Today's Thankful Heart - Jan 10th

Today I'm thankful for:

• God's Direction - He is so amazing. A group I'm a part has been fasting and praying the past week for God's direction in this new year. He has answered each of us in different ways, but we have all received direction from Him. The fasting ended yesterday and I was beginning to think that I had missed what the Lord had to say to me, but then today He answered me very clearly. He is such an amazing and faithful God!
• Time with my children - My dear husband went into work this morning for a few hours. The kids and I ended up spending time at two different parks today and had a blast. I really need to do this more often. Then when my hubby returned home my daughter and I went to the library and picked up some books for school (she is doing a report on horses this month). Then while my husband fixed dinner the oldest two donned their new helmets and road their bikes to the park with my youngest and myself following behind on on foot. They are all sleeping good tonight!
• My Husband - Nothing in particular - I am just thankful for him and all he does for this family. I'm blessed with a man who is a very mechanical person (I definitely am not!) and he is able to fix pretty much anything. Today he took apart our laptop because where the screen attaches to the laptop has become loose. He is always taking care of things for our family like this. He is an amazing man and he takes wonderful care of our family.

Today's Thankful Heart - Dec 31st - Reflections on 2008

Today I'm thankful for this past year. In many ways it has been the hardest year of my life, in my marriage and life in general. However, at the same time it has been the best year of my life. Through all the ups and downs the Lord has drawn me closer to Him. It was because of my deepening relationship with Him that I've had the strength to change my attitude and how I deal with certain situations. That in turn has brought many amazing changes in my life.

God is amazing and most of all He is faithful. I've started to realize this year how very much He really loves me, and how very little I deserve that love. It is funny how those two things seem to go hand in hand.

So tonight as I look over the past year and all the Lord has brought me through and all that He has taught me I am thankful for the journey so far. I also realize it has just begun. There will be many more hills and valleys before I reach my eternal destination, but I can trust that through it all the Lord will be with me and has a plan for my life and the lives of those I love.

God's Faithfulness

I realize I did not post yesterday, however Friday night after posting my daily Thankful Heart I came across a post I did a year ago based on an entry in my journal. You can read the post I'm referring to here on my Ang4him site, but I'll be reposting the most pertinent parts here. This has been on my mind all weekend, so I'm posting about it tonight - this is my Thankful Heart posting for this weekend.

First a bit of the backstory (or in this case the poststory, I guess). I've mentioned on my blogs recently that the past year has been both the best and the worst year for me, my marriage and my walk with God. My hubby and I have been through some rough times before, but this year has been the worst in my mind. It has been a very scary roller coaster ride. However, through it all God's been revealing His heart to me. I've come to better understand His love for me, and due to this I have changed and the way I treat my husband has changed. This blog in fact is a result of those changes (read here for my reasons for starting this blog).

I've been thankful in the past few months for what this year has brought and for the changes in myself, my husband and our marriage, as well as my deepening relationship with the Lord. I've been thankful that although it has been painful, God has given me beauty for my pain. Then Friday night I stumbled (I actually believe the Lord led me) to a post I did last year in November.

I had just recently found the Spiritually Unequal Marriage (SUM) blog and Dineen had done a post called The Most Dangerous Prayer, which spoke to me. After reading this post I wrote the following prayer in my journal and the Lord gave me the verses I have posted below.


My Prayer:

Father,
I am falling to my knees asking what I have always been afraid to ask in the past. Asking for the one thing that matters more to me than anything else aside from You. I'm completely surrendering my husband to You, trusting in You fully to take us both through whatever lies ahead. Lord, I am asking that you do whatever it takes to bring my beloved to saving knowledge of You, to a full relationship with You as his Lord and Savior.

After praying this - the Lord gave me these two verses:

Ephesian 3:16-19
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Psalm 73:26
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

I fully meant this when I prayed it but I had pushed it from my mind. I was thankful before finding this that God has used this past year to draw me closer to Him and to teach me how to be a better wife to my husband, but now I've realized that I actually prayed for exactly what happened over the past year. I may not have imagined it happening in the way it did, but I did pray for it and God was faithful and answered my prayers - in His Way and His Time. He is so faithful.

I know this journey is not over yet. God is still working on my husband, our marriage and most of all me. I find it such an encouragement to look back over this past year and realize that God was even more in control than I had ever originally thought. He has worked so many things together in my life to get me to where I am right now. We have further to go, but right now I'm exactly where He wants me to be and I'm thankful for that!

God's Perfect Gift

A dear godly woman in my life recently visited here and sent me some very encouraging emails. Below is part of one of those emails, which she has given permission for me to share. I believe this is a message not only for me but for other women as well. I pray it will speak to others as it did to me and healing will come because of it.

My husband and yours are not 'outsiders' in their marriage. They're not some picture we fell in love with and took home, only to find that it clashed with everything else in our home. It's not like they're a piece in the puzzle of our life that we're putting together that doesn't fit. They don't need to have 'the edges knocked off' to fit. They are, at this point and place in time what God meant them to be and they were always meant for us. They are God's gift to us, in more ways than I think we'll ever know in this lifetime.

It's so easy to almost feel like we made a mistake to fall for them, but that God will 'work it out' in spite of our mistake and love for them. No, I believe we 'NEED' them in the plan God has for our life......his plan to help us become EXACTLY what he wants us to be. They were, are and always will be that 'better' part of US......that perfect and precious GIFT straight from God's heart to ours. We would never be who God wants us to be without them to complete us.

Not only that......we complete them. God has a plan for them too....and we have the privilege to be in on that...God gave us to them as a gift....it was not a mistake that they fell in love with us.

God's plan is perfect and so is his timing. He doesn't make mistakes. He gave you and I a 'perfect gift' as a part of GOD'S plan. No mistake, no outsider, not second-best.......GOD'S PERFECT GIFT.