Five Minute Friday

Because of Thanksgiving weekend, I’m taking a break from our Friday bible study to participate in Lisa Jo Baker’s Five Minute Friday.  Today’s topic is “Thank You” and I’m only allowed to write for five minutes on the topic without editing so forgive grammatical mishaps:

Thank you.  We’re teaching our three three year olds to use those words liberally.  Preceded by please and concluding with you’re welcome.

But thank you is something deeper than simple manners for toddlers to implement early in life.  Thank you is bigger.  Sometimes the simple words are adequate to express your emotion – those days when you offer thanks to someone for opening the door or for giving you a crystal vase for your wedding.

But so many times it’s not nearly enough.  How is it that we haven’t come up with something bigger and wider and more expressive than thank you?  Did thank you adequately cover the depths of my emotion when the NICU nurse brought our wee one back from the brink on Day 3?  Did thank you adequately capture my heart when my husband slept on hospital couches just to be next to me when the tumor was cut out that first year and when the babies were born than second year?  Can thank you define my overflowing cup when I cried out to God my gratitude over finding out I would be a mother after years of trying and this time to not one but three?  Does thank you express the limitless love and appreciation I felt for friends and co-workers attending funerals and wedding, bringing food and doing laundry, gathering to pray on their knees for what lie ahead of me?

I love the word.  I love the ring.  But I wish I had more than just those two words to offer the untold number of people in my life, in my family’s life, that have gotten us through divorce, poverty, school, graduations, weddings, funerals, births, losses, moves, and big decisions.

Stop.