She stood under all that blue sky and watched the windmill spin round and was it the all the world turning that she could feel?
How it spun and hurt and unfurled.
Dandelions unfolded at her feet — suns, risings everywhere.
The rooster turned.
Laundry slapped on the line.
Something in her, the hurting places, stirred awake right there.
That’s what she could feel:
The surrendered accept that pain is always but growing pains.
And growth is always a gift — even when trials are the tutor.
One of the ducks duck settled down by the barbed wire fence.
Out in the far field, a horse stood in the midst of an afternoon turning out all these golden globes.
And in the long grass, she opened her hand and reached up for the line –
this trusted stretching right into wind.
::
::
::
“The greatest Christians in history seem to say
that their sufferings ended up bringing them the closest to God -
so this is the best thing that could happen, not the worst.” ~ Peter Kreeft
In this world you will have tribulation,
but be of good cheer,
for I have overcome the world. ~ Jesus Christ
More than 1000 Moms choosing to be the gift (We did it — you did it! We all did it together — you and your amazing Moms! The 1000 Moms Project? Well, nearly 2,000 of you publicly thanked Mom and you and your Moms became the gift to Mamas in Haiti!)
the daily opportunity to quietly and gratefully be bread broken and given
… and the beauty of all these Mamas, whose legacy continues in 1000 Moms Project , all the way to the Moms in Haiti!
The 1000 Moms Project:
Thank Your Mom — & Bless Another
Did you see these beautiful mothers? You thanked each of these exquisite Moms publicly in the 1000 Moms ProjectAnd you and your Mom made a Mother’s Day Difference in Haiti this year. Have you read all your incredible stories of of Moms on this this page? A thousand thank yous!
I hope you & your Mom will join us when we travel to Haiti in July to see what a difference your thanks has made! When thanksgiving becomes thanksliving!
{Just click to begin this inspiring slideshow — here you all are so wondrously!}
Each day of May, either share your gifts on on Twitter {label with #1000gifts #JoyDare so we can find you!}, or with us in the gratitude community at Facebook , or on Pinterest (#1000gifts).
Each day, 3 people will who share their gifts via Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest will be randomly selected & entered into a drawing for JOY BASKET: a gift card @ Amazon {100$} & {signed copies of One Thousand Gifts, the photographic gift book, the DayBrightner, and the family gratitude journal} Give thanks to Him in the assembly!
Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts?
Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.
Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!
Fill the house and your heart and mind and bones with Praise to God music (Play it loud and let the whole house dance in praise! Really — just for a moment: dance in praise!)
– just because. Nibble on this sweet with with a cup of your favorite tea. Use your best china! {It’s like a mini-holiday, right at home!}
4. Pick up a Pen
– just for a minute.
Write down 3 reasons why you are grateful for your Mother.
From the Harvard Medical School: “When participants wrote and personally delivered a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked for his or her kindness, participants immediately exhibited a huge increase in happiness scores. This impact was greater than that from any other intervention – with benefits lasting for a month.”
“People who were in the gratitude condition [keeping a gratitude journal for 10 weeks]felt fully 25% happier - they were more optimistic about the future, they felt better about their lives and they even did almost 1.5 hours more exercise a week than those in the hassles or events condition.”
{Wouldn’t that be the best gift to give yourself — 25% more happiness! Who doesn’t want that? Just give thanks everyday to The Giver of all and everything — share your thanks to Him with us every evening in our little gratitude community!}
After the nap, play with the kids, because oh, the kids (no matter their size) and you just need to laugh and run with the world’s best bubble recipe — blow them like crazy and have a hoot…. or just blow them slow and quiet and watch them float…
But just take a bit of time to make a few good, happy memories on this good day?
Because there’s something about the sound of opening up a bag of seeds in spring.
Something about holding a promise right there in the palm of your hand.
And the Farmer’s whole tilled field, she’s laid right open, expectant and waiting.
The Farmer’s got his Wranglers on and he’s got his hands into those seeds all like pearls and the man’s dirt etched and pretty happy.
He’s got these 50 pound bags of seeds sitting there open on the tailgate of his pickup, ready.
The whole truck sagging under the pregnant hope of these seeds, millions of near-weightless seeds.
He bends down to check the dirt he’s already planted. The Farmer’s kneeled like a prayer and he scrapes back the surface and he searches.
“Found one.” The wind carries his voice to us sitting in the ditch’s grass.
“We’ve got the right depth, the spacing. Looks good!”
Those hands of his, they wear dirt like plain honesty and he carefully folds that found seed back into the earth.
He’s planting 29 thousand seeds into every acre of this waiting earth.
And it all just looks like barren dirt out here.
My Dad planted this same field full of seeds when I was a little girl and I went out to the field and stood on this same dirt and believed the impossible of the impossibly small. One generation can yield promise from pain. And it’s the gritty and the grimy that can hide real yield.
I reach down and touch Shalom’s silken hair.
And I think of Abraham and Levi and seeds and all that I am planting that I don’t even see:
“For although Levi wasn’t born yet,
the seed from which he came was in Abraham’s body…” ~ Hebrews 7:10(NLT)
Shalom looks up at me grinning. I look down into her —
For although there are generations not born yet, the seeds from which they’ll come are in the body of the child right here.
The wind blows and no child is just one child.
Every child carries generations of children inside.
Every child is like nestled dolls, all these generations nestled within — and mothering is a holy trust of whole entire eras.
Every day, every mother, she mothers thousands – all the children yet still to come.
I cup Shalom’s upturned face. She crinkles that freckled nose hers and laughs into the wind and who doesn’t laugh wild wonder that we get to be here like this?
I tremble this holy joy and a holy fear. And His grace is more than sufficient: it’s the soil that grows us all.
The Farmer drops the planter back down into the field.
He heads back out across that seedbed.
He waves back at us — this is it!
And the mother takes the child’s hand and a mother touches thousands and — this is it!
This is the time given. All the grit and the grime yields gifts….
The wind blows the child’s hair like a crowning.
Why the grace of all this?
And a woman wears motherhood like a plain honor, a hidden bestowing of a bit of eternity —
All the moments strung out like one pearled strand.
This strand of thousands and thousands of moment-like seeds….
{New York Times Bestseller Christianity Today Books of the Year Award of Merit Recipient}
"[from] one of the most gifted writers I've ever read a book that'll challenge you & mess with you
in the most beautiful of ways..." Lysa Terkeurst, Proverbs 31 Ministries
%20and%20go%20on%20a%20hunt%20for%20the%203%20gifts%20listed.%20Give%20thanks%20for%20the%20gifts%20and%20find%20Joy!%20%0A%20%0AShare%20daily%20on%20Twitter%20(%23JoyDare%20%231000gifts)%2C%20or%20on%20FB%20(OneThousandGifts)%20or%20on%20Pinterest%20(%231000gifts)%20and%20be%20entered%20to%20receive%20JOY%20IN%20A%20BASKET!%20%20 "Pin It")
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