Consider your Blessings
Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you had a wonderful week and had a chance to take a break, if just for a little while. We were out of town last weekend at a DiscipleNow Weekend in Alabama. Formerly in student ministry in Nashville, we were asked by this wonderful husband and wife, who now work at a church in Alabama, to come speak and lead small groups. It was great to see ministry friends we rarely get to see and chat about ministry.
I worked with the high school girls and Saturday morning, we were given some money and told to be creative and use the money to serve others as missionaries to the community. They bought flowers and handed them out at the local nursing home. Not gonna lie, I usually do not enjoy nursing homes, mainly because I feel sad when I visit, but we had a great time surprising men and ladies with flowers to brighten their rooms! I also loved that they had hallmark Christmas movies playing in their dining hall! One of my favorite parts of Christmas!
For Thanksgiving, we live too far away to travel to see family, since my parents live 15 hours away and my husband’s parents live 12 hours away, so we stayed home and cooked. Trying to be a fun mom, the girls and I celebrated pajama day on Wednesday, so we baked and watched Frozen. We have only seen it one thousand times! We always get up and get dressed and have our routine down, so I thought pajama day would be fun! I do not like staying in the pajamas I slept in through the next day, so we all put on clean pajamas out of the drawer – and that was a stretch for me! It sounds idyllic and I was feeling like a super fun mom, but with three girls three and under, there were spills, tantrums, screaming, fighting, and a million trips to the potty…I guess that’s what we consider a beautiful mess!
As we consider our blessings, I am thankful for the dirty diapers and the hours I spend in the bathroom potty training each day because that means that home is filled with joyful laughter instead of silence. I am thankful for picking up puzzle pieces all over the floor all day long because home is filled with people. I am not super spiritual, so please don’t think that, I am simply trying to remember how many blessings God has given.
We have activity sheets at home I helped the girls complete that have a picture of a turkey and has lines to list things they are thankful for. It lasted approximately 120 seconds with their limited attention spans, but I smiled later that night as my three year old prayed before bedtime and rattled off a lengthy list of blessings in her life.
As I think about this year, it has been filled with uncertainty, stress, anxiety, tears, broken hearts, and prayers. We, like everyone else, are not immune to hardships. We have had many great memories this year and also our share of difficulties, like many of you! As we gathered to formally give thanks to our Lord for His goodness in our lives, it makes me take pause to really think about how richly He has blessed me, even when I am not able to travel to a fantastic destination vacation or afford new clothes when I want.
I am thankful for our first little plot of land in south Mississippi we call home and the little “cottage” I fondly call it that sets on it. I am thankful for the back porch that backs up to woods like I prayed for – my haven where I can take a break from the rest of the world. I am thankful for clothes to wear and food to eat. I am thankful for a dining area turned playroom that keeps my little rugrats safe without them scattering all over the house like roaches (and getting into all kinds of germs)! I prayed so much for that room in this house before we moved in! I am thankful for a warm bed to sleep in and a washer and dryer to wash clothes in. I am thankful that I can afford Lysol spray – I go through a whole can about every week. Yeah…it is cold and flu season, though!
A freak you say? Perhaps…
When I catch myself complaining about what others have and what I do not have, I am embarrassed. I want to thank God for the blessings in my life! What about you? What are you thankful for this year? I am glad to have this time to take time to thank the Lord for his goodness. Let me know how He is blessing your lives!
Love,
Charis
