This is mom of mom and me.
Today is Thankful Thursday. But not just any thankful thursday it is the day america as a country celebrates all the wonderful things that God has done for them.
Today there may be some who are saying, "What do I have to be thankful for my life is a wreck and I don't think I can handle it if it gets any worse." Maybe you are wondering how you are going to handle things now. Maybe your family is at odds with one another, maybe you spouse just walked out on you, maybe you lost a loved to a accident or sickness unexpectedly. There could be a million things that people are facing today that could cause them to be a little bitter about life and maybe even have them saying things like, "I have nothing to be thankful for, I don't feel like celebrating thanks giving my life is a mess and I can't find anything to be thankful for." Well I understand that feeling really well today. One day I was in a marrage that I thought I would be in till forever. There was nothing (so I thought) that I would not be willing to workout with my husband if I had to. I could not picture my life without him in it and even though we had some tough times and we always seemed to prevail and then we were better than before the tough time. But then, a little over a week ago I witnessed something that took my breath away and I suddenly had to get out of the house so I could breathe. My brain was screaming. "NO! This can't be! There has to be a mistake! I saw wrong, I heard wrong! But I knew I hadn't. I was so close I could have reached out and touched him. There was no mistaking what I saw and heard. In my opinion it has got to be real close to the number one thing (if not number 1) that someone could do that could destroy an entire family. It was disgusting and sick and my daughter and I have got to find a way to get past it and get on with our lives. So you see within a matter of 3 minutes my entire life changed and I was left with a broken heart, broken soul and a hurting teenage daughter. It is not just the two of us that are hurt and dissallusioned by this, my adult children are having a hard time with this also, my parents and siblings all loved him. He was our family. Holly, my 22 year old and her husband came and moved me out and I am so thankful for them they were such a life savor. But then afterwards She went back over to the house to get little Hailie's things out of the back yard and she called me and it sounded like she had been crying and she says, "Mom, I walked into the backyard and I guess it hadn't hit me how much stuff youguys had for her back there but I was suddenly struck with such a heavy saddness, that house, that backyard, Tim it has all been such a big part of our lives I just can't believe it is over. Why did he have to be that way and do and say those things? My already broken heart just broke into a few more peaces listening to her pain that day. He was loved and respected by us all. He was the head of our family and he always took care of all of us. Little Hailie wants her pawpaw. She is so confused, she wants to know why nana dosen't have a backyard anymore. Everyday I face heartwrenching situations because of this. So I understand the feeling of what do I have to be thankful for? I have to make it on my own now and I am scared. I am going to have to work 2 or 3 double shifts a week just for us to be ok. I have to be sure I keep Cayenne at the top of my priority list and make sure I know what is going on with her. She is a beautiful teenage girl and I love her dearly and I have be so upset with her because of all the things she had been doing and all the acting out. But now that my eyes were opened to the truth of things it is all starting to make sense to me. Kids act out when they are trying to tell you something that is horrible. They try to get your attention on them and off whatever your attention is on so that maybe they can make you see them and their pain. My attention was on my husband, he was a full time job in himself and so he seemed to monopolize most of my attention and I thought Cayenne was just trying to be some kind of wild unruley kid. But now I have also seen how broken her heart truely is and once again when I look at that my already broken heart it breaks into a million more peaces. We are a family stuggling to deal with a very sick and ugly situation and it is hard to find the good things in our family right now.
But I have been giving this Thanksgiving thing some thought, and to my total amazment and I'm finding myself looking forward to today. Cayenne and I are going up to the nursing home my parents are in and we are taking Thanksgiving dinner to them and my son is going to meet us there and we are going to have thanksgiving in there room there at the nursing home. Then afterwards we are going to go on up to Kansas City and spend a few hours with my sister and we are planning to have a wonderful thanksgiving and spend time with some family. I have so much to be thankful for. God loves me! What has happened in my family is not to be blamed on God. I believe there has been a war going on inside of Tim between good and evil for quiet sometime now and I guess this time he chose the evil one. God gives us free will and he doesn't make our choices for us so when things go bad maybe we made some wrong choices, but we can't blame God. Anyway back to what I have to be thankful for. I have 4 beautiful children and they are all healthy and I will be spending today with two of them. I have 7 grandchildren and they are all healthy happy kids. They are so precious and I have an overflowing amont of love for all of them. I still have my parents and my siblings, I have neices and newphews, I have a church family who cares about us, I have a good steady job, I have friends, I have a roof over my head and a car to drive. If I tried to name everything that I have to be thankful for I would most likely be right here typing this blog this time next week. But that is an example of the things that are dear to my heart and important to my survival. I believe God is looking out for me and Cayenne. I haven't been to good with my prayers this past week, I have had to move and get so many things changed and it just seems like it was an impossible neverending task to just start over from scratch. I haven't been able to sleep well, my brain just won't shut down, But I slept a little tonight. I know it is 3am but I went to bed like at 7:30pm and I went right to sleep and I woke up about an hour ago and let scooter out and was going to go back to bed and decided to talk about being thankful. But I know that Tonya has been praying for us and if I know her she most likely has a whole line of people praying for us all the way from England to America.
I just think that today we should all take time to really reflect on our lives and see what is there and if we do that I think we will be surprised at how many things we realize we have in our lives like people we love and things we need etc..... that we have to be thankful for.
Lets think about this: We have life, oxygen, food, water, the abilitiy to read this blog or whatever else you want to read. God has created a beautiful world full of everything we need, air, water, beauty, amazing sunsets, millions of varieties of foods. He has giving you preciouse gifts, like your family, he made you what makes you, you. Maybe you have a great sense of humor, or a beautiful voice for singing, or maybe you can play a musical instrument, maybe you are a good leader. What are your gifts we all have them, sometimes we think we don't but everyone of us has a gift of somekind that God gave us. The Bible itself is a very special love gift from God. The Old Testament is full of stories of long sufferings and life lessons that set the scene for his son Jesus's trip to earth and humanity.
The book of psalm give many examples of praise and many good reasons to be thankful.
Give praise in all circumstances? Even in the midst of the pain and dissallusions that my family and my heart is going through right now praise is appropriate because God is keeping track of our enemies while we sleep.
Give praise in the dark times? Even in darkness God's beautiful light dawns.
Thank him for family? God will meet your needs and watch over you.
Even God's commands are to be counted as gifts because they bring us life.
Scripture doesn't promise believers a life without trials and problems, but it does promise a life of purpose. I promises that if we love and trust God we are secure. Things happen, "the old saying bad things happen to good people." Yes they do, But even though God never promised us a life without problems or heartaches he promises that if we trust him and keep our focus on him that he will bring us through it. This is a lesson I really need to work on. To many times I think, "its ok God, I got this one." WRONG! I always make a big mess of it. Everytime I took my eyes off of God and went it on my own I sunk just like peter did when he walked on water as long as he didn't look down and continued to look at Jesus he did but the minute he got distracted and looked away from Jesus he began to sink but then what did Jesus do? Peter cried out Jesus help me and there he was reaching down his hand to pull Peter out of the water. Praise God for his faithfullness. No matter that you may be sinking, stop trying to save yourself and just cry out to God for help and I think you will be shocked at how help shows up. Just give it a try. You do have to be sincere and you have to be willing to do what is necessary and sometimes that alone is hard because we think this doesn't make sense but we all have those little gut instints that tell us what to do and a lot of times (most of the time) we try to make it make sense and so since it doesn't we think we are reading it wrong. But it has been my experience (especially what is going on in my life right now) that make sense or not you had better pay attention to it because that little voice in there is God trying to lead you and in proverbs 3:5-6 it tells us to trust the Lord with all your heart and lean not on you own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. So you see maybe it doesn't make sense to us right then but we don't have to understand and maybe if we were to just follow his lead understanding would come, it usually comes anyway but maybe it would come without quiet so much heartache.
We often think of thankfullness in terms of gain. We say thank you to someone who has done a nice thing for us. or we are thankfull that our boss finally noticed us at work and gave us the recognition we deserved. You know stuff like that.
But it is mind boggling when we see people overcome with an attitude of thanksgiving during heartwrenching circumstances. Such as a seriously ill child, a natural disaster destruction, a deadly accident. Somehow families survive these things and some families do it with a lot more grace than others. But those who keep their focus on God during such times come out stronger and more at peace and can go on with there life without it being crippled by bitterness and regrets.
I challange you today to count your blessings. Once you start, my guess is that like me you will find them countless there will be just to many. Life may have thrown you a curve ball and maybe it knocked you off your course and now you are trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces and what pieces to even pick up and move on. It is hard. I know. But I will survive, I am determined to survive. But I will do it with God holding my hand and leading me through. I can't do anything right on my own and I need him and his leadership in my life.
Everything about God is worthy of praise. Do not let anyone or anything rob you of your thankful heart on this Thanksgiving day.
Lets sing with David: Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; Let them say among the nations, "The Lord reigns!" 1 Chronicles 16:31
Be Thankful and Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Mom
Virgo Vs Cancer
8 months ago
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Beautiful Mom!
ReplyDeleteIn response to whether or not you are writing anything worth writing:
There is this song its called "Fifteen" by Greg Long - one of my favorites. I can't find the lyrics, but here is the video, listen carefully to the words. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cVpWlf0-Gos This song speaks to me like no other.
You see Mom, you don't know who knows Jesus or not & every day you see, speak to, or touch someone who is lost. Your smile might be the only one they see all day. None of us have signs stamped on our foreheads that say, "I'm a Christian". So we have to let our actions, our thoughts, & our prayers show through. If you see someone having a bad day & you don't know them, say a silent prayer anyway - cause God does know them. Pray for those you work with, those you take care of, those who wait on you in a restruant, the cashier as you check out of the store, the mom that's yelling at her kids in walmart, & on & on. They don't have to know you're praying for them & you don't have to know them, because God already does. The thing is you don't know how many people are praying for that person, you don't know how many peple it's going to take before that person realizes that God loves them & that he wants a relationship with them. You don't know how many have prayed for you at one time or another. You may never get to witness to the fruit of the seed you've planted or the seed you've nurtured, but you should rest peacefully knowing you did your part in helping it grow. Does that make sense?
We do not know how many people are reading our blog, we do not know how many people just happen to stumble upon it, & we don't know how many people it will touch. Yes, it would be nice to receive more feedback, but we can rest knowing that we are helping in the care & nurturing of their spiritual gardens. Our blog posts don't have to be massive or amazing - they just have to speak the truth, that God loves them & desires to be in relationship with them. When we think to ourselves why am I writing this, what's the point, is anybody even reading it, is it even helping them in anyway - that's the Devil's thoughts. He doesn't want us to write Christian things, he doesn't want us to pray, he doesn't want us to tend to the gardens, & he definately does not want us being someone's 15.
We have so many people to pray for that it can seem- endless, but the truth is our prayers do not have to be beautifully crafted words. God knows our hearts & our thoughts - which is why we must keep them pure - our prayers can be 1 sentence & God knows everything else, there's no need to ramble. As a matter of fact the is a scripture about that, Job 15: 2-3
2 "Would a wise man answer with empty notions
or fill his belly with the hot east wind?
3 Would he argue with useless words,
with speeches that have no value?
There's another one that fits even more so but I can't think of it - it will dawn on me about midnight or so probably haha. So we don't want to ramble on & on in our prayers, that's useless words. Look at the Prayers of David in Psalms, look how he says what he needs to say with rich, full, & meaningful words? That's an example of how our prayers should become.
Say you see a lady in walmart that looks like she's having a horrible day or the waitress that delivers your order looks plum exhausted - you've no idea what is going on in their lives, you've no idea if they are a Christian, but you feel for them - so say a short prayer. "Dear Lord watch over and bless that waitress, and please give her rest. Amen". Before you know it, you're praying all day long, your thoughts become prayers, & it becomes as natural to you as breathing. You may never know how many people your prayers have touched, helped, uplifted, encouraged, or just made their day better - so don't let Satan say, "Hey, you are waisting your time girl!" because he is lying to you!!!
Post as often as you feel led to post, when things just hit you like that - 9 times out of 10, it's God saying "Someone else needs to hear this too". That is why people share their testiomonies with others, we never know if our testiomony will help someone or not either, but if it helps open their eyes just a little more to the love of God - then we've done our part. We are called to share the good news & the love of God, sharing our testiomonies with others does just that, because we are saying "Look at all I did wrong & God still loves me!" People who don't know God or are having a hard time hearing or seeing him - they need that confirmation.
So do not get discouraged, do not feel nervous. Be confident because you know that God had you write, touch, or pray for someone out there and you listened.
Thanks for posting again, Mom - glad to see you back!
Me