Want an Easy Life Plan That Changes Your LifeSpan (& Is So Easy Kids Can Do it)

All summer, I’ve been writing a messy love letter in my head about this very moment, whatever the one is that my body is actually in.

The one where I’m kneeling over the roses in the picket fence garden, right off the front porch, examining the underside of every leaf for sawfly slugs gnawing up the possibility of any more unfurling blooms, or the moment every morning where I soak nine alfalfa cubes in a pot of warm water, to carry out on a thrifted platter to my pregnant ewe, Jewel, as her own summer dish of fresh greens, and seeing how she comes bounding toward me the moment I open that gate, and then, the quiet moments, just as I clean and sort and organize the slightly sagging shelves under the basement windows, heavy with children’s books and all kinds of memories, and all these old scrawled notebooks of the once-kids tilted, penciled handwriting, and it’s parts of me that’s being sorted and storied into this letter serenading the sacred of ordinary now. 

“What your life really wants is you not to need a vacation from it, but to simply want your everyday life enough to fall in love with it — and the One who gives it. “

What your life really wants is you not to need a vacation from it, but to simply want your everyday life enough to fall in love with it — and the One who gives it.

What if… you didn’t have to vacate your life for some vacation, to turn and come face to face with joy and fall headlong in love with your vocation, with your calling, with your sink stacked with dishes, and the fridge that needs all the creamers to get their act together and line up in a neat row, and the side porch door that’s relentlessly smudged with little handprints, and a few smeared pawprints,  and all the fingerprints of God’s grace marking the moment right here.  

Don’t be fooled into thinking that this is all just about “romanticizing” your life – this about surrendering to Love Himself who made you to live your life in His life…. in His love.  This is about letting your soul be romanced. This is about savoring the moments and tasting God, good God. 

Maybe you’d finally stop feeling behind and out of breath by the end of the day if you simply, quietly, begin each day by breathing deeply —- Breathing in all the holy Love…. Breathing out all the heavy stuff…. Breathing in all the holy Love… Breathing out all the heavy stuff — breathe. 

This is what This Moment whispers: Faith is a matter of focus. All of life turns on the turn; turn and focus on the face of Love Himself. Watch everything in your life come into focus.  

Notice the way the clouds brush shy against the sky when you’re sitting for a moment at the stop sign, and pay attention to the feel of the park’s summer grass under your bare feet and how your back feels when it sinks into the earth when you lay your book down and close your eyes, the warmth of the afternoon sunshine feeling like an exhale to drowse, and see, really see, the flash of the brazen chipmunk’s tail dashing round the corner of the strawberry patch while you’re just waking waking at the kitchen window, sipping the morning’s first cup, and look at August coming to meet you, and meet you again, right where you are.   

Whatever folks say? It doesn’t matter so much what your lifespan is – what matters most is your GraceSpan. 

“What if braving life is already kinda low-key terrifying, and it’s looking for every day amazing graces and gifts and gratitudes that is the very comfort of God that actually gives us the gift of courage to do the hard things from a place of already being fully loved? “

It’s not a long life span that gifts you with a great life: A great life is a function of your GraceSpan and how grateful you are for all kinds of grace, for all kinds of gifts. 

(Yes, I know they say – and I’m not saying anyone’s actually wrong – that comfort can be the god of this age, and that you have to push out into the terrifying things out of our comfort zones? But it’s true too: What if braving life is already kinda low-key terrifying, and it’s looking for every day amazing graces and gifts and gratitudes that is the very comfort of God that actually gives us the gift of courage to do the hard things from a place of already being fully loved? 

When you’re grateful for grace upon grace, gift upon gift, your GraceSpan is long enough to hold great joy – the abundant life. 

This is the point of everything: You lengthen your GraceSpan by looking long for the goodness of God. 

Lengthen your GraceSpan: 

Begin the day with The Book and feel the moments shift and unfold into a better story. Why begin the day reading The News when you could begin reading Good News, reading its lines of poetry and prophecy and personal possibility?

Life is savoring grace. Eat His Words; taste God.

Jesus is the meal, and what is sustenance to a soul is a Savior, and you’re made by the Word so it makes sense that you’re made for the Word, that you crave Words — it’s just that you find the Word you’re hungry for are from a Savior, not a screen.

Lengthen your GraceSpan: 

There’s some vase, or even an old recycled glass Tabasco bottle, that’s begging you to notice one unexpected wild flower somewhere today and bring it home so the two can be married in the summer twilight. Really, go ahead, leave a tray or a vase empty and waiting on the counter for you to fill it with some found beauty you’ve noticed and picked up during the day, along the way, and fill all the empty spaces with gathered beauty and let the beauty multiply and expand your joy. 

Put your phone in a box, any old box you can find. Then take a book off a shelf, any old book that could find you. Read, and find your soul read. Write something. Right something.

You don’t have to go away to find a way for loveliness to fully take up the length of your one glorious life.

Lengthen your GraceSpan: 

“It’s your GraceSpan that actually lengthens your very lifespan – so the length of all of your days actually gets to savor a life of all kinds of abundant grace! “

“Unless you become like little children… “ (Matt 18:3). The goal isn’t to become like an adult. The goal is to become childlike. (Note: The goal is to be childlike, not to be childish. Not be selfish, try to get more for your life, but to relish and be in more awe of your life; not to be arguing and infighting, but to be ardently in love with the God of all grace, the God of all light.) The goal is to be childlike: To be delighted and belly-laugh a hundred times a day like a little kid all over again, to be awestruck, wowed, wide-eyed over amazing grace and all the wonders in this thing called life. Plane! Dog! Waves!  Ice-cream! Grace upon grace!

The goal isn’t to grow sophisticated, grow jaded, grow cynical, grow rich, or grow old— “but grow in grace” (2 Peter 3:18).

The goal of your Life is to grow your GraceSpan…

And: Your GraceSpan isn’t a function of your circumstances, your finances, or your healthspan – but it’s all about opening the whole span of your heart… to be receptive to common grace, to fill with daily, divine grace.  Dawn! Dew on grass! Freshly ground coffee beans! Sun-dried sheets! Laughter in the check-out lane! The scent of rain! God in this moment! Here! Now!

Turns out?

It’s your GraceSpan that actually lengthens your very lifespan – so the length of all of your days actually gets to savor a life of all kinds of abundant grace! 

All summer, I’ve been writing a messy love letter in my head about this very moment, whatever the one is that my body is actually in, and this is the discovery worth scratching down, engraving deeply right into the soft neural matter of my mind:

Yesterday is now unchangeable. Tomorrow is yet unborn. This Moment alone is unapologetically alive with your life. Your life is only fully alive in the now. 

I am not really sure if it’s a relief or not, and you can shirk it off, or dismiss it if you want, and I totally get it, but none of how anyone feels about it changes the facts of it: 

Not one moment is ever a small thing – but every moment is everything; this moment is the only place where your life fully lives. 

Now is the only place where joy fully breathes. 

You don’t have your whole life to live your life. Your life is always only lived in this present moment. 

This moment is your gift. 

This is the Life Plan to change your life span and your GraceSpan — try gently picking up a pen and looking for gifts of grace, even here, to count, all from a good and relentlessly loving God who draws near with grace upon grace in our heartache.

With spacious lines to name three gifts each day, and uniquely formatted to daily see how God has shown up with gifts on this day of the month, on all the previous months, Gifts & Gratitudes gently helps grow trust in a God who doesn’t always explain our suffering but who always enters into it with us. Taking pen to paper each day will help trace God’s goodness and keep a record of gratitude. And because of Jesus… there is always, always, always something — Someone — to be thankful for.

If you’re seeking deeper peace, in a world of tender pain…. if you’re looking for hope in the midst of all kinds of hurt… beginning this daily practice of looking for Gifts & Gratitudes helps you see the way forward.

ON SALE FOR LESS THAN $10 HERE

Be one of the more than 2 million people who have stepped into the life-change of this experience.…

What does the Christ-life really look like when your days are gritty, long — and sometimes even dark? How is God even here? My story of just that: One Thousand Gifts.

Are you ready to begin—or begin again—a life-changing habit of daily gratitude? Want to reset, refresh, reboot your life and literally rewire your brain? 

It’s only in the expression of gratitude for the life we already have, we discover the life we’ve always wanted . . . a life we can take, give thanks for, and break for others. We come to feel and know the impossible right down in our bones: we are wildly loved – by God.

Let’s finish the year strong in joy as we count all the ways He loves us!  Life is too short to do anything but truly savor it — to count all the ways you truly loved.

ON SALE FOR 40% OFF RIGHT HERE