Thank you

Thank you to everyone who prayed for my family this weekend, and those that even went so far as to spread the word to other believers.

My mom is doing better. I hope and pray she will continue to improve, even though the pace seems horrifically slow right now, to both me AND her. At my last phone call, I asked her how she is filling the time and she responded that she is sitting around a lot until time for her to get up and move to another room just to make sure she still could.

We're a family that never went to the dr, and certainly never went to the emergency room. I'm 25 yrs old and have never seen a dentist, and to this day still haven't been to a dr for anything beyond a physical both for college and the Red Cross. We've been blessed.

Sitting here thinking now about my blessings, I realize how much they tend to simply blend into the background of my life. My family, my job, my health, my home. The previous owners of my home were drug dealers, and as an act of violence against them someone set their car on fire outside the house. The house caught fire and was substantially damaged, both inside and out. My father bought the house for 3,000 and spent another 10,000 redoing a lot of the inside, and a little of the outside. My house looks like a burnt shack on the outside, but on the inside it is just lovely. He's never done anything about the roof, AT ALL, and yet it has never leaked. In the 4 years that I've lived there, I have never needed to have any type of major repairs done. No minor repairs are coming to my mind at the moment either. ---- What would you pay for that kind of blessing?

In monopoly, the get out of jail free card saves you 50 bucks. It is a gift and a blessing that has a specific value. If you receive a gift of health though, the value is harder to see. You don't notice the gift until it's missing. The same with the value of a car that rarely breaks down, and a house that doesn't fall apart, and a thousand other expenses that come along at the spur of the moment and knock the wind out of your budget.

You don't see it until it's gone.

I've been struggling with something lately, unsure of how Christ would handle a situation that I've found myself in. Yet every time I turn around, someone is telling me to praise God. They're not pointing at me when they say it, but they always seem to quote a scripture, or mention a situation or preach, that we should praise God for our blessings because we have no idea how truly blessed we are.

So, I leave you with the same idea I've been chewing on. Praise God. Count your many blessings, name them one after another. Saying "praise God praise God" doesn't praise God as much as praising Him for ________. Fill in your blank. Have an attitude of gratitude, walk with gratitude and thankfulness over His many blessings. If you think you don't have that many, trust me, you're not looking hard enough.