Blessings Personified

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down... and I don't know why.  There's just something to returning to the hustle and bustle of  a work week (although I took a vacation day today to get caught up on my stats project.  It's due Friday but my goal is to get it submitted by Wednesday... or at least ready to submit so I can ask questions during office hours on Wednesday night. Any prayers will be greatly appreciated)... Anyway, the whole Monday issue should be a call to excitement... a new week, new opportunities.  Sometimes I feel that way...

But when combined with the rain ALL day, just nasty, gloomy rain, it's easy to become down in the dumps.  God's Word tells us instead to focus on true, noble, lovely, pure things... and as always, I am reminded to think of my blessings, to practice gratitude on this dark day. 

Blessings are easy to count if you have the right perspective, yet even though I have been very intentional this year about looking for blessings, even in the unordinary, I still sometimes find myself at a loss, feeling ungrateful.  It's easy to be thankful for material things... but today I want to talk just a little bit about blessings in the form of people.

Of course, I am thankful for my family. This morning, I was taking Caleb to school and he was chatting away in the passenger seat, and my heart was just full.  It's amazing to think how God can take something tiny and exponentially grow it into this manchild that is so smart and funny.  It seems as if I only blinked and he had changed from that toddler who couldn't say so many letters to this articulate human who has no difficulty expressing his feelings.  Then there is Wallace, and my parents and my sisters and my in-laws, and baby Will, who I am just fascinated by.  Not to mention my whole extended family.  Wallace and I have the same conversation every holiday, how extremely blessed we are to live on this holler with all of these people with no fighting or discord.  How our families have melded into one over the years.  It's a beautiful thing... and completely a God thing.  I hear of too many family disagreements to not give credit where credit is due.

Then there are my friends, whom I have very blessed to have.  Just this weekend, Jenna and I drove to Bowling Green and back.  A wrong turn took us a few minutes out of the way, and it was dark and rainy the whole time, and the drive seemed like it took forever, but I know that if I didn't have her by my side it would have been much longer.  Through laughter and stories and talk of music and work and families and shopping and cupcakes... she gets me.  And I need someone that gets me.  I'm so blessed to have good coworkers that are more than peers. 

I'm blessed with some great students, who overcome adversity on a daily basis.  I'm blessed to love a group of basketball players like my own kids.  I'm blessed with a good church family, who I know I can count on in difficult situations.  So many people... so little space.

Then there are all of you... and others I connect with online.  I have a group of sisters that I've grown to love through an online Bible study group on Facebook.  Our group is as varied as they come, and span the nation, but we've grown close through chatting and sending cards back and forth.  And then there are some of my favorites, like Ann Voskamp and Beth Moore, Lysa Terkeurst and Renee Swope.  I look forward to reading their blogs and following along in their Bible studies...and while I've never met any of these individuals, they have impacted my walk with God.

As we move into Christmas, take time to tell those you appreciate how grateful you are for them.  Every person is in his  or her own way a blessing from God, just proof of how his grace multiplies, as do his blessings.