Over the past few months, I have been rereading the book “I Believe in Love” by Fr. Jean C. J. D’Elbee. This powerful book is one of my all-time favorite spiritual reads and I cannot recommend it enough. It has entirely transformed the way I view the spiritual life and the love and mercy of our God. 

A few weeks ago I was sitting in adoration and reading the chapter titled “Abandonment to Jesus”. I intended to just read a few pages and slowly soak it in, but every page was richer and fuller than the one before and before I knew it I had finished the chapter. The following is what poured out of my heart in my journal afterward: 

“O Jesus I thank you for everything” 

This! This is the key to total abandonment to God. Gratitude. How beautifully simple and yet how easily overlooked.

I truly believe we overthink abandonment to the point of missing the point entirely. True and total abandonment is nothing more and nothing less than seeing the Divine Will at work in everything. Every person, every action, every breath I take, every step I walk, every breeze that brushes against my skin, everything is filled with the Divine Omnipotence.

Total abandonment means learning to recognize God in all things and at all times and we do this by thanking God for everything. An act of gratitude is thus an act of abandonment. Thanking Jesus for everything – the good and bad that happens to us and around us is precisely how we abandon everything to Jesus. 

“O Jesus I thank you for everything. 

How rich this little prayer is! How it glorifies Jesus, and how it pleases Him! Each time you say it, it reaffirms your disposition of love for Him in total abandonment. It sings you into His Heart, for it sings of His love for you.” – I Believe in Love

Total abandonment is making the conscious act of my will to thank God for ALL. To see all as GIFT – even and especially when my nature feels broken and hopeless and confused. 

Sweet Jesus, I must learn to thank you for the brokenness because it allows me to experience You as my Savior. I must offer you my lack of confidence, my distrust, doubts, and worries and I must offer You all of this with the greatest confidence that You will not reject these but transform them in Your love. 

I pray, dear friends, that we may all learn how to live out true abandonment to God through simple acts of gratitude every single day.