Books!

Reading.
Learning.
Studying.

Fictional books are nice, and even greater when they have a subversive message, but NON fiction, now there we go! Awesomeness.

So today, I'm off the appointed chart, but the heart of Eucharisteo is to be thankful.  I find thankfulness is best when you are truly thankful for something very meaningful to you.  Since a picture is worth thousand words, I'll quit talking.

I am delighted to read all of these! How good is Father God to show me interesting things!

Christmas Gifts

This gift is worth the most.  Both of our kids were home for Christmas!  I am beyond thankful for God's mercies. His love and mercy is new every morning :)

A Gift MIRACULOUS

Before getting out of bed and I was still drowsy and thinking about sleeping more? He said,
"Wanna get up and spend time with me?"

Then those who feared The Lord spoke with each other, and The Lord listened to what they said. In his presence, a scroll of remembrance was written to record the names of those who feared him and loved to think about him. "They will be my people," says The Lord Almighty. "On the day when I act, they will be my own special treasure, I will spare them as a father spares an obedient and dutiful child. Then you will again see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not."
Malachi 3:16-18

3 Gifts BERRY RED

More blessings of God that make me stop and say, "thank you!"  Three things today that are berry red that make me stop and say, "God, you are good!"

Beautiful brooch from my awesome mother!

A super read.

Christmas is beautiful - with lots of red. 

Three gifts unframed art

Three gifts of unframed art.  I see art all around me. Art can take on many various forms.  The ability to create something is art. Whether you're creating a motorcycle out of parts of creating a cake or writing a book....all are forms of art. And of course there are obvious ones like painting and sculpting clay, but musicians are artists, carpenters are artists, electricians and plumbers can even be artists.

These are gifts that give me a happy heart toward God when I look at them because He gave me the ability to either make these, purchase them, or put them together in this arrangement. I love Christmas.

I love everything!

I am happy.  I also feel super lucky. I personally think I have the best life. I don't have to get up really early, I can go to bed later, and when I do get up I have an awesome husband (who sleeps later than me) and a cute "Spikey Dog" who is always eager to get up too. Then I make myself a BIG cup of coffee.  Pour-over style.

I am actually quite particular about my coffee.  I really only like pour-overs (because mine are outrageously strong) or expensive lattes.  Not that they're worth the price, I just like flavor once in a while in the car.  Hot. My coffee has to be boiling. Almost boiling doesn't cut it. Full, roaring, boil. And for some reason, as I get older, I am getting picky about the kind of cups I use.  You know at Pier 1 they have all those fancy cups but the deal is they're not microwaveable. The clay (is it clay?) is very thick and if you microwave it, you're going to burn your fingers off when you take it out. Guaranteed. But anyway, getting back to coffee, I have been starting to not like big puffy cups.  Thin, porcelain is definitely the way to go.

Plus I'm so lucky, that when hubby is sleeping, I can sit in my office (I've never had an office to myself at home before) and look out my window at the Rocky Mountains and read my favorite book.  If you don't know my all-time most favorite book in the world, well, I'll leave that as a surprise.

I've also been studying about Eucharisteo from Ann Voskamp.  Today is easy. I am thankful for EVERYTHING! Some days I just wake up and being in a good mood is a challenge - today however, is awesomely good.

It's Wednesday December 10, 2014 and the assignment is to find 3 gifts of "Unframed Art."  I'll do that later, but for now, I delight in my coffee.  This is a wonderful gift from Father God every day as as I spend time with Him.

Pretty much LOVE books.  This is one side :D

My desk is filled with so many pretty things and I am thankful for all of them!

Current books I am reading and more loveliness!

Such a great view when I look up from my writing and reading :)

Father God, you are awesome beyond belief that you have lavished such gifts of peace and joy and beauty on my life.  But most of all, thank you for sending your Son to die for my sins and giving me the promise of eternal life.  I love spending time with you now. Here. Your words are my favorite words in the entire universe to hear. And how awesome that you choose to spend time with a messy, clay lump like me.  And Father God, I have a lot of friends and family that I want to meet you and experience your amazing AWESOMENESS! You ARE love.  -Jessica

Not always bad. Even though it looks bad...

When you and I can look at a very negative situation and still say, "thank you" to God, knowing He will transform it into a thing of beauty at just the right time, that is when heaven takes notice and we can begin to see God's beauty.  He is good. And he works diligently to turn our mistakes and failures into opportunities to show us more grace.

1,000 GIFTS

• Full moon shining out over the mountains and onto the snow
• The smell of smoky chimneys in the air on an evening walk
• Being able to attend and worship at Fresh Life Church in Kalispell
• Reading and finishing an entire book in 1 day.  (A record for me)
• Lavender tea.  So delicious.
• Hot buttered rum.  Never had it before but it was amazing.
• Mannheim Steamroller and Brock Thomson at the Bigfork Theater.
• The ability to dream about stopping time (read the book.. ;)

3 Gifts BRIGHT

Cultivating a spirit of thankfulness on ALL occasions and In everything. Because thankfulness always precedes the miracle.....and, pretty sure no one likes a grump.


1. Bright eyes! I LOVE when people's smiles actually REACH their eyes.  True happiness!

SGT. Alexander Johnson

2. The sun on a grey wintery day.

3. Bright light in a house.

3 Gifts WHITE

Things I am thankful for:

1. Snow!! Snow started falling today in awesome, giant sized 3 flakes. The kind you can eat :)
2. Shampoo bubbles. They're so beautiful when they glisten an entire rainbow in one bubble :)
3. The dinner gift certificate. That restaurant is yuuuuuuumy!

 

When you just don't care.

There's this challenge - to be thankful for 1,000 things. Sometimes it's really difficult. When I start to focus on what went wrong, it just doesn't happen. This happened to me the other day. When I woke up, I was crazy mad before I ever got out of bed.  (That isn't a regular occurrence for me, that almost never happens, (she said tongue in cheek) but that day I was really in a funk.) I had told my husband I wanted to be an early bird and not a night owl.  So I ended up becoming an early owl. I didn't get enough sleep and I had the eyes of an irate early owl and the mood of an angry bear.

Then, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find anything to be thankful for. I didn't like anyone or anything.  And to make me feel worse, I knew I should be thankful, grateful, appreciative and I wasn't. Knowing you're failing at a challenge really lifts your mood too.... Not.

I was supposed to think of 3 gifts I received "at noon."  Really? Well, How about the gift of sarcasm, I definitely had a heaping gift of criticism that day, and then I gave a gift too.  Yay me. I gave a gift. Does that count?  I mean, I know we're thinking of things to be thankful for so, thoughtful me, I gave a gift to my dog.  I decided he was going to go on a diet. (I know. I'm a real sweetie.) Dear doggie, today my gift to you is that you are going to lose some of that extra fat! Aren't you glad I'm around?! You know it's bad when you walk in the house and the dog hides. :/

=====================later====================

My list of things to be grateful for is really awakening me.  I realize now just how much I need to focus on gratitude in all things in my life.  The above post is unfortunately true I am sorry to say.  Spikey really is on a diet now, and I was a super grumpy early owl. Or maybe I was a late bird.  I don't know.  Either way, I am going to be honest all this year with my 1,000 gifts and truthfully, not every day is a win/win.

But hey, "tomorrow is another day," said Scarlett O'Hara.  Tomorrow I will overcome.

 My husband is so wonderful.  After that very bad, terrible, horrible, no good day,

he gave me this card.

The End.

3 Gifts Hard Eucharisteo

This means that you are thankful for 3 things but that require a little more effort because sometimes they involve "hard lessons" of grace and joy and thanksgiving when we don't naturally feel like that.

Giving thanks to God - especially - when you need a miracle.

1. Trusting God with things I cannot see right now and believing he is always in control.
2. Thanking God that "iron sharpens iron" and my husband sharpens me.
3.  My __________.  A "hard Eucharisteo."

The root word of this word is the Greek Charis.
Charis means grace. Chara means joy.

Eucharisteo : Grace, thanksgiving, joy.

The root word for our daughter's name: Charissa!

3 Gifts Golden

Three (golden) gifts from God that I am thankful for today:

Crabcakes on a bed of lettuce with lovely lemon butter :) 

The glow of warm lights inside Christmas light-up houses for a friend 

A friend's Golden birthday party at Crush Lounge with my awesome husband.

3 Gifts of Remembrance

1.  I remember His promises.  Today I reread some of them to remind myself what the ending is. :)

(Don't you just love knowing that everything is going to end "ok"?  Some days it takes faith to believe that what you don't see now, will come to be someday.  I guess that's the definition of faith anyway.  "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and confident of what we cannot see." Hebrews 11:1)

2.  I remember courageous soldiers. Only 1% of all Americans actually have the grit to become soldiers.  That makes them a special minority.  They are wonderful!

3.  I remember words of love, spoken by people I love.  And that makes me love them more instead of focusing on bad words or events that happened.  I remember to love.  

3 Gifts found in Bible Reading

I read Acts 16-17 today.  Sometimes gifts come in the form of reassurance.  Today I read about how Paul and Silas were doing the will of God and you would think that if you are doing what God wants, that you're going to have this glowing aura of protection and blessing on your life.  Everything you touch will turn into gold and everything smells like roses kind of world.  Well, not so much.

Paul and Silas were doing everything God wanted and they had it bad.  They were stripped and beaten with rods (Acts 16:22), they were thrown into prison (Acts 16:23), "Jason's" family was thrown into jail because the people thought he let Paul and Silas stay in his home.

My three lessons I learned today:

1. Sometimes you do God's will and bad things still happen. (Acts 16:19)
2. And then sometimes those bad consequences result in a miracle. (Acts 16:25-26)
3. God is not far from any one of us. (Acts 17:27)

Those were my three things from reading today.  I hope they encouraged you somehow!

A Gift SWEET, SALTY, SIPPED

This was so easy.  Sweetpea and I both had a big cup of amazing squash soup.  In a grande to-go (coffee) paper cup from a local store.

Awesome, amazing, delicious, sipped gift.

THANK YOU!

Image credit: SimplyRecipes.com

3 Gifts Eaten

1. Piece of Godiva chocolate
2. Was a piece of pumpkin roll with cream cheese frosting
3. Little Caesars pizza

I'm reading this book, 1000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp . It's about looking for ways God has blessed you every day and then personally thanking him for them.  I knew today was going to be focusing on 3 gifts eaten and after I read it, I promptly forgot it. :( Then we went to Costco later in the afternoon. I took a demo piece of chocolate (does anyone not take chocolate?) and as soon as I put it in my mouth I thought, "this is GREAT!" I heard a happy "that's one." I smiled.  And did say thank you because I don't purchase Godiva chocolates. Ever.

Then we had purchased Pumpkin rolls with frosting.  That night I cut myself a piece and I thought, "this looks SOO pretty!" My attention span seems to be short some days.... but when I took a bite, I was reminded that this was another blessing from God. I smiled again. :)

Then at the end of the day, I was wondering what the third edible blessing was. I thought of the wonderful, hot cup of coffee Craig brought to me this morning, and also thought of the Little Caesars pizza we ate after work.  Both were blessings.  

When I look for God, I discover how many good things he really has blessed me with. How good it is to see God in every aspect of your life.  I have so much to be thankful for. :). I hope you get encouraged to read the book.