Biscuits at Nana's

Ever feel slightly under-appreciated? I do. Not that I need to take the credit all the time but there are times when a little would be nice.

Like the day my family and I were going to visit my husband’s Nana and my young daughter piped up about how much she loves going to visit Big Nana. “Why’s that?” I asked, anticipating all the reasons it might be – the special toys she has, the bike the girls love riding which was my husband’s when he was little, Nana herself.

“I love her biscuits! She’s such a good cooker, Mummy. She always has really yummy biscuits for us to eat.”

Yup, under-appreciated. I sat there in the car trying to figure out whether to laugh or be offended! (I laughed) See, Nana doesn’t bake. I do. I make a point of taking homemade biscuits with us every time we go visit her. Gingernuts, choc chip cookies, shortbread, snickerdoodles, gingerbread, double choc, iced sugar cookies… Those afternoon teas my daughter so appreciated Nana creating for her were biscuits I’d spent my morning baking. Every time.

I didn’t need the appreciation, I love baking, but it would have been nice for my daughter to notice that I’d been the one to provide the food, much as I laughed about it at the time.

I was laughing about that story again last week as I was trying to think of what type of biscuit to make when we visited Nana on the weekend. It made me wonder how many times God has given me a gift or gone to the trouble of setting something up and I, like my daughter, have totally missed who the real benefactor is.

I call it coincidence, think it’s of my own making or assume it just happens when God is the one sitting there waiting for me to notice that it was him and say thanks.

I challenge you today to think through your life and find moments to be thankful for. Big ones, little ones, seemingly completely inconsequential ones, the things that wouldn’t matter to anyone but you, the sunrises and sunsets, people being in the right moment at the right time, things that just ‘happened’ – because God made it so.

No matter what kind of day you’ve had – whether it’s been brilliant or one you’d rather wish you could have skipped altogether – find something to thank God for in it. Because I guarantee, there’s something.

And he’d love the appreciation.