LIVE A LIFE OF NO REGRETS!!: Choose Joy

Quote from "Stepping Heavenward" by Mrs. E. Prentiss

"She says I shall now have one mouth more to fill and two feet the more to shoe, more disturbed nights, more laborious days, and less leisure or visiting, reading, music and drawing.

Well! This is one side of the story, to be sure, but I look at the other.

Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a soul to train for God; and the body in which dwells is worthy of all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom, while I minister in Christ's name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation my other dear darlings had left me. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares, to her lifelong prayers! Oh, how rich I am, how truly, wondrously blest!"

Friday, December 11, 2009

Choose Joy

It's that crazy time of year again. Each year I try to do less and less to make it a more relaxed month but somehow MUCH still creeps in. We're still in school but each day is becoming December "homeschool light" as the days creep on closer to the 25th. Work has picked up a lot and my mother is now full time employed (PTL) after a year and a half from being laid off. I'm very happy for her and realize again what a blessing she was to me here as I pick up the full load again. I'm allowing the teens to work again to help lighten the load. Being a mom of many, running a warehouse, homeschooling 5, being a wife, and trying to juggle housework, healthy diets, exercise, and more adding a busy month in could be a recipe for disaster BUT once again I choose joy. I will choose to rejoice in the Lord each day! I will choose to thank Him for the work He gave my husband and I instead of complaining. I will choose to thank Him for the ability to homeschool my children instead of straining under the stress of the task at hand. I will choose to thank Him for blessing our home with good health, joyful children and most of all a peaceful home to lay my head down at night in. I will enjoy the Christmas music, the hot tea or chocolate (even if there will be a dozen more spoons and powder spills on the counter), the warm fire (that I never have to build thanks to my pyro sons), and the busyness of it all because we miss out on the abundant blessings poured out into our every days if all we gaze at are the troubles. Thank you Jesus for the joy you infiltrate into our lives. Help us to keep focused on you and enjoy the ride of life.