10 more days until my favorite holiday of the year…..

I want to be prepared physically, emotionally and spiritually to fully embrace all of the blessings gifted to me from the hand of my loving Father. Thanksgiving gives me the opportunity to weave them into my own story, my family’s story, to recount God’s faithfulness in our lives. Because music speaks loud to my heart, one of my favorite things to do is listen to songs that set my focus on gratitude. So I assembled a Spotify playlist called Thanksgiving. As I listen, I think about all the things I have to celebrate.

In these next 10 days, I will choose 1 particular blessing to reflect on each day.

Day 10-Home

Today I celebrate home. That’s a big word for me. It entails more than one place on the map and in my heart. It’s one of my “in process” stories. On this day, I reflect gratefully on the journey God has taken us on to live in these particular four walls where we are raising our family. I muse about how God paved the way for us to move out of an urban area with a For Sale By Owner sign in the front yard followed by a SOLD sign after the first showing. We bought this house with a pasture abutting the back property and tore down the dilapidated wooden fence to watch the cows. For several years, we fed them, talked to them and even named them.

When the cows left, I bought the porch swing I’d always dreamed about in order to admire the sun’s goodnight kiss in all it’s glorious splendor beyond that same scrubby southwestern grassland out back.

Then we built a retaining wall around the back patio and set to work on a perennial garden that delights me in every season. I love to sit at my dining room table and watch the butterflies sip nectar in late summer.  The roses bloom into November and then there are pansies through the cold season which leads to the incredible rebirth of all the plants that rested in the ground all winter .  It’s a miracle to behold!

We have invested sweat, tears and a lot of money keeping our home well maintained, comfortable, and a practical space for our family to live in. And I have to admit that dimly lit with a candle burning, it’s pleasant, warm and inviting—a welcome space for the friends God brings along our path.

Especially today, I need this reminder when we are in the middle of yet another plumbing repair/reno project that has me down a bathroom going into the holidays.

So, thank you God. Thank you for this home. Thank you for the stories we are writing together as we live and love in this place you have provided.