It’s Thanksgiving here in the States, and in between stuffing your turkey and spreading the french fried onions on your green bean casserole, here’s a refreshing little thought from the folks at BJU press. Be thankful for your weaknesses, your failures, and your shortcomings. Sound strange? If you get a chance, you can read the quick little thoughts at A Different Kind of Thanksgiving. I was blessed. I hope you are, too.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations. –Psalm 100:4-5

I took all five children to prayer meeting by myself. At 9:30 P.M., on the way home, while I talked on my cell phone to my husband still working at his office, the baby started crying and then screaming about a diaper newly wet, and the two-year-old began to sob because she was afraid of the dark. We rolled up the driveway. I passed out assignments of who should carry what. And my valiant oldest daughter somehow hurt her back trying to pull a small cooler of eggs out of the back of the van. Inside and unpacking, I watched in horror as the four-year-old managed to hit the six-year-old with an ice pack right on the toy binoculars he was holding up to his eyes. He started screaming and refused to open his eyes for me to check. I now had a little one on each hip and two injured older children who needed help getting ready for bed. At least the four-year-old was OK . . . until everyone was climbing at long last into bed and we discovered that somehow her wet bed had gone unnoticed that morning. I had to change her sheets in the dark because by this point, her two-year-old sister had already fallen asleep. I felt my way all along the top shelf of the closet, but the only waterproof mattress cover I could find was for the toddler bed.

The path to the Promised Land led through the wilderness. Sometimes God takes us through the wilderness, too. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about why that might be.

And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live. –Deuteronomy 8:2-3

He humbles us and suffers us to hunger so that He can feed us with manna. Without humiliation, we don’t even realize that we need God. Without hunger, there’s no manna, no miracle. Would I like to see a miracle, or would I rather go on in self-sufficiency?

I’m desperate for miracles. I want to witness the awesome power of God. But my flesh just doesn’t want to be inconvenienced. It’s easier to be a slave in Egypt with my breath reeking of the onions I picked for myself than to follow God through a wilderness and taste the bread of angels. Because hunger hurts. And humbling tears down my most cherished idol, my own capabilities. But then, and only then, I see the Lord move and find that the sand is covered with manna, His incredible provision. And I live, not by bread only, but by His word, made once again real to me, His other incredible provision.

Standing in the dark surrounded by my needy babies, I remember this and sing verse 3 quietly to the tune I learned on the Bible Bee CD. I throw a sleeping bag over the four-year-old’s mattress. It’s nearly 11:00, and she’ll be fine. It’ll be like camping.

The children are asleep all around me, and I am still alive. Miraculously, I did not yell at anyone. I say “miraculously” because it’s true. I lose my sense of humor and nine-tenths of my patience promptly at 10:00, but somehow we all survived. And now here I am with a weary peace and thankfulness and this irrational bit of bubbly joy like manna all over the room.