January 1997: I remember the month vividly, but I had forgotten about a list I wrote on the 16th day-at the time, it had very little significance compared to what it meant to me today when I came across it while looking through my filing cabinet! Most people make a new year’s resolution every year-losing weight or going on a diet being most people’s number one item on their list! No matter what I ever wrote as my resolution to do or overcome or even to become, I very rarely followed through and so on the first day of the following year, I always had the same list year after year! So in 1997, I did things a little differently-I simply thanked God for my blessings and I came up with thirty-six blessings compared to three or four unfulfilled resolutions! Number one on my list was me and my family’s life that God had so graciously given unto me! I had a handsome husband, Derrick and a precious son, Cody and a beautiful daughter, Brittany who brought so much happiness into my life! Actually, a very typical blessing for me to be appreciative of! Number two really stuck out-I was thankful for our health! That was back before I started getting really sick, but I do remember thanking God every night for our health! Somewhere along the way, I am not as thankful because I rarely thank God for our health-at least not every night! Number five: I was thankful for our food! I was still able to swallow anything I wanted at this time in my life and never realized that the ability to swallow is a blessing too often taken for granted! Had I known what I know now-I would have eaten like I owned the grocery store and the food were free! lol Number eighteen: The love my family has for me and each other! 1997 was an interesting year for me and probably one of the most memorable for many reasons! In October, I had our third child, Aaron, who was born blind! I tried to learn to read braille! Aaron was such a good baby and brought so much love into our hearts, even more so because of his disability of blindness yet a happy, laughing baby boy! Number thirty-two happened to be the blessing of no disabilities in our family! (My list of blessings was written shortly before I became pregnant with Aaron!) Aaron later miraculously received his eyesight to the amazement of many eye Doctor’s! We also put a plum metal roof on our house that year because every time the wind blew really hard-our yard had shingles laying everywhere and our porch had already started to leak! That is also the year that the wind blew our porch roof off-I couldn’t figure out why there were so many small pieces of splintered wood lying all over the carport when I went outside to leave for an appointment! I understood when I was coming up the driveway when I came back home and saw that the porch looked like someone had taken half of it and flipped it over to the other side! The porch was metal to metal and the two by fours were standing straight up in the air on the opposite side of the porch roof than where they belonged-a sight to see and the explanation for all the wood scattered around the porch and on the carport! Although I was pregnant that year, I went on a vacation without my family in the hopes of bringing down my high blood pressure by relieving some stress caused by difficulties with my pregnancy! Home Interior and Gifts paid for my three day vacation in Gatlinburg and I stayed in a beautiful chalet with about twelve other Interior Decorator/Accessory Specialist! I didn’t get in the hot tub, ride the go-carts or play pool (I didn’t want a stray ball to somehow go through the air and hit me in the stomach) in fear of hurting the baby! I was just in awe of the experience because it was so expensive and I was there for free as a bonus incentive I earned selling Home Interior! And now on to Number thirty-one on my list: I actually didn’t know if I was going to cry today when I read it-I was shocked that I would have even thought to have been thankful for such a blessing and I thought if only I had known-I was thankful for no diseases in my family! I now have so many diseases that I say that God is letting me collect them, but in 1997-I nor no one else in my immediate family had any diseases that we were aware of! I can’t write I am thankful for no diseases on any new list of blessings that I may ever write, but I can be thankful for God allowing me to have many diseases! Although I struggle more often than not and today just being able to breath has been a battle (Thank God for Vick’s suave-I have had a bottle stuck over my nose almost all day to try to keep from using my Nebulizer treatments because they speed my heart up so badly and my heart has already been hurting more than usual and I am trying to prevent any further pain while hoping to clear my airways too), but anyway-back to my original thought-I am so thankful for my many diseases-that isn’t always something easy to say, but through the daily struggles-I have learned a dependence upon God that in no other way would I have! My faith has been put into action time and time again and I have learned to not just have faith but to trust God with the outcome-not in word, but with all my heart! So many times, I wonder if I will make it through the night, another day or even the next moment, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that God is leading me- whether God is leading me to a stronger faith or leading me Home to Heaven-either way, I find comfort in knowing that God is leading me! I don’t always follow, but the safest place is in the will of God! And following the end of 1997 and in 1998, the heaviest burden was lifted off of me when Derrick gave his heart to God and was saved! And on this March 2014 day-I am blessed far above measure to know that all my children have been saved and my family will be together again someday in Heaven when God calls us Home-what could be greater on any list or a bigger blessing than to know the joy of having the peace in our hearts of knowing Jesus as our personal Savior and Heaven is the greatest blessing ever!!!
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 06:37:39 +0000
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