I’m Blessed

I’m trying to think of how to narrow down this week all the things that I want to write about today for “I’m Blessed.”  Because of the storm, we should have been delayed even one day more, but a ride back home was just dropped in our lap.  My kids have been giving me non-stop snuggles all week.  I have had the most interesting conversations with friends, and laughed until my sides hurt at a Super Bowl party where our kids made great friends with some other kids.

I got a call from my busy sister, which may have been the highlight of a whole day last week.  I miss her badly since she went back to work.  On a night where it was 5:30pm and I still didn’t know what was for supper, my in-laws called and invited us over for pizza.  Ingrid has the most adorable bowed, cowgirl, toddle, and she toddles around the whole house with such joy.  She’s also taken to sleeping with a dolly snuggled in her arms, and it just melts me.

God has just been ministering to me, verse after verse, in a way I haven’t experienced in years.  This last week 1 Peter 2:9 has been running through my head, and I don’t know why.  I keep seeing it written everywhere too, and hearing it on the radio.  I’m feeling targeted.  It’s a great verse to meditate on.  I saw a modern paraphrase of the verse on Facebook too: “You are not called to fit in.”

Bible reading for me isn’t always gratifying or rewarding, but lately it’s like feasting on dessert every time.  After a period of walking a valley, the lush mountaintop is a welcome place to be.  I bought some music at the conference I was at of Joel Clarkson‘s piano music.  I’ve played it nearly constantly since I got back from my trip, and it has brought this sense of peace over everyone in our house.  It hasn’t stopped the whining, but maybe it just calms me down.  That in itself is a feat.

I’m starting to ache for spring.  It feels so far away with feet of snow still in my yard.  I didn’t put away as many vegetables as I usually do last summer because of the car accident.  My harvest wasn’t great, and I wasn’t even able to harvest everything that was out there.  We’re now out of our own grown greens in the freezer.  Seed catalogs are piling up in the mail.  Still, with all the turmoil last fall in my harvest going bad in the garden, and my freezer not as full as it usually gets, and what are we going to do…

now that it’s here…I have peace.  I do miss our own vegis, because store-bought just isn’t the same other than they sort of look alike.  But I have peace.  Peace cannot be bought, or mustered up, or reasoned.  It’s a gift.  The last month, before I couldn’t get 1 Peter 2:9 out of my head, I couldn’t get Hebrews 12:2 out of my head: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”

Fixing my eyes on Jesus.  It’s a place to breathe.  A place to rest.  I so don’t deserve it.  I’m blessed.