Forty Reasons to Thank God
At 6:07 on the morning of her fortieth birthday, Nadine Brown woke up to a cake she had bought for herself and a silence she didn’t know what to do with.
Not the peaceful kind of silence.
The kind that sat on the edge of the bed and asked rude questions.
No husband?
No children running in to mash up the frosting?
No big party with cousins arguing over who cooked the best curry goat?
No balloons, no matching pajamas, no surprise video montage with soft piano music and people saying, “Nadine, you are such an inspiration,” like they were reading from a church program?
Just her.
A one-bedroom apartment in Kingston. A blue cotton sheet twisted around her knees. A half-finished mug of ginger tea on the nightstand. Rain from the night before still dripping from the zinc awning outside her window. A neighbor’s rooster crowing as if he had personally invented morning.
Nadine turned her face toward the wall.
“Lord,” she whispered, “is this forty?”
The sun answered first.
It slipped through the thin curtains, gold and gentle, touching the old photograph on her dresser. In it, little Nadine stood between her mother and grandmother in front of a small house with a mango tree leaning over the roof. Her school uniform was too big. Her smile was too bold for teeth that still hadn’t made up their mind.
She stared at that child for a long time.
Then she sat up, reached for the notebook beside her Bible, and wrote across the top of a clean page:
Forty Reasons to Thank God.
She tapped the pen against her chin.
“One,” she said. “Thank You for waking me up.”
That one was easy.
Two was harder.
She looked around the apartment and saw the things she owned, but also the things she had buried inside them. The secondhand sofa where she had cried after Devon left. The tiny kitchen where she had stretched one tin of mackerel across three meals and still laughed with her friend Keisha on the phone.
“Girl, you eating mackerel again?” Keisha had asked.
“And rice,” Nadine said proudly.
“Plain rice?”
“Rice is rice, ma’am. Don’t disrespect the grain.”
They had laughed so hard Nadine forgot she was hungry.
She wrote:
2. For laughter when money was small.
The number opened a door.
Suddenly she was eight again, walking to school in shoes that pinched her toes. Rain beat the zinc roof so hard the classroom sounded like a steel pan band warming up with no conductor. Her teacher, Miss Mattis, stood at the blackboard, tall and sharp-eyed, with chalk dust on her skirt.
“Nadine Brown,” Miss Mattis said one afternoon, holding up her composition book, “you have words in you.”
The class giggled. Nadine wanted to disappear.
Miss Mattis came closer and lowered her voice. “Don’t hide them because your life feel small. Words can build a house before money can.”
That was the first time anybody had spoken to Nadine like her future was already standing nearby.
She wrote:
3. For Miss Mattis, who saw me before I saw myself.
By ten, the list was warming her. By thirteen, she was crying.
Not ugly crying, exactly. More like the kind where your nose betrays you and you start searching for tissue with dignity you no longer have.
She remembered her mother, Elaine, stirring cornmeal porridge before dawn, humming old gospel songs under her breath.
“Mommy, why you always singing so early?” little Nadine used to complain.
“Because if I don’t sing, I might fuss,” Elaine would say. “And singing sound better in the Lord’s ears.”
Her mother worked long hours cleaning other people’s houses. She came home with swollen feet and still found strength to braid Nadine’s hair, fry dumplings, and ask about homework. Sometimes dinner was simple. Sometimes it was miraculous.
Once, when the cupboard looked like it had joined a fasting ministry, a woman from church appeared with a bag of groceries.
Elaine opened it and blinked fast.
The woman said, “I was passing and felt to bring this.”
Nadine remembered her mother’s hand gripping the doorway.
That night, they ate stewed chicken, rice and peas, and sweet plantain. Elaine prayed over the food so long Nadine whispered, “Mommy, if we don’t eat soon, the chicken going back to heaven.”
Her mother laughed until tears fell.
Nadine wrote:
14. For provision that knocked on the door wearing church shoes.
By midmorning, music floated in from a neighbor’s radio. Beres Hammond, sweet and aching. A motorbike zipped past. Somebody outside shouted, “Morning, Miss Brown! Big day today, eh?”
Nadine smiled through the window. “If you say so, Mr. Lewis.”
“Forty look good on you!”
“You can see forty from down there?”
“Mi have spiritual eyesight!”
She laughed, and something in her chest loosened.
But then she reached number twenty-one.
The pen stopped.
Devon.
She almost skipped him.
That would’ve been neater. More Christian-looking, maybe. A clean list full of blessings people could clap for. But gratitude after hardship didn’t come wrapped in neat paper. Sometimes it arrived looking like a bruise you finally stopped pressing.
Devon had been charming in that easy way that made aunties whisper, “Good young man,” without checking references. He brought her patties after work. He called her “queen.” He sat beside her in church and sang off-key with confidence only the truly blessed or truly shameless could carry.
Then came the borrowing.
Then the excuses.
Then the lies that rearranged her life.
He drained her savings with promises about a business that never opened. When Nadine asked questions, he made her feel small for needing answers.
“You don’t trust me?” he said.
“I trusted you with everything,” she replied.
He left anyway.
For months, shame followed her around the apartment. She felt foolish. She felt used. Worst of all, she felt angry at herself, as if love had been a crime she committed against her own heart.
Now, at forty, she stared at the empty line.
Her mouth tightened.
“I’m not thanking You for what he did, Lord.”
The room stayed quiet.
“I won’t pretend that was okay.”
Still quiet.
Her hand shook, but she wrote slowly:
21. For surviving betrayal without becoming bitter.
Then she added beneath it:
Gratitude is not permission. Forgiveness is not a return ticket. Boundaries are holy too.
The sentence surprised her.
She sat back.
There it was. The hidden wound had finally spoken, and it didn’t sound weak. It sounded grown.
Nadine pressed her palm to her chest. For years, she had thought being thankful meant smoothing over the wrong, making the person who hurt her more comfortable than the woman who had to heal. But God had never asked her to lie about pain. He had been her Hiding Place when she was embarrassed. Her Shepherd when she didn’t know where to go. Her Protector when “love” came wearing a mask. Her Provider when the bank account was gasping for air.
She could thank God for the strength she gained without thanking Devon for the wound he made.
That revelation entered the room like fresh breeze after rain.
She wrote number twenty-two faster.
22. For the friend who stayed.
That was Keisha, of course.
Keisha, who came over with curry chicken, a box of tissues, and the kind of face that said, “If I see him, Jesus will have to hold me back.”
“Nadine,” Keisha had said, kicking off her sandals, “cry all you need. But drink water. We don’t dehydrate over foolishness.”
Keisha sat with her through nights of silence. She answered calls at 2 a.m. She reminded Nadine to eat. She prayed without making a performance of it.
Once, when Nadine said, “Maybe I’m too much,” Keisha pointed a plastic fork at her.
“You are not too much. Some people just have small containers.”
That line deserved its own scripture reference.
Nadine wrote:
23. For friends with faith, food, and attitude.
The list kept going.
She remembered the stranger at Half-Way Tree who paid her bus fare when her card wouldn’t work and the driver was already vexed.
“No worries, sister,” the man said, tapping his own card. “One day you’ll do it for somebody else.”
She did. Three months later, for a schoolgirl with frightened eyes and coins that didn’t add up.
She remembered the night taxi ride when the driver suddenly refused to take the shortcut he always took.
“Spirit tell me no,” he said.
Minutes later, they heard sirens from that very road.
She remembered sitting outside a job interview in a borrowed blouse, whispering, “Lord, if this door is mine, open it. If not, don’t let me break myself trying to force it.”
She got the job.
She remembered losing the job.
She remembered getting another one that treated her better.
She remembered finishing her certificate at night, eyes burning, coffee tasting like punishment. She remembered her first professional achievement, her name printed in a program under “Coordinator,” and how she called her mother in the bathroom because she didn’t want anyone to see her cry.
“Mommy,” she said, “they put my name.”
Elaine shouted so loudly Nadine had to pull the phone away.
“Jesus! My child name in print! Wait till Sister Marva hear this!”
By number thirty-two, Nadine got up and made fresh tea. She cut a thin slice of birthday cake, then cut a thicker one because, as her grandmother used to say, “If you going taste sugar, taste it properly.”
The cake was vanilla with guava filling. The bakery had written Happy 40th Nadine in purple icing, with a heart that looked a little like a yam, but she appreciated the effort.
She placed the slice beside the notebook.
Outside, the sky shifted from gray to blue. The wet leaves of the mango tree across the road flashed in the light. Somewhere, a child laughed. Somewhere, a pressure cooker hissed. Somewhere, somebody was sweeping their yard like the dust had personally offended them.
Nadine picked up the old photograph and studied her younger self again.
That little girl had no idea how far they would travel together.
She didn’t know about the rooms where Nadine would be overlooked.
She didn’t know about the bills paid on the last possible day.
She didn’t know about the prayers whispered into pillows.
She didn’t know how many times God’s grace would pull her back from despair, not always with thunder, often with tea, music, a phone call, a bus fare, a sunrise.
Nadine wrote:
36. For every rescue I noticed late.
Then:
37. For divine protection seen and unseen.
Then:
38. For dreams unfinished, because unfinished is not dead.
At thirty-nine, she paused.
She thought of the life she imagined at twenty-five. Husband by thirty. Two children by thirty-five. A house with a veranda. Sunday dinners. Matching outfits for Christmas photos. The kind of life people recognized quickly as blessed.
Her life had taken a different road.
That difference had felt like failure for a long time.
Now, sitting in the sunlight with cake crumbs on her plate and tears drying on her cheeks, she saw it more clearly.
Her life was not empty. It was full of names, mercies, roads not taken, warnings heard, strength built, laughter rescued from sorrow, and prayers answered in ways she didn’t expect.
Time itself had been the gift.
Forty years.
Forty years to learn.
Forty years to forgive without reopening doors.
Forty years to create a life with God in the center, even when the frame looked nothing like the picture in her head.
Forty years of God's faithfulness showing up in ordinary clothes.
She wrote:
39. For time.
The last line waited.
Nadine held the pen, then laughed softly.
“I should make this one deep, eh, Lord?”
The rooster crowed again, dramatic as ever.
“Even the rooster have comments.”
She looked at the photograph, the cake, the room, the morning. She thought of Black woman healing, not as a slogan, but as a real breath in a real body after real pain. She thought of spiritual growth that didn’t look like floating above the mess, but standing in it with clean hands and a steady heart. She thought of finding purpose, not by chasing a perfect life, but by noticing the holy one already unfolding.
At last, she wrote:
40. For the woman I became while You were keeping me.
Then Nadine did something she hadn’t planned.
She opened her front door.
“Mr. Lewis!” she called.
The old man looked up from watering one stubborn croton plant. “Yes, birthday queen?”
“You want cake?”
“Is that a question or a temptation?”
“Both.”
Within twenty minutes, Keisha was on her way, Elaine was on speakerphone singing “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” slightly ahead of the beat, and Mr. Lewis was at the table eating cake like it owed him money.
Nadine tore a fresh page from the notebook. At the top she wrote:
Thank You, God, for forty years of protection, provision, mercy, and grace.
Then she taped it to the wall above the small table.
Not for decoration.
For remembrance.
She poured tea. She cut more cake. She let herself be celebrated without apologizing for the shape of her life.
And when the afternoon rain returned, tapping the zinc like fingers keeping time, Nadine lifted her face and smiled because forty had not arrived empty-handed, it had brought proof that God had been holding her all along.
A gentle reader reflection
If Nadine’s birthday reflections felt familiar, take a quiet moment today and write your own gratitude prayer. Start with five reasons if forty feels like too much.
Name the tender things. Name the hard lessons too. You don’t have to excuse what hurt you to thank God for how He carried you through it.
This story was inspired by the spirit of thanksgiving found in Prayers by Racquel R. Reece, a heartfelt collection that helps readers remember God’s protection, provision, mercy, and grace. If this story stirred something in you, consider discovering and purchasing Prayers by Racquel R. Reece for your own moments of prayer, healing, and celebrating life.
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