I Wrap It Up: Day 30 of the Count Your Blessings Challenge

Well it's happened. I've got blessings running over and I've run out of month.

In my attempt to wrap this up, I've got to share with you some of my hopes and dreams.

I have four adolescent/young adult daughters. How many times over the past couple years would I have loved to pamper them! To take them all for pedicures, shopping and lunch on a whim. To buy their friends lunch. To throw big backyard parties. To let them decorate their rooms all at once, refurnish their bedrooms. To take them on family vacations, to buy their yearbooks and new school clothing (both - not one or the other). To go and get our hair done all together. To buy them the books they want. To buy them all new bikes. To help buy them each a car. To travel to visit colleges. To pay for college. It's been so tight. Instead they've seen the utilities turned off. Heard us for hours on the phone with creditors. They've never been hungry, but sometimes it wasn't the food they wanted. They've shopped second hand frequently. I could go on, but I don't want to sound whiny.

The question sneaks in: Where's the blessing?

Two-part, if you must ask. First of all, I know what my girls are like when they don't have everything. And finer girls you never saw! Having everything you want usually makes a different (and not so pleasant) person out of you than not having everything. My girls are living proof of this, and I am so proud of them.  I guess underneath it all, more than the material blessings, the nurturing of their spirits is what I've truly wanted. The second part is this. I've trusted God with my whole life. If He can promise me that all things work together for good and His glory, then I can trust that no matter what I go through, even when I'm in the middle of things that  I've messed up, it's safe.
.
I'm safe.

You're safe.

We're safe.

It's the only way to live. Jesus said life is far more than clothes and food, even more than our physical bodies.  And we can trust Him. You can't learn this on a Sunday School picnic. At least I wasn't chosen to learn it on a Sunday School picnic. Maybe you were.

But wherever you are, I hope you, too, are learning to trust Him, the One from Whom all blessings flow.