Today I attended a funeral with my 88-year-old dad. It was the funeral of a woman who lived across the street from my family when I was growing up, a woman for whom I feel much admiration and affection.  She and her husband, along with their children, go as far back as my memory goes of my family living on that street. We moved in when I was three months shy of turning four, and they were across the street two doors down. At that time they had three children; the other three would come later, as would my only sibling. When we moved to that street, I was still an only child. I guess my parents celebrated the move by conceiving my little sister who was born nine months later.

As we sat in the church today, my eyes on the grown children mourning their mother (my friends from childhood), I thought about that street and our years growing up there. I thought about their house and the people in it.  I thought about their family of six children and how to me, one of two children, it seemed to be a house full of laughter and fun, a mysterious way to live having all those siblings. Of course, our house had plenty of laughter and fun, too, but I didn’t have all those siblings.  And even though at the time I could hardly stand the one sibling I had, wasn’t it perfectly natural to think having more would be preferable? At least in theory?  I thought about the fact that of those six children, one of them became my sister’s best neighborhood friend. I thought about their mom, of course, and their dad who pre-deceased her.  I thought quite a bit about all our moms,  houses, and all our childhoods.

Sharing a street growing up means sharing a part of your own personal history.  It means sharing a collective memory.  We can all remember the saplings that have now become proud and beautiful trees, remember the daisy chains we made while sitting in the grass (do children still sit in the grass?),  remember the boys (and sometimes the girls) drinking from water hoses, remember the small fleet of our bikes and riding them together down the street and beyond, remember climbing trees, remember baseball games in an empty field, remember the voices of our mothers calling us home from the porch instead of a cell phone, remember when our street that was originally gravel was paved, remember the birth of every family’s younger children, remember Halloweens after Halloweens, trick or treating together in a band of goblins made up of various ages and sizes, older siblings responsible for the younger ones as we walked the boundaries we’d been given.  There was no need for our parents to walk along with us.  It was such an innocent time.  We remember and remember.  There were many houses on our street with children, and when we were all playing outside, we were quite a number.  Of course, we didn’t all play together.  There was a natural pecking order, and it was determined by age.  It was as much a rule of nature on our block of that street as day following night, and it was something to which we strictly adhered. After all, it gave us a much-needed break from playing with our siblings.

I thought about the fact that since I was only three when we moved there, I wasn’t allowed to cross the street, so I sat on our front steps waving to the little girl (not much older) who lived directly across the street. She’d wave back, and it seems now that we sat there for hours waving and grinning at each other, but I’m sure it wasn’t for that long.  I do know it was everyday.  I suppose we had to wait for a parent to walk one of us over to the other. That little girl and I grew up together on that street, as did the family sitting in the church today saying good-bye to their mother, and we remained close friends.  She was my best neighborhood friend.  Don’t we all have one?  We all grew up on that street, all of us from the different families.  All the way up.  We all started school on that street, and we all graduated from high school while living there, too.  When we were in lower elementary school, most of our families had only one car.  Our dads would car pool to work – though not all to the same place – and so our moms would car pool taking us to school.  Sitting cramped in an automobile decades before required seatbelts is an almost indescribable experience. Later, when we were older, we formed unplanned gangs with the other neighborhood kids from other streets to walk to and from school.  Most of us went on to graduate from college, most of us from this blue-collar neighborhood with parents who badly wanted college educations for their baby-boomer children. All of us married while our parents were still neighbors, with some of us still living at home.

Now we’ve all lost at least one parent, some of us both.  Now we know the perils of adulthood, that good marriages last but bad marriages don’t.  All our parents somehow had good marriages.  Some of us weren’t as fortunate.  For some of us it took more than one marriage to get that good one. We know the joys and the trials of parenthood, and we certainly know the grief, the raw grief of losing the parents whose voices called us home in the evenings and worked to give us everything they could, including a childhood worth remembering.  And they gave us each other.  We don’t see each other much these days, but we know we’re all only a phone call or Facebook post away.  And we remember.

Today we had a guest speaker at church who stood in for our pastor for Sunday services. She gave a good message, one that addressed fear over faith. Listening to her speak, I remembered a sentence from Ann Voskamp’s book, ONE THOUSAND GIFTS, in which is stated, “It is impossible to give thanks and feel fear simultaneously.” That sentence, one among many that I’ve remembered from the book, seems to make its way to the forefront of my memory often.

Each and every day we all face fears, different kinds of things that make us afraid. Sometimes our own fears are small compared to those others are facing. Sometimes we’re the ones facing the huge, important, life-changing fears. No matter, to remember that point, that when giving gratitude to God for what do have, it is impossible to feel fear at that exact moment, is to remember a way to face the fear without letting it win. I’ve tested the thought more times than I can count. It’s always been true. Whenever I’ve felt fear, whether over something important or important only to me, I’ve noticed that remembering to give thanks for something in my life cancels out the fear.

If we’ve lived to a certain age, at least past our twenties, and maybe into our thirties, we “get it”. Once we’ve grown out of adolescence, and perhaps married and taken on parenthood, we realize how much we have to be thankful for in our lives. Some people take longer to make the connection, to understand that what we consider to be “ours” is actually only ours because God is gracious enough to let us have it, be that anything material or (more importantly) the people in our lives that have become so important to us. I know that’s where I often stumble. I don’t want to be reminded that my loved ones, my children and my grandchildren, my husband, my extended family, my friends, all those I cherish are but gifts from God. He has given me the gift of having those precious beings in my life, but in reality they belong to Him. Many times those very ones who bring me such joy, who have special places in my heart, are the ones who cause me the most fear. It’s at those times, when I can feel the fear taking over and winning, that if I remember to thank God for the very existence of them, for the very opportunity and gift of loving them, that I can no longer fear. Thanking Him for my loved ones reminds me that they are really His, and the fear that is surrounding me on their behalf begins to dissipate. It doesn’t happen immediately, but it does happen.

Doing the gratitude thing to cancel out fear works in all sorts of situations, not only when it comes to our loved ones. For as many times as we feel fear and for as many reasons, there is always something right in front of us that we know is a gift from God. We know it like we know our names, but we don’t always think it. When we consciously take a moment to think it, to make ourselves see it, and to name it so that we can thank God for it, that fear living inside us seems to evaporate. In my case I can feel a type of lightening of my load (which is usually the world carried on my shoulders). It’s nice to give that up for awhile, even if only a few minutes, to that One much larger than I. Later, of course, the fear may come back. When that happens, giving gratitude will once again chase it away.

I’m more than a little glad that I read Ann Voskamp’s book. I’m more than a little glad that I know gratitude can counteract fear. Gratitude can slow us down, make us realize that we’ve been given countless things from God, and that in the larger scheme of things (for after all, in the midst of our fears we seem to have tunnel vision), He cares for us enough to have given us what we already have. Knowing that, it’s easier to realize He is with us in our fears and that those, too, are under His power. Those, too, those scary things that cause our fear, are not insurmountable to God. Nothing is.

So, this morning, sitting there in church, morning light shining through stained glass windows, our guest speaker giving a message on fear vs. faith, I couldn’t help but remember what I’ve already learned about the power of gratitude to God in the face of any fear. Showing our gratitude, naming our gratitude, telling God of our gratitude, is a powerful weapon against any fear at all.

Today I am grateful for the reminder given me this morning. Today I am grateful that I know the power of gratitude. Now if I can only continue to remember it and apply it whenever I need an antidote of a fear I’m facing.

Today I’m grateful for you and that you’re reading this post!