Today we are calling you to take action on this Tuesday!  Yesterday we pointed out various different ways that we are so very blessed in this life.  Today I would like you to participate in a little activity. I hope you will join me as we are going to be focusing on our blessings!

Whether you do so in the comment section, in your email to another family member or friend, or if you write it on Facebook, I would like to challenge you to list several things that you are thankful for.   You don’t necessarily have to write them down, but for me, it helps to do so instead of leaving those thoughts in my head.  If I write them down and see them in black and white in front of me, it seems to possess more power.

For the next week, I would like you to focus on these and other things on your list that bring you joy, love, and happiness.  I am asking you to give thanks and to be grateful for the gifts you have been given in this life.  Count your blessings not your troubles or sorrows.  Focus intentionally on things that you truly need to praise God for, and then start doing it!!  That is the key!

Are you ready to accept this challenge?

I am thankful for:

• My beautiful children that God has given to me.  They are my miracles from above, and I just thank God from the very bottom of my heart for trusting me to care for these precious little ones.  He gave them to me, and my soul danced with delight the day I found out I was pregnant.   I was so in love with you, and my heart leaped with joy and excitement every time I would feel you move and kick inside of me.  There are no words to adequately describe how I felt when my baby girls were placed in my arms for the first time.  Tears of joy filled my eyes and spilled out down my cheek as I looked into your angelic faces.  I counted ten perfect little fingers and ten perfect little toes.  I thank God for my babies.  They are now 17 years old and nine years old at the time of this writing, and my heart cherishes and treasures each and every moment that I have been given with them.   They are the reason I am on this earth.  They are my purpose, and they are my life!  I thank God for my two miracles from above!

• My parents who gave me the best that they possibly could growing up.  We were not rich by any stretch of the imagination.  What we lacked in money and in material things, we were overflowing with in love, compassion, and care for one another.  My parents raised me with good morals and values.  They taught me to be a responsible and respectable young lady, to be a woman of great character and integrity.  I am thankful for my parents loving me in the good times as well as the bad and for being my rock through the troubled times in my life.  Things haven’t always been easy, but we had each other through it all.  My heart is eternally grateful, and I thank God above for my parents.

• My husband who I met when we were teenagers.  Although too shy to really connect back then, we thought of each other through the years and destiny brought us back together many years later.  We reconnected and rekindled the spark inside of our hearts for each other.  Although we have struggled through the years as most marriages do, we have realized that the love that we have is something worth fighting for.  We share what most people search their whole lives for and rarely ever find.  It has not always been easy, but it has always been worth it.  It is a love that I will fight for and do everything within my power to ensure lasts.  As God as my witness, I will not rest until I have exhausted every measure to ensure that this man knows how much I love him.   I thank God for putting us back together.

• My friends.  Oh, the Lord has richly blessed me with friends who are more like family.  They truly are the family that I have chosen for myself.   You are born with family, and then you meet people in this life that you connect with on such a deep level.  They, then, become your family of choice.   I love each and every one of them with a love so deep and so powerful, and I thank God for placing these beautiful souls in my life.   Some friends I have had for 20 years, and I know that they will be by my side no matter what.  We may not always see eye to eye, and there may be things that threaten to pull us apart from time to time.  However, we always come back together.  That is what true friendship is all about.   I thank God that I have a hand full of people in this life that I know are my true friends and love me completely just as I love them.  They are my brothers and sisters of the heart.

This list is just something that came to me right off the top of my head as my fingers floated over the keyboard and words flowed from me onto the post that you’re now reading.   I have many, many blessings in this life.  I am so very thankful to God for all that He has done for me and my family and friends.    He is so good, ladies and gentlemen!  He is so good to us.  He blesses us and continues to pour out His blessings in our lives.  He is worthy to be praised.

Look around you as you start to write your list.  You don’t have to capture everything today.  Just think of a few things that easily come to your mind.  Be sure to thank God for these gifts in your life.

May God continue to pour out His blessings on your life.

Always & Forever,

Shirley