1000 Gifts...One and Two

Stick your fingers in your ears, wiggle your fingers and stick out your tongue!  I am going to be a copy cat!

But, I am copying someone I think very highly of.  My friend Mary.  Check out her blog Hollinhead Hullabaloo.  When I grow up a little, I want to be just like her.  She is one God-lovin', home school rockin', REAL woman.  I look up to her because she is not only my friend, but she sets such a real example for me, her walk with the Lord, the way she manages her family, and her heart for others.

It all started on Ann Voskamp's blog a holy experience.

She started listing her 1000 Gifts and it took me back to when I first began my walk with God.

I was just a girl, barely 18.  I was so wrapped up in this world.  I was so pulled by what others thought.  Not that I have completely overcome this.   I had no idea who I was.  I was, who a lot of other people wanted me to be, people who didn't know who they were, themselves.
Oh how I would love to go back in time and shake Eighteen Year Old me.  Shake her and tell her what I know now.  Save her some heartache and heartbreak.
But what good would that do?  She wouldn't listen to me.  She would only listen to the One who made her that way.  The One who really knew her all along.  The One who would take her on an intimate journey, showing her who He wanted her to be.  The only One she needed to worry about. 

Early in my walk.  The part where I took many steps backward for each one in the right direction,  (If were were thinking Footprints In the Sand...there would be dragging involved), I started a Thankfulness Journal.  I just wrote down things I was thankful for.  Looking back at it, there were some pretty silly thank yous.  Blow Pops and  Dawson's Creek, eventually started to turn into a little bit deeper gratitude.  All of it just reminded me to be thankful, in everything.  It changed me.  He used it to change me.

I want to go there again.  I want to be changed.  And thanks to Mary, I will.  Let's start with one, and see where it leads.

1.  God.  That he loved me so much that He gave His only son for me.
I have two sons.  This absolutely blows my mind and when I think of it, I squeeze my boys, I wonder, I cry.  I know there is no love like that, but His.  He has filled a hole inside of me that I used dozens of other things to fill.  I searched.  I prayed. They all poured out in the end.  But there He was.  It was His Spirit all along.  He knew, He never gave up. He reigns in my heart forever and I can praise and worship, and call out his name for eternity.

2.  Max and Ruby.  They, and their 3 shenanigans per episode, are the only way I am getting to blog about this minus MAJOR interruptions.