Written by Amanda Farris of Embracing Grace
Have you ever been so overwhelmed with thankfulness that you just couldn’t contain it and felt there was no possible way to express your gratitude?
A couple years ago we were blessed and served more than we ever could have imagined.
I had just hung up my coaching whistle to take on the task of full time mom- so that means we went from 2 full time incomes to 1.
During this transition time we were also praying that God would help us to build or buy a house.
We prayed for a home that we could raise a family in. We wanted a place to practice hospitality and to serve and love others. (Up to this point we had moved 5 times in 5 years!)
Anyways- The Lord blessed us and helped us to build a house to make a home. (This is a long story for another day)
But what I want to focus on today is the help that we received. So many people – friends, family, and community members showed up to help in various different ways. They blessed us beyond measure with their time and resources. So after it was all finished my husband and I were overwhelmed with gratitude towards all these people. We wanted them to truly feel how thankful we were and how much we truly appreciated them.
For some reason- a Thank You card would just not do it this time.
So we decided to host a Thank You dinner and give out “gifts” to everyone that helped us.
Now- we wanted to be able to get everyone extravagant nice gifts as a token of thanks- but obviously if that was in the budget- we probably wouldn’t have needed so much help in building process of our house.
So what were we to do?
We decided to host a “Thank You” dinner and look everyone in the eyes and tell them face to face how much we appreciated them.
Basically it was a red carpet affair at our home. We wanted to love on and serve our guests of honor.
At our Thank You dinner we served everyone a meal and then had a gift/award ceremony where we gave everyone an “appropriate” token for a way that they helped us. Here is list of a few ways that we said Thanks.
If they helped with….
Sweat Equity: Friends and family spend hours of painting, scraping sheet rock, glueing down wood floors, etc.. etc..
Gift: Sweat Bands
Insulation: Friends spent hours in the heat of July insulating our home
Gift: Gloves
Flooring: Someone really helped us with flooring. “They really put the pedal to the metal and we were Floored with their generosity”
Gift: Vase with Flowers (petals)
Moving: Wow! Someone came and moved all of our stuff in a day and basically packed it too!
Gift: Homemade Movers Business Card
Painting: Friends came and gave our walls a splash of color
Gift: Water Colors
Builder: Helped us more than words could express in this post.
Gift: Cardboard box homeless sign that we gave to him since we no longer needed it.
Babysitter: (While we spent all our time building our house)
Gift: Toy Baby Bottle
Sheet Rock: A friend hung our sheet rock
Gift: A bucket of rocks
Monetary Help:
Gift: A 100 Grand Candy Bar
Electricity and Tile: Wow! What a great friend who did this for us. This particular person actually had twins on the way and various other projects and things going on but spent countless hours helping us.
Gift: Candy Shockers and Tilex
During this Thank You dinner we gave a presentation to each person when we handed out the gifts. We publicly acknowledged them and explained a bit more on why we got them a certain gift.
Some of the explanations were funny and were accompanied by a humorous story.
Some of the explanations of gifts were very heartfelt and emotional accompanied by some tears.
Oh and we also bought these personalized little gems for everyone. We wanted to give them a million dollars! Even though they were worth way more.
I’ve tried to condense this long story for you and tell you with a purpose to encourage you.
I encourage you to think outside the box if you are trying to thank someone.
So if you are trying to Thank someone today but don’t feel like a card is the route you want to go then Host a Thank You dinner.
- Serve food (Keep it simple if it is a large group. We did BBQ)
- Spend some time thinking about a creative way to thank them. What is a small token that you could give to accompany your presentation ceremony? Is there a funny or heartfelt story that you could tell?
- Send out real invites letting them know they are the guest of honor and their presence is requested at a Thank You dinner.
- Enjoy yourself! Look them in the eyes, hug them tight and tell them THANK YOU!
- HAVE FUN!
Amanda Farris is a wife to her super hero hunk of a husband and a mother to 3 little kiddos. Amanda is a teacher/coach who hung up her coaching whistle after she got promoted to motherhood. She is a runner who loves all things sports and outdoors. She loves early morning traveling, long coffee chats with her husband, and fresh flowers on her table. She is an adventurer at heart and has a great talent of unintentionally becoming over-busy (that’s a bad thing). So she is constantly reevaluating her life priorities which keeps her on her toes and helps her to live life passionately and deliberately. You can find her occasionally blogging at www.embracinggrace.org. Come Join the Adventure.
Amanda! This was so lovely! Thanks for it!