Long List

This week's list is going to be long.  I re-read One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are recently...it is inspiring me to seek to have more gratitude for the gifts God has given me.  This will be the longest Multitude Monday list I have ever typed up...been a hard, emotional week, but finding God's graces around every corner has made it worth it! 

Seventy gifts this week...

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-The youth joining us for camping
-Starbucks coffee packets
-Dutch oven pizza
-Homemade sandwich bread
-Packages in the mail
-A campfire
-An unexpected call from a friend
-Memories of my home in Virginia
-An awesome grandma
-Time spent on my grandparents' ranch when I was younger
-My little books of scripture memorization
-A husband cooking breakfast
-Readjusting my thinking about someone I am struggling with
-Coffee and conversation with a friend
-Summer shirts
-Board games in the camper
-My time at VBS
-Turning dysfunction into healthiness
-One of our girls in the youth group...she is so awesome to be around
-A shower in our camper
-My dad's easy going nature
-Being taught how not to parent
-Watching Zach on his unicycle doing sword battles with friends
-Our back door that lets the sun in
-A momma robin sitting on her nest
-Baby birds being born!!!!!!!!!!!!

-White socks

-Firewood

-Beauty from ashes

-Memories of good times

-The concept of bummer lambs from Sheila Walsh's book, God Loves Broken People: And Those Who Pretend They're Not

-A new greenhouse!!!

-All the plants transplanted

-A boy reading beside me

-The warm smell of a greenhouse

-The gratitude of Daniel (Daniel 6:10)

-Sore muscles from gardening

-A puppy lapping water from a spray hose

-An awesome pastor and his wife

-Time on the field

-Water bottles

-Cool breezes

-Rest after a hard day's work

-Soccer balls spinning

-Flags whipping in the wind

-Sunny warmth on my face

-Puffy clouds

-Assistants to help me teach

-Posh Logic Puzzle books to keep my brain busy

-A "mentor mom"

-Little notebooks to list my gifts

-A coach for the team

-A wee one singing on the sidelines

-The smell of lilacs

-Lilac petals in the breeze

-The boys' test scores

-That gratitude cures jealousy

-Doing my Bible study in the greenhouse

-The roar of a lawnmower

-Healthy rhubarb plants

-Breakfast with a friend

-A night of insomnia (Praising God for it anyway)

-Hard Eucharisteo

-Friends to pray for me when I am weak

-A student of mine giving her life to the Lord at VBS

-Hunger

-Finishing the hard copy of my gratitude journal (printing off three years of lists of gifts)

-A hard rain for dry dirt

-A commitment to myself

-Air conditioning

-That the gratitude is overflowing!

Life change comes when we receive life with thanks and ask for nothing to change. --Ann Voskamp