I am so incredibly blessed.Every morning, I should have reason to wake up and immediately thank God for everything- even for giving me life and a new day to live!
Yesterday was my birthday. Yes, that exciting day that comes once a year that you only look forward to for the first twenty-something years of your life... for the 19th time, I got to celebrate the day I was born! When you think about it, birthdays are really vain days. Birthdays are defined by people celebrating your existence- and we drink in the attention and pampering every single year until the day we die. It's "our" special day. So why not eat lots of unhealthy food? I'll take that!
I don't want to bore you with long details, but I promise I have a point. Really. My birthday celebration began on Saturday when my WKU friends surprised me with a trip to Nashville to eat at the Rainforest Cafe! After that they poured great gifts & sweet, encouraging cards on me that I definitely did not expect. The next day (still not even my actual birthday!), I got to spend time with one of my best friends at the park and then go out later with Paul. Which, by the way, 84379 points to Paul for getting me the new Dave Barnes CD... I love it!
After the day was over, I was already feeling so special and blessed to have such great people in my life, and it wasn't even March 2nd! On the day of my actual birthday, texts, phone calls, Facebook messages, and lots of mail drowned me in love from friends and family that I didn't expect at all. I felt so incredibly blessed! All throughout the day I seemed to continue to be surprised by blessings from the people I love.
Now that the crazy weekend is over with, all that's physically left to show of the great people God has given me are the beautiful sunflowers on my window sill, a princess balloon and tiara, and some randomly places signs on the door of the 419. Well, and there's also Dave singing in the background as I write this. And LOTS of Reese's candy. But beneath all the "stuff," I have a deep feeling of gratification for God and people. Even now, I'm smiling thinking about how God lavished His love on my by using the people around me. Even though I am miles from my family and my very best friends, the people that will always always be there for me; I have still been blessed with a new and great church family and best friends.
But why am I overwhelmed with gratitude today?? It's good to be thankful, but not in spurts. I should be thanking my Father every single day for the love He's lavished upon me! Every single day I should keep my eyes open to the blessings He strategically places in my life. Every day. Every, single, dreary, happy, ordinary day... how much more joyful would we all be if we were simply thankful???
What are YOU thankful for?! Actually, I'd love to hear! It's great to share with other believers how the Lord has blessed us!
My heart is totally with you on this one! It's awesome how you drew the connection from people loving on you to it actually being an outpouring of God's own love for you. Incredible how that works...especially for us as Christians, the fact that the entire purpose of our lives is really to discover the nature of God's love and to live in the pure joy experiencing it brings, it's great to think that the love we can show and that can be shown to us by others is that much more powerful because of our connection to the One who is love! And this is where we find that true joy and thankfulness that is completely relentless.
ReplyDeleteSo I for one am endlessly thankful that God chooses to use and is using me of all people to be a conduit for His love, and that He loves me enough to lavish me directly as well as through those around me, and in so many other ways I can't begin to understand. Good stuff!
And totally random but that word, "lavish," I must say how I do love the sound of it especially in connection with God's love so thanks for that haha.