my shelves or the bin, or the blemishes on my face, but I suppose someone as ungrateful as I am has to start somewhere.

Jesus said "Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also", and I strive not to treasure and love my possessions so much that they become my identity and source of fulfillment in life. Heck, I've had to wean myself off lifestyle and home blogs because they make me so jealous and subconsciously give me the wrong view that these perfectly fitted and beautiful places complete a person, make them happier and more fulfilled when I know as a result of my Christian faith that there are higher things, greater things to set my mind on. But the things I do have are all gifts, graces, provisions, and I wish I appreciated them more. At the right time, they are given away to serve another, sold to fund something more pressing or passed on simply to recognise that I don't need as much as I thought I did to live. But for now, I can look at pictures that I have taken and think:
"Yes, I am thankful."

And I hope that one day as I mature that my thankfulness extends as far as Helen Berhane's did, because I certainly am not there yet.