Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. I Thessalonians 5:16-18
I decided that I do not thank God enough for the many blessings He has provided to Marc, Luke, and me. Here are the top 7 things (ranked in order) that I am personally thankful for.
1) God: I truly serve a mighty God -- a God I'm working to draw closer to each day of my life. I honestly don't know how I'd make it through my life day to day without Him.
2) A country (the USA) where we have the freedom to worship and serve God openly: I think that, here in the USA, we take it or granted that we can openly worship and serve God. I need to worship and serve God even more openly than I do.
3) Marc, my husband: I feel undeserving, yet privileged, to be Marc's wife. He's the husband for me and me alone. He's the man I most respect and love. He's the leader of our household and provider for our household. He's the earthly father of our son, Luke. He loves God, and each and every day, he works to become an even stronger Godly husband and father. This photo of Marc was taken in August, 2007, in Seaside, OR. It was in a hotel swimming pool. The funny thing was that right above this pool were windows overlooking the beautiful Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean up there is cold. So, we resorted to the pool.
4) Luke: Luke is our son whom we love and cherish. We're thankful for him. We too are excited and feel privileged that God has entrusted him to our care. Our prayer for him is that he one day accepts Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior. We also pray that he too will become a Godly husband and father, if that is in God's plan for him. Here's a photo of him on his tummy, taken just last week.
5) Friends: I'm thankful for the many friends that we have. We have so many that there is absolutely no way I could post photos of them all. So, I'll start out with this photo of my friend Tammy, her son Caleb (at eight months old -- he's now over 2 years old), and me. This photo was taken on a visit to Minneapolis, MN, nearly two years ago.
6) Jobs: I'm thankful for Marc's job at Cessna. He goes there each day, hoping that he can use his job to glorify God. I'm also thankful for my job at a DQ in Wichita as well as my job with Graber Backhoe. I really never planned to work part-time (notice I said, "I never planned" -- God plans other things for my life). Now, I'd have it no other way. I can't imagine working full-time at this point in my life. Our goal is to eventually have me stay home full-time. We're working toward that goal.
7) Our home: Our house just isn't any house. It's our home. It's where memories are made. It's the place we look forward to being at with family each day. It's the place where we want our children to feel like they can come to anytime -- well into adulthood (as long as they do get their own place as adults). There's a line in the movie, "French Kiss," spoken by Meg Ryan...."I want to plant some roots and watch them grow." That pretty much sums up my feelings toward our home.....
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I'm so very thankful for many more things, but the blog post is already long enough. Take time to thank God for the many things you are grateful for.
Finally, this weekend was Valentine's Day. Our original Valentine's Day plans did fall through, but you know what....We didn't let that get us down. We still enjoyed a nice, relaxing weekend together. Luke's teething right now and a bit "not himself." So, it's probably better that we were home a little bit more.
Valentine's Day is a secular holiday. However, our pastor, Dave Reimer, wrote a great article in our church's monthly newsletter. He said that even though Valentine's Day is a secular holiday, we as Christians can claim it because "God IS love, and we are His, and we live eternally because of that love."
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." I John 3:16
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