I love these autumn months. For our little family, fall is our slower season when Casey teaches less and we have plentiful three-day weekends. With soccer games on Saturdays and a fresh weekly routine of school, I anticipate this season. We have gotten off to a good start but very early into our school year I started questioning my choice of the adjective slower to describe this season. It isn't feeling slow. I'm feeling most days like I'm not keeping up. At all.
For example, my middle son left the dinner table to use the bathroom and returned with a disgusted look on his face and proceeded to describe to us and the guests at the table the color of the stuff that was on the inside of the toilet bowl and why he couldn't use that potty. So, I know, all my potties could use a scrubbing.
But, they are dirty because last weekend was gorgeous and instead of scrubbing and cleaning we took our boys up to Pymatuning Reservoir and rented a little dingy fishing boat and tooled around and had a blast, despite my predisposition to nausea. Casey impressed us all by catching a 36" musky with his bare hands. Can you smell anything fishy from the picture?
Somewhere this last year I drifted away from jotting down thanksgivings, which is very sad because it is one of my more reliable forms of journaling and to not have a record of what I am thankful for is to not have a record the faithfulness my God has shown me. I have become lazy in looking for things for which to be thankful.
I sat myself down one morning this week and made myself come up with ten things for which I could give thanks. I am embarrassed at how hard it was to get going, but then the ink began to flow and it was as if I started seeing again.
We do choose thanksgiving or not. We can choose to see everything as a good gift from our Father or we can choose to see it as not. It really is so simple. What helps you to see?
Pictures and words are reminders for me. For a few reasons, a computer hard drive crash being one, I have spent very little time with my pictures this year. Going back through the pictures I have taken (which are fewer than normal) stirs my heart with thanksgiving. I have been given a lot. My life is full!
What stirs you to thank the One who gives you life and life so abundantly? We need help in giving thanks always. How can you help yourself, train yourself, to give thanks always?
I want to begin now, asking the Lord to do His work in me and give me a more thankful heart today, rather than wait for that one day in November when we all eat too much turkey and try to come up with one thing we are thankful for before we stuff ourselves.
Father, forgive me for my ingratitude. You have given me everything and I deserve nothing.
Draw on my soul the lineaments of Christ,
in every trace and feature of which thou wilt
take delight, for I am thy workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus,
thy letter written with the Holy Spirit's pen,
thy tilled soil ready for the sowing, then harvest.
Valley of Vision, A Christian's Prayer
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| Chillin'. |
