Practicing Gratitude

Huge stretch to practice being grateful.  HUGE!  And yet....I am.....so.....grateful.  This corona virus pandemic is crazy.  We have joked that we feel like its a dream we will wake up from....but every morning when I wake up it persists....and gets a bit more surreal.  So I guess I own it.  The boys and I had planned to go to LA for a long weekend missions trip the end of March.  It was to be their first mission experience.  That's been postponed of course.  I was reflecting lately on the effect of a missions trip for me.  Often, it is an exercise in being uncomfortable and out of my routine.  Often it is a challenge to seek the Lord and His will and His plan and purpose and set aside my thoughts and plans and goals.  The few missions trips I have taken all required me to find Jesus in hard things and work hard in His name.  So here we are....on a mission field in our own homes, at our places of work and worship and play.  Here we are.  What are we to do here?  Yesterday I

I've been learning more and more about the care and keeping of bearded dragons.  Folks.  It's a good thing I didn't do my research ahead of time.  If I had had any idea about how involved this would be I am sure I would have made a different plan for Josiah's 7th birthday.  Absolutely....positively.....sure.  But.  That's now how it went.  I decided we should get him one and convinced his dad and the rest is in the story. I'm glad we get to learn and adjust as we go.  With bearded dragons, with children, with our careers.....with all of it.  Resilience is a beautiful word.  Spike is about 4 months old.  He eats mostly bugs and some salad and veggies every day.  If he doesn't like the salad he throws it all over his tank.  Today he got some strawberries and he ate every little nibble and had pink lips the rest of the day.  I didn't think he was drinking enough so I tried to syringe feed him some and it worked.  Now I am dripping water into his mouth