The Best Gifts *Gift 6* Tender, Real Moments

The best gifts in Life are the real moments shared with others.
Tender clover flowers and buttercups given by the tiny hand of my niece today.
Thank you, Lord, for helping me to recognize
The Best Gifts

Mothers and Daughters *Gift 5* The Women In My Life

I L*O*V*E spending time with my daughters.

When they were younger, I used to tell them that the women in my family were my best friends... Now that they are in their twenties, they understand and appreciate this.

We have stories about ourselves that go "Way Back" as we always say!

I am so grateful for the women in my family. They know me and love me just the same ;)

He Makes All Things Beautiful...In His Time *Gift 4*

Ecclesiastes 3:11He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

We must wait with patience for the full discovery of that which to us seems intricate and perplexed, acknowledging that we cannot find out the work that God makes from the beginning to the end, and therefore must judge nothing before the time. We are to believe that God has made all beautiful. Every thing is done well, as in creation, so in providence, and we shall see it when the end comes, but till then we are incompetent judges of it. While the picture is in drawing, and the house in building, we see not the beauty of either; but when the artist has put his last hand to them, and given them their finishing strokes, then all appears very good.

~Humbly seeking patience and grace~

Clean Thoughts *Gift 3*

I humbly thank the Creator, the One who sets order to the universe... for sending me these lovely people who daily inspire me.

Thank you Lord, for my sister who shares her thoughts about keeping order and gently shines light ...
She's been in my basement. She's opened those drawers!
Thank you Lord, for the wider community that inspires and motivates me to conquer the unkempt corners of my house ... of my heart ... of my soul.
This post followed a phone call from my sister in which we shared our "clean house" philosophy. . .
She - more conscientious about tidiness, I - more relaxed...
(a reversal from childhood).
Ann Voskamp wrote of this last week ~ A Divine Appointment, I always say. Ann writes for me, for many.
That was it, that was my moment... I knew what I had to do... Scrub brush in hand, knees on floor, hot steamy pine scent filling the air...

Doreen inspired Clean was on its way to Maria's house!

"Science may call it entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, the wearing down of all systems. God calls it sin and decay. I call it my daily battle.

Dirty laundry, sprouting weeds, piling dishes, dust collecting... this is life after the Fall.

Yet, in small ways, I return to God and the Perfect Time Before when I order, wash away, sweep clean...beating back the chaos, the powers of destruction.

Simple acts of cleaning are humble, conquering efforts in the quotidian struggle between chaos and order, creation and disintegration, God and Death.

Deliberate, ritual motions can maintain an easy order. Daily attending to picking up, putting away, cleaning out is easier than wrestling order out of invading chaos.

A tidy space ushers in the possibility of a tidy heart. A heart beating with His, in a place more like that place In the Beginning.

Is work a picture of entering into Redemption? To bring restoration to that which has fallen...

I can frame this task at hand as my monastic beauty, my daily wrestle to create, in imperfect ways, a world more like the one He created for humanity when the world began...."
~Ann VosKamp
A Holy Experience

He refreshes *Gift 2*

Leviticus 26:4 (NIV)

I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit.Dear Lord,

Thank you for sending down your sweet rain to water the beautiful trees that surround me. The crabapple trees are splendidly clothed in white blossoms. The oldest tree, given to me on Mother's Day 20 years ago, adorns my picture window all year.

Her sister tree, given two years later, is almost as big now.
We have five apple trees, abundantly producing fruit that lasts for months.
In every season, I am in awe and filled with gratitude for the beauty, the strength and the gifts of these trees.
~a grateful heart ~

enjoy the blossoms more by clicking on the photos

A Grateful Heart *Gift One*

He shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry
them in his bosom." ~ Isaiah 40:11 JOHN 10
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who doesn't own the sheep, sees the wolf coming, leaves the sheep, and flees. The wolf snatches the sheep, and scatters them. The hired hand flees because he is a hired hand, and doesn't care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and I'm known by my own; even as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep.

I live in this country, under its governance and laws...
But my Shepherd is not of this world. He is the one who truly loves me.
Thank you for carrying me