I am so very thankful for a variety of channels, shows, and music that I can watch and listen to. Yesterday, my husband and I spent most of the day in the car, driving to an ophthalmologist appointment for me and then doing errands while we were in town. Unfortunately, I get stressed by all of the political junk going on these days. Also unfortunately, my husband is a political junkie…the more news, the better. So, for the most part of the afternoon, I listened to impeachment news non-stop, with additional commentary by my husband. By about 5:30 p.m., I was so done with the news and the commentary that I had an awful headache and just wanted to go home. But alas, we had one more stop, to a pharmacy for the eye drop prescription that my doctor had given me. Oh, no! The pharmacy didn’t have the meds and when the pharmacist called around to find it for me, she discovered that there is a nationwide back order on it. So, finally, I could go home to fight another battle today. Very happily, I get to stay home today where I can put the TV on the soothing music that I enjoy while reading. No talking heads telling me how bad/good things look for the president! No commentary! No politics! My kind of day! Thus I am thankful that I have a variety of channels to choose from, and I choose music! Not politics! Praise music is the best, followed by classical and easy listening. Blessings to each of you for a day filled with good thoughts, good music and lots of time to enjoy your day!

Photo from society6.com

Today, I am thankful for heat. Yes, heat! We got our first snow yesterday. Although this it only amounted to about an inch, the weather turned extremely cold for this time of year, dipping down to the mid-twenties. I snuggled under my heated blanket, with my heating pad at my back. But you know what kept our house warm? Our almost thirty year old heater! It’s still working just fine. I’m also thankful for the propane truck that came on Monday and delivered our propane before the cold came. My husband had planned on calling them this week, but they came before we called, delivering to their regular customers before the cold snap hit. Doesn’t that remind you of Jesus? He knows what we need before we call and gives it to us before we ask! So, I am very thankful for heat and for the people who make it possible. What are you thankful for today? I hope that you are staying warm and counting your blessings!

Thank you to the two different people who tagged me for this honor: Stu and Gail. Please visit their posts and give them some love and a follow; they daily give out love and encouragement to others. I also would appreciate it if you would all visit and follow the person who originally created this tag, Matt over at Jesusluvsall. This tag is perfect for this month of Thanksgiving, so I’m happy to participate! The intent of this post is for us to share what we are grateful to Jesus for.

Here are the guidelines for this tag:

Share what you are grateful to Jesus for.

Share a passage from the Bible about gratitude that means something to you.

Tag whomever you wish.

Please share a link to the person who tagged you and to the original post by Matt.

Use any picture in your post that expresses gratitude.

Share the intro…

The 1 Grateful Person Tag is based on Luke 19 and the account of Jesus with the 1 out of 10 lepers he healed who came back to thank Him. Let us aspire to be like the 1 who thanked Jesus and not the 9 who did not.

Since I became a grandmother, each time I visit the grandchildren, I enjoy story time with them. From the youngest to the oldest, I have tried to instill into my beloved grands the same love that I have for reading. I am happy that their parents also encourage reading, of course. Reading has given me an entire world to enjoy, but most importantly, it has allowed me to read and study God’s Word. That is part of my testimony of how I became a Christian. Alone in my apartment, I read the book of John, was convicted of my sins and gave my heart to the Lord. So, reading is important to me and I really love my reading time with the grandchildren. When I had my stroke, at first I couldn’t read. I couldn’t understand the written word, and I had been reading since I was five years old. But the occupational therapist in the hospital assured me that my brain would find another way to wire itself and I would be able to read, write and speak again. I praise God that He made us in such a way that our bodies heal themselves in this miraculous way! I could read again within a month of my stroke, and although I read more slowly now and sometimes have to concentrate more (no background noise, or only some classical music), I can read and comprehend again! Praise God!! And I especially enjoy my reading time with my grandchildren!

I am tagging:

Michelle

Temi Michael-O

Lydia Potter

Renee

Sealed in Christ

I am thankful for each of my readers and wish you all a blessed and happy day!

Today, I am thankful for my exercise class. We are a group of ladies who meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays to do gentle swim aerobics. We chat as we move and have gotten to know one another. They call me if I am absent several classes in a row, just to check on me. We go to lunch together on Tuesdays and enjoy talking about all kinds of topics. After the loss of my best friend in March of 2018, I needed new friends and prayed to find someone. God gave me an entire class full of them! Most are retired, like I am, and several are former teachers. The instructor is a miraculous ninety years old! Every other month, two of the ladies organize a birthday party complete with cake and small gifts. Everyone is very thoughtful and kind; I had to leave early last Tuesday because my husband had a medical appointment. One of the ladies offered to take me home if I needed her to, and I live about 40 miles from the pool. Generous, kind, loving people who encourage me to do something that is good for me. That’s what I’m thankful for today!

Photo from amfamfit.com

I hope that today you will thank a veteran. Take one to lunch or dinner. There are a lot of lonely vets out there who just want someone to acknowledge them. My husband and I are planning on going out for a meal today, although I am not sure which meal. It will be his choice because it is his day. He also wants to watch the movie “Midway” so if that is playing in the town closest to us, we will go see it. I am not at all interested in war movies, but he is. I am thankful for my veteran husband today and for my father who served in WWII (he passed away in 2017) and for my friends who were in the military, serving alongside my husband. I am also thankful for those who are serving today, keeping those of us in the United States safe from harm. Honor our veterans, not just today, but every day because they deserve our respect for all of their sacrifices and the duty that they felt to serve.

Photo from btd.org

I am beyond thankful that I was born and live in the United States of America! I have been to Canada, Mexico, Spain, Guatemala, Iceland, Great Britain and Morocco. Although each country is beautiful, none of them equals the beauty of the U.S., with the majestic mountains of the west, the gorgeous beaches on the east and west coasts, and the mountains and valleys that welcome me home, named the Blue Ridge. I have lived in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Georgia, Oklahoma, and finally Virginia. I have visited California, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Nebraska, and Colorado. There are many other places that I would like to visit, but our finances prevent that. However, I am so blessed to have been born and be able to live here. There is no place like the United States. There are a variety of people and views in this nation, all of them breathtaking. This is the land of the free, because of the brave!

Photo from flags.com

Before you begin reading, I want you to swallow. Did you do it without any difficulty? Well, for many months, I had difficulty swallowing. Even the simplest liquids like water were very difficult for me to swallow. In fact, I was given a prescription for some liquid medication to take to numb my throat and down through my esophagus so that I could swallow more easily. The pain was excruciating and indescribable, so I am thankful today for swallowing. When I had my surgery in March to push my stomach back where it belonged, the surgeon also had to put a wrap around my esophagus. Because stomach acid had backed into it for years (who knows how long, really?), my feeding tube was badly worn and damaged. So the wrap strengthens it and makes it so I can swallow more easily. Even after the surgery, there was about six weeks in which swallowing was so painful that I didn’t want to even try to eat anything. That’s when I was on a liquid diet and then progressed to softly cooked fish and veggies. In spite of my travail, I came through everything and I am healed! I can swallow! I am so thankful that when I pick up my cup of tea or my glass of water that I can swallow without pain. Are you thankful for swallowing? Think about it.

We are definitely fearfully and wonderfully made!

Have a blessed day, my friends, and remember not to take the small things like swallowing for granted!

Have you noticed that there are a lot of people who are openly sinning and seem to think that it’s okay? It’s like God has changed His mind about what is sinful. Well, He hasn’t and it really bothers me when people just fall into bed with others without thinking of the consequences. We have made society into a group that accepts sin as something that is every man’s individual choice. Humankind is making their own choices; in a way, many have become their own gods. “If it feels good, do it” has become the mantra of many in our world today. You can see it on billboards, on television, in the movies and I even read it in some of the books that I am supposed to review. Man is lawless because he has become a law unto himself. That will never work out because God’s Word is the Law. God has the last word about sin, so people need to think about the effects of their sin on others and on themselves. I’m saddened by an entire population that thinks being gay is a good thing. They deceive themselves in saying it was the way that they were born, so they just have to accept that as part of their fate. Then, there are the ones who kill little babies in the womb. Now that my state of Virginia is totally democratic (both house, senate and governor), the governor is likely to pass a bill that abortion is okay up until birth. He even did an interview in which he said that the baby could be killed after birth if the mom decides she doesn’t want it. WHAT?!? My mind is blown because of the lack of belief in God that people seem to have. They don’t believe in Heaven or Hell, so they don’t believe in a future reward or consequences. I wonder sometimes if they are deceiving themselves. I know for sure that Satan is alive and well and spreading his evil lies everywhere. But God won’t be mocked forever; the Day of Judgment is coming and the time is now for those of us who believe to stand up for our beliefs and to say, “Enough!” We have not been led astray by the lies of the world, but others have. We need to proclaim loudly and clearly that the God of the Universe is alive and well and He will ultimately judge all sin…whether people want to call it sin or not.

There are preachers everywhere who say from the pulpit that various sins are okay. They and their flock will answer to God because He stands by His Word, the Word that is truth. What myth have you believed? Is there someone in your family who has been deceived? There are multiple members of my family who do not believe the truth but who have quickly latched onto the lies. Why is that? Well, I think it is because the lie is what they want to believe. Let’s join in prayer together for those who are deceived and who have “itching ears” to hear the Word of Truth, be convicted and repent.

Blessings to each of you for a day in which you hear only truth. My prayers is that filling our hearts with truth will overflow to a needy world!

I am thankful for cars. Since we live in a very rural area (think lots of trees and few humans), it isn’t easy (almost impossible, in fact) to get to a place with a store without a car. The closest Walmart is seventeen miles away. Most of my medical appointments are further than that, from forty to fifty miles away. How do we get to all of these places? In a car, of course! My car, a 2013 Toyota RAV4 is in the shop, having the transmission repaired under a manufacturer’s warranty. So, my husband and I are left to use the old Kia that I used in the early 2000’s to get to work. It went into the shop for repairs, stayed there almost three years (the shade tree mechanic was in no hurry to do the work). Once my husband got it back, it made a horrible noise. Think motorcycle, but it’s a car! When we came back from the Toyota dealer on Wednesday where I left my much loved Rav, I had to wear my noise cancelling headphones inside the car in order not to get an awful headache. Thank goodness my husband thought about bringing those along. Now, we wait. We wait for the Toyota dealership to call and tell us my car is ready. They said maybe by late afternoon today. Thus, I am thankful for cars. They are our route out of the wilderness into what I term civilization. I thank God that He watches over us and takes care of us when we travel and that He has given us the means to do so!

What are you thankful for today? Do you have reliable transportation? I hope so! Blessings for a great day filled with safe travels in the car or truck or whatever God has provided for you!

I know that you have all heard or seen the guy in the end zone doing his little dance or the racer at the finish line patting himself or herself on the back. God wants us to take pride in things that are much more important.

If we think that we are wise or mighty or rich, then the only thing that we should actually be proud about is the fact that we know God. Now, I have known the Lord as my Savior for almost 47 years, but I don’t know all that I want to know, not by a long shot. Nor do I even pretend to understand Him. You know the Scripture verse that says His ways are not our ways, right? Many times I have seen the things happening on earth and I’m glad that I am not God because in my disgust, I would probably just have wiped man off the earth. But God knows all and understands all, and I only know a part and understand a part. I understand some really important and valuable life lessons, one of which is that the Lord offers us loving kindness (when we probably deserve judgment), he exercises justice (think of all the ways God is just) and He exercises righteousness. How does He do the latter? Well, He sent His Son to die for us and then we show the righteousness of God to a lost world. Righteousness equals right standing with God. I am not in right standing with God without the shed blood of Jesus Christ which God so freely provided for each of us. The final part of this verse says that God delights in exercising His loving kindness, justice and righteousness in the earth. I think that this part of the verse also refers back to the first part in that God also delights in having us understand and know Him. Every day that we spend on earth should be a day in which we know Him a little more, understand Him a little more and can share what we have learned with others. After all, that is our purpose here…to be His hands, feet, eyes and ears to the people who need to know and understand Him. I must admit that I would like to be wise, mighty and rich (especially rich), but God says that if I understand and know Him, I already am. How about you? Are you dancing in the end zone of life because you know the Lord? Let’s all dance together here on earth and make others wonder what we are so happy about! Blessings to each of you for a day filled with God’s glory!