Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

Oct26

Preparing Our Hearts For Thanksgiving Gratitude and Christmas Joy

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Just in case you wondered why the Family Dollar drop-in visit yesterday……

Well of course all the running around was for a couple future DIY Christmas projects!! A little create and connect going on over here.

My mother-in-law Bobbie Caldwell is and has always been so creative. The work of her hands continues to bless others and our family. She has always enjoyed making her home a warm and inviting place. I so love that about her.

I also LOVE making beautiful spaces in our home for every season. Since she is living with us now, I wanted to add some fun, thoughtful and creative ways that we can engage with each other, the grandkids in order to make her Thanksgiving and Christmas super memorable this year.

So I bought a new, smaller Christmas Tree which has totally made me rethink how I normally decorate. Well- according to Monty Self our “new” forever Christmas tree has arrived so that we can get rid of the “old” big tree he struggles with and grumbles about getting up the stairs every year. 🤔🙄

For My Fall/Thanksgiving table scape I could not find any small pumpkins that I loved. So I purchased cream napkins from Target and made small pumpkins by repurposing old round nakpkin rings. Add a stick and you have a “custom” pumpkin to match the vision. Pictures to follow. Wish I’d made a video while making them. 🤦‍♀️

Secondly, Bobbie loves the front porch and back porch outdoor spaces at our home. {So do we} She has already spent many hours sitting and rocking the days away. So I wanted to make each space warm and thoughtful. Like home for her. So I grabbed a new rug, changed up the plants, added throw blankets for the cooler days and festive pillows. I still have one empty wall that has inspired me to add a special word of welcome and a message.

So back to the story at hand-

The Dollar Tree now owns Family Dollar and has really amped up the game for DIYer’s. So my day yesterday was centered around my doc appointment with a stop into Big Lots, Marshall’s, Walmart and Family Dollar. Gathering the needed items has been a mission of late and truly a labor of love.

I just wanted to share with you how passionate I feel we should be about following our hearts as it relates to the things that will bring meaning, fullness and joy to the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. The Lord has already started preparing my heart for the busy days ahead. Most all of the “gathering of goods” is done. Now to enjoy the process and live present in each moment that the Lord allows us.

Our homes are sacred! It is where most of life really happens. Our values, commitments to one another and the passing on of faith and faithfulness dwell there. So at peace in this season of our lives. Just had to share a glimpse of our “perfectly imperfect”world.

Thanksgiving- gratitude

Christmas- the coming of our Lord

Share the joy…..

Preparing Him room today in my soul…..

Maybe we’ll share a Facebook Live when we get down to crafting.

Nov22

10 Days of Thanks {Day Seven}

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Day Seven

God’s beautiful message to you ~His beloved.


Thank Me for the glorious gift of forgiveness. I am your Savior-God, and I alone can give you this blessing. I went to exorbitant expense to procure this gift for you. You receive forgiveness and become My child by receiving Me and believing in My Name. This Name, Jesus, means the Lord saves. To receive this gift of salvation, you need to trust Me as your only Hope—the One who delivers you from all your sins.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Me. I want you to enjoy the wonder of walking through your life as My follower—totally forgiven! The best response to this wondrous gift is to live in gratitude, seeking to please Me above all else. You don’t need to do good things to secure My Love, because it’s already yours. Just let your desire to please Me flow readily out of your grateful heart. Thanking Me frequently will help you stay close to Me, ready to follow wherever I lead. Rejoice, beloved, for through Me the law of the Spirit of Life has set you free!

That genuinely seems difficult. Right? In my 42 year relationship with the Lord, there is one thing I know so very real. Enmity with someone else can do hinder our relationship with the Lord. A number of years ago there was a moment of conflict between a friend and I. Truthfully I cannot even remember what happened, what was said except that she felt as if she had offended me. The next time we were together she handed me an envelope. Inside this envelope was a sticky note and a bandaid.

She had written out the following quote:

Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words but to pour them all out , just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and soft them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away. ~George Eliot

You will have conflict with others at times in your life. For us, I was not offended but in her own mind and heart, she felt there need to make things right. It is a good practice to keep these things current. How many people do you know who are still holding on to something someone did years ago? Not good. It can escalate and detour not only the people involved but everyone around them. The ripple affect can go on for generations.

If there is one thing I know, holding unforgiveness in your heart will rob you of joy, full life and put unnessary distance between you and the Lord. Out of obedience to the Lord, my friend was convicted by the Holy Spirit to not only maintain OUR relationship but her relationship with Him. This sticky note and bandaid has been in the front of my Bible since the day she gave it me. It is a constant reminder of our responsibility in relationships to live right before the Lord when it comes to forgiving.

Romans 12:18 says it this way: “Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone.”

My friend, if you want to walk in the freedom of forgiveness with the Lord then you must not hold unforgiveness in your heart. At the end of every day, I pray this passage of scripture and ask God to bring awareness to anything I have done that day that I need to make right with Him or with someone else. God is good snd loving. He has a beautiful and gentle way of encouraging me to make right snd stay pure before Him. I am the first to confess that I am not perfect. I will fail you. But God forgives snd restores. That I know.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23-24

Lord help us to stay our path and help us to forgive, just as you forgave us!

Be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. — Ephesians 4:32o

You. Are. Loved.

Forgiven by Crowder

https://youtu.be/uUiwA1JNDig

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.—John 1:12

And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.—Acts 4:12 nasb

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.—Romans 8:1–2
Nov16

10 Days of Thanks ~A Gratitude Challenge {Day One}

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Day One

God continues to speak through the highs and lows we have all experienced the last 7 months in our nation. I hear Him whispering and waiting for us to lean in and listen to His still small voice – Thank Me for the glorious gift of My Spirit. This is like priming the pump of a well. As you bring Me the sacrifice of THANKS-giving, regardless of your feelings, My Spirit is able to work more freely within you. This produces more thankfulness and more FREE-dom, until you are overflowing with gratitude. 

Overflow defined- to fill, be filled beyond capacity or spread beyond its limits 

This past Thursday the beautiful, peaceful creek by our getaway camper in the mountains “filled beyond capacity.” The overflow of water impacted every space that it spread “beyond its limits”. Let’s just say my first thoughts were not “overflowing with gratitude”. After assessing the damage, we began to assess all of the other campers now filled with water-logged trashed treasures. Just priming the well y’all. We are going deep where we really live in hopes of stirring our souls toward overflowing gratitude. He has graciously allowed us this season for a reason. A recent widowed lady could not even enter her porch for debris everywhere. Compassion met gratitude and it swept over me so powerfully. She sat in her truck snd sobbed. Everything she and her late husband had was destroyed. I was humbled because the first thought I had was- we have damage but ours could have been so much worse than it was. This very gratitude challenge kept coming to mind- How can I share the overflow of gratitude with women come Monday? Truth is the more we walked alongside of each other on Thursday, the more I was compelled to share compassion from the Lord and to speak life and Thanksgiving over every circumstance. 

I heard the Lord speaking and leading the more I leaned in toward His goodness. God is right about us. I had already written the following before the dark Thursday @ the campground.

I shower blessings on you daily, but sometimes you don’t perceive them. When your mind is stuck on a negative focus, you see neither Me nor My gifts. In faith, thank Me for whatever is preoccupying your mind. This will clear the blockage so that you can find Me. Giving thanks in EVERYTHING invites me into His presence. 

As we bow our hearts low before Him, by faith, let’s THANK Him for whatever it is that is preoccupying our minds, surrender it back to Him and rewrite our very nature to think the worst with the overflow of gratitude.

Grateful for grace my friend.

Forgiveness. Freedom. Full life.

Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High. —Psalm 50:14

Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. —2 Corinthians 5:5

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. —2 Corinthians 3:17

Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. —Psalm 95:2 nkjv

If the Son has set you free beloved of God, you are free indeed. I’ll be practicing this beautiful way of surrender right alongside of you today. Look with grateful eyes for thanksgiving throughout your day. I think we will all be amazed at the beautiful work of the Holy Spirit all around us in every little moment of every day!!!

Thanks for gathering with me today- ten days to focus our energy on living life to the fullest measure of gratitude.

Nov26

Giving Thanks In ALL Things

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I pray that you will be encouraged and as a way of reminder, find a place for thanksgiving today as we enter into a time of remembering. Affirmed and grateful for how timely God always is when we need a “word in due season”. God continues to stretch & shape my heart as I bend and surrender my will, to each committed new mercy-filled day to give thanks in ALL things. The last few years have been filled with some challenging, fear-full, one step at a time, God-Sized and yet “hard” eucharisteos–the giving of thanks for my family and I. This joy journey, the purposeful pursuit of grateful living, where “thanks-giving” rewrites the habits of ingratitude into “thanks-living” has caught me off-guard, captured my thoughts, and is continuing to transform my heart. As a way of transparent confession, this truth-teaching that transforms hearts at the same time has opened the door for warfare unlike anything that I have ever experienced. Yet. Will. I. Praise. Him.

It is easy to say, I give thanks in ALL things. It is another to give thanks as you walk THROUGH the “hard eucharisteo’s” and come out of life’s most difficult “opportunities” to learn that giving thanks is the only way to fullness of joy. Sigh. You see for me it has settled deep, opened, exposed and removed dark places closed off to the Lord and recreated a beautiful place for God to fully live. Emptied. To. Fill.

The Lord dwells there. His presence makes known to us the path that leads to life according to Psalms 16:11 Apart from HIM there is no joy-filled life, rest for my soul, nor surrender to His sovereignty. He is working ALL things together for good, from His view of ALL that is going on. And on the days when thanksgiving has truly transformed my life, we meet there. Without the giving of thanks, I am left empty with nothing of the Who He is in His fullness to spill out one drop of thanksgiving. Lord. Help. Us.

Today, I stopped and with a burdened heart, gave thanks. He IS the mighty warrior, supreme and powerful ruler…the God of the universe; yet in His mercy, His presence sees. Knows. Leads. Comforts. Provides. His presence fills every emptied out place with peace in this life when ALL things seem to be shaking in  this world and the spiritual realm. We will never understand the ways of God, nor comprehend how His unfailing love is working in ALL the days of our lives for our good and His glory. Lord, Your ways are higher, stronger, greater and every moment of thanksgiving back to You is a small gift from this veiled view. The mystery. We. See. Dimly.

Such love…..so pure, rich and deep. Oh, the JOY that floods my soul.

“Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” 1 Corinthians 13:12

Tonight we give thanks. WE. GIVE. THANKS. Tomorrow’s mercies will be there for every bent and spilled-out surrendered heart to what seems so very simple. It will likely challenge every programmed response we have ever learned to date. Yet, His promises are trustworthy, sure and steadfast. He is God and HIS character, nature and attributes remain the same ALL-ways! Sure as the sun will rise to greet each new day, if the Lord wills.  New. Every. Morning.

“Eucharisteo…always, always precedes the miracle.”Ann Voskamp

To give thanks

“Eucharisteo, always, always precedes the miracle.” Ann Voskamp

Thanks Ann Voskamp for validating my heart’s journey towards fullness of joy! God has taught me so much in 2013. I am grateful that He does not give up or abandon His creation but continues to long for a relationship with His beloved! The privilege that I have had of leading women, children and families along the same path that this simple life traveled has been beautiful to watch from my view. My heart leans in to their stories of their journey fills my emptied heart with such deepened love and joy around the living Word received and applied so powerfully in their lives. God’s message and directed course for this season has led surrendered hearts through the “hard eucharisteos” into the places where THEIR messy story began. Their pathway still meandering, as does mine, around the field of mines that vie for the lies and affections of our life. Hearts rewritten with gratitude and Thanks-Living are among the best in this season of remembering.

Thanks-Giving. Miracles. Thanks-Living. Fullness of joy.

Excerpt from Ann Voskamp’s Journal Entry Today…..

http://www.aholyexperience.com/

“They were simple people, but they knew it because they had lived it:

No matter what the headlines shout, the world only has two stories: bless God or curse God.
No matter what the world tries to sell, we all only get to choose from two shelves: Give God thanks or Give God the door.
No matter what we’re facing, there are always only two roads: thanksgiving to God or dismissing of God.

“They were simple people but they had decided that they….

…..would not let hard times steal their thanksgiving.
…..if you let something steal your thanksgiving, you let something steal your joy, and if you let something steal your joy, you let something steal your strength.
…..would let nothing steal their thanksgiving to God – so that in everything they could stand strong in God.

Simple people – keeping it simple……. we will give thanks to God not because of how we feel, but because of who He is.

No disaster, no storm, no cancellation, no termination, no catastrophe would stop them from giving thanks. Because…….they knew it:

No matter where they were, every thanksgiving always brought them home —- giving thanks always brings you home to the heart of God.” ~Ann Voskamp

My children, grandson and family will be together around the inherited family table, the gathering place of so many great memories. It represents a lifetime filled with so many blessings. Countable gifts. The measure of a gracious God. We. Give. Thanks.

Home. “Thanksgiving” is bringing them home. Around the table, our collective hearts will pause and find peace above ALL circumstances through Thanks-Living EVERY DAY IN ALL THINGS.”
Yes, and this I know……Thanks-Living will lead us directly to the heart of God. “In His presence IS fullness  of  joy….” Psalm 16:11

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