Saturday, August 17, 2013

Seeing gifts while camping

I know I missed my Monday update for counting gifts this week.  You'll have to forgive me.  We went camping from last week Friday through till Wednesday, and I deliberately left my laptop at home so I couldn't even blog if I wanted to.  Our trip was as relaxing as camping with a one-year-old can be, but I was pretty ready to come home when we did.  The waves on Lake Huron were ridiculous this year - only one day where it was actually calm, and the ensuing noise from the surf started to drive me batty and made sleeping difficult.

It was interesting, though, how much easier it was to find gifts from God while surrounded by His creation.  Along with this, life slows down significantly while you're camping, and it was that much easier to breathe deeply and take the time to really see what was going on around me, not to mention I love all the smells that go along with camping, so half the time I was breathing deeply just to enjoy the fantastic scents filling the air.

Another lesson occurred to me that needs to come out of this journey of 1000 gifts - connecting those gifts with their source, and seeing God's love for me through the graces He gives, and being thankful to Him, not just being thankful to be thankful, but actually being thankful to the One who gives the gifts.

There is so much to learn!  Sometimes I feel like it will take a lifetime to learn everything I need to.  And maybe another lesson there is that I don't need to learn it all at once, to go slow and pick one lesson at a time.

So for now, I continue to focus on seeing the graces around me as gifts.  Maybe once I get that down, I can work harder on being truly thankful to the One who gives them to me and recognizing His love through them.

Some highlights from this week's list:
- shooting stars
- sand under my feet
- a seagull
- a ladybug
- the many smells of camping
- splashing running into the lake
- a little boy, breathing
- fresh cucumbers

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