The Joys of the Journey

I don't know about you, but my tendency is to become so fixated on the adversities in my life that I become oblivious to the vast wideness of God's goodness to me. My troubles are real, but they are small compared to God's wide spread mercy. I have found that deliberately counting the joys of my journey is a very powerful spiritual exercise. Yes, DELIBERATELY!!!! I do not think that it comes natural for us as humans to over look the negative and see the good. I am way too quick to pick out all the troubles of the day. In fact, I can even project what the troubles of tomorrow will be without too much effort. I need to deliberately choose a different path. The different path is the path of finding the joys in my journey. When I start to look for them I am totally blown away. The joys are EVERYWHERE. If I look for them. If I train my eyes to see them.  As one author put it so well, " I can start counting my blessings, but I can never stop".

This exercise helps me shift my focus away from the few things that are wrong to the many things that are beautiful and wonderful. Something very wonderful and amazing happened to me personally as I made the deliberate choice to count the joys of my journey. I began to see purpose and even goodness and blessing in what I thought were troubles!!!! So. The circumstance of my life have not changed. But my perspective has. My desire is to be able to see the joys even in the darkest times of my life. Because in seeing the joys, I see God. I know that He is present and he is working.

This Thanksgiving season is coming up with perfect timing in relation to my own journey in thankfulness. My challenge this year for myself (and for you) is to become a grateful person all year long. I know that I said previously that I need to deliberately count my blessings. Sadly, I do need to do that. I want to cultivate a spirit of thanksgiving in my heart that through time, soul  training and God's work will naturally perceive the joys of the journey. I want thanksgiving to be an overflow of my heart.

This year I am so thankful for God's work in my life. Really. Really I am grateful! I am so thankful that he doesn't let me wallow forever in my own selfish, shallow thinking. God is good!

In Tribute...

To the Innocent and Meek relative residing in Guys Mills who has taught me so much about life and the art of survival in a family of abundant boys.

He introduced me to the JOY concept at a young age. Jesus first, Yourself last, Others in between. He was happy to take the role of "others" in my life.  I owe my life to Shannon for teaching me this fundamental lesson at such a young age.

Now he is teaching JoElla and Erin all about this same JOY concept.

And, let me assure you, the reason that he is able to teach others this JOY thing is because he models it himself.  He's a great man. He's just struggling a little with his xanga site. If you wish to give him some encouragment you can visit him at  http://shannonlehman.xanga.com

A girl and her hat and suitcase

The girl would be my daughter, Angeline. The hat would be our thrift store find and the suitcase was picked up at a garage sale just a block or so from our house. When I bought the suitcase the fellow I was buying it from said, "Did you see that I have some other nicer suitcases over there in that corner??" I replied, 'Yes, I did see those, but I want this ONE'. I think that my daughter, the hat and the suitcase and I will have more fun together in the future!!!

Oh Christ, do not give me tasks equal to my powers,

 But give me powers equal to my tasks,

For I want to be stretched by the things too great for me.

I want to grow through the greatness of my tasks,

But I shall need your help for the growing.

E. Stanley Jones

This prayer really, really touched me this morning because I am so. so. just so needy. If I was only given tasks equal to my powers...I am not sure that I would even be asked to get out of bed in the morning.  When I heard the 'thump, thump, rattle, bang-bang' of my kids getting out of their beds this morning I felt tired, unable, weak and like, really... how am I going to do this again today, Jesus? My Bible was on my lap (barely open since I was just opening it as the children got up) and my eyes fell on this prayer that I have written on the inside cover. I knew that I needed power today, not of my own, but the divine power of Jesus. I do deeply desire to grow. But growing is often much more painful and harder than what we imagine it will be. I am so thankful for my heavenly Father who walks with me everyday and helps me in this growing process. I find so much rest in the fact that Jesus knows and sees my every need much more clearly than what I do and that He is always acting on my behalf. Today, I think He is carrying me. I wasn't even smart enough to realize that I needed to be carried. But He is carrying me.

thoughtless mistakes

You know the little line that goes something like, "things always get worse before they get better"....

That's what I am hoping will be true with my carpet. Someone (thanks, Jenn) gave me the clever idea of spreading coffee on the stinky area to absorb the awful rotten egg odor. Being a coffee lover, I jumped at the idea. Amazingly, my hallway had a wonderful aroma all day long. Not only was the rotten egg and vinegar smell gone, now wonderful, delicious scents of coffee wafted throug out the house. Last evening I decided to go ahead and sweep it up to see if the odor had indeed been absorbed or if it was still there only being covered by the smell of coffee. However, the coffee grounds did not sweep up very well. I was able to sweep up the top layer, but probably at least half of them had absorbed into the carpet themselves. It turns out, that it would have been a good idea for me to make sure that my carpet was DRY rather than still wet from the 5+ scrubbings that it received in the last several days BEFORE throwing coffee all over it. I guess the wet carpet made a nice absorbent sponge. So now. NOW. I have a nice, dark, ugly, obnoxious coffee stain in the corner. Just to prove that I am not making this sound worse than it really is.....

Now I do not really know what to do. I am tired of working with this particular corner of my house. I was able to see a lot more humor in the eggs than in this coffee stain. Any ideas for what would work to get a serious coffee stain out of carpet?? I am willing to listen and learn.  I am scared that more scrubbing is only going to extend the stain further out into the middle of the hallway. I wish that I could just dip that corner of carpet in a large bucket of soap/water until it was all washed out.  I am thinking of just dying the entire carpet with more coffee.

More than anything, I hate making mistakes. I dislike the loser like feeling that comes over me when I do something so stupid and so thoughtless.  And I hate the fact that I do not take the time to think/plan ahead. I run head long into this kind of stuff all the time without taking a few moments to perhaps *think* that maybe my carpet is still wet and that maybe it would be a good idea to save the coffee treatment for a dryer kind of day.

Growing in grace and carpet cleaning,

Shaunda