Give Thanks Day 8

Today I want to GIVE THANKS for GOD'S WORD!!

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

 Father, I thank you for Your Word. I thank you that it is alive, the more I study Your Word the more it becomes alive in my life. You speak to in ways that only through it can I hear and understand. Thank you for speaking to me through Your Word. May You continue to give me a desire to know You through Your Word! Help me continue to hide it in my heart!!

 

Give Thanks Day 7

Today I want to Give Thanks for Am's husband, Matt!! He came into our lives not long after Am graduated from High School. (wow, that was when she was the same age as Sis!) So it has been about 8 years that we have been blessed with him in our lives.

 





In 2008, he became an official part of our family. Bless his heart, he is an only child and God chose to put Am in his life, not only does she have siblings on our side, she also has siblings on her mother's side. Needless to say, if he can deal with just one half of the equation then he is a jewel!! Because as you have seen, my parents are divorced and since they get along, we are all together from time to time, and that can really mess with people's heads. Even the fact that Am's mother & I get along, really confuses people. 

 

He & Am were in college (she was 20) when we told her that she would be a sister AGAIN.... and with them being away, they weren't around very much when Kea was a baby. Kea loved Matt. He always wanted him. One summer, Kea was about  and they went to the beach with us. Kea was all about Matt. Am was pretty much chopped liver. Kea would say where's Matt? every time she walked in the room. He would say Matt was his brother. It was so cute & we all laughed over how he did her. The best part was when Matt came in and he said, "where's dat gurl?" :) Matt loved that and still to this day, you can find him playing with Keaton. He is truly his brother!

 

All the times that he played with Kea, we would say, "he is going to be a great Daddy one day" And that day came on April 17, 2010. He is a wonderful husband and a great father to Baby C. (another day of Give Thanks to come). He is a very special young man, and Sis summed it up the other night when she said she was thankful for her siblings, including Matt, I don't just think of him as my brother-in-law but as my brother.

 

Oh Father, thank you for you for Matt. Thank you for bringing him into Am's life and into our family. Thank you for the husband that he is and for the father that he is. How awesome to watch a family start out and grow and be able to juggle all the differences and the family dynamics that come with Am, especially our crowd. Thank you for allowing all my children to be at church with us (oh, he is a nurse and works weekends!!but he was off) yesterday. It was awesome to have them all there together, worshipping the Lord as a family!







Give Thanks Day 6

Today I want to give thanks for God's Protection!!!

He alone protects and saves me;
      he is my defender,
      and I shall never be defeated. Psalm 62:2

Last night as we were coming home from visiting my Dad, we were almost home and the van in front of us turned right in front of an oncoming car. Benny stopped the car, jumped out to see if anyone was hurt, PRAISE the Lord no one was. When you witness something like it startles you in a way that you can't really explain, yet I knew immediately it could just as easily involved us, I thanked the Lord for protecting us. As Benny was checking on them they began to argue and that did scare me(you never know about people these days) and all the while Kea was having a fit. He is crying thinking we are going to get arrested, or even die. (seriously, where does he some up with such stuff??)  Benny got the accident victims settled down and I finally moved us out of the middle of the road. I was shaken and it didn't help that Kea was crying, Bub was fussing at him to stop crying, he has little patience (geez where does he get that from?) And Sis is trying to console him and get Bub to hush. I said just pray with him while I get us out of the road. It's amazing how God works through prayer, because everyone calmed down immediately.

When it was time for our Thankful time before bed, this accident opened up an opportunity to discuss how God's works even when we can't see what is going on. It could have been much worse, people could have been hurt, the driver could have swerved our way and hit us, who know what else He protected us from? We get in the car day after day without much thought as to what He protects us from. Many times I know that me running later than usual in the mornings, I have been spared because there has been an accident on the interstate just minutes before I would have driven through there. I don't always think of things like that as a Divine interruption, but I do more than I ever have before.

Father thank you for your protection. You go before us and behind us, I may never know the times you have protected me. But I thank you for those times as well. Thank you for the opportunity to teach my children about your protection seeing it with their own eyes. Thank you for being MY DEFENDER!!!

Ohh, I have planned on our family making a Thankful Tree since before we started our Give Thanks month. I finally had a chance to get myself together and make my tree.....Please don't laugh or judge, because it does look a bit like it could be Charlie Brown's Thankful Tree.

Thankful Tree before.......

See it looks a little sad, and plain, and well..... ugly,  but I am happy to report we have 30 leaves on in already. So by the time we are finished it will be so full of leaves, we may not be able to see any limbs.

I may update you in a few days just so you won't think that I have flipped my lid.