Counting my blessings

I find myself in a halfway place, and what a wonderful place to be! As I slowly work toward my own ranch, I realize that I am blessed to live in a place that I can practice homesteading. I am stocked up on food for months to come, any baking or preserving I want to do is at my fingertips. While working through my business plan questionnaire the other day, I realized that I was already practicing….

I am blessed to have a place to garden, and a resourceful husband. Between the two of us we are constantly coming across great garden and craft finds for very cheap or free. I have been under the impression that I am not enough person to get enough stuff made to justify spending money on renting a farmers market booth, until I made a list yesterday of everything I thought I could inventory throughout the winter. I can make plenty of stuff to sell at a farmers market booth. I have tons of supplies on hand and am always searching for great craft finds and dollar sales at the craft store. My favorite are dollar pattern sales! I am planning to create a diversified inventory over the course of this winter so that I can try to earn a little in the spring. If I can continue to find low cost beads and fabric, I should be able to put most money I earn into a rescue ranch fund to start working toward a permanent place where I can build whatever type of garden beds I want to, and plant trees wherever I like.

I am blessed to have an awesome family, who support me in whatever wild goose chase I might run off on, and for believing in me even when I have a hard time believing in myself. I have six wonderful pets, and I am blessed to have them in my life.

I am the luckiest girl in the world. It seems that all around me, people are struggling through hardships and frustrations. I feel like I finally get to just relax and enjoy some of life finally. I guess all those years that I said that I believed that there had to be balance in the grand scheme of things, and that since my childhood sucked, I would be blessed in the second half of my life, maybe I was on to something. At the time it was just a coping mechanism, but I did truly believe it. With the technology age we are in, I am not sure if I still believe there is balance, after all, the scales will have to tip eventually. However, I am gonna take my chances and enjoy what I have got for the time being.

I struggle a little, the answer seems so easy. Jesus. It kills me to see my friends struggling and suffering and saying “Why me?”, or “I just wanna be happy”. I want to tell them that they can be, that they just have to open their hearts….but they just look at me with an “I’m glad that worked for you” kind of look, and it breaks my heart! It’s funny how people tell me that they have read the Bible and that there are things they just don’t buy, or things that go against their beliefs. As a young Christian, I was afraid to ask what things they could possibly be talking about. Have you ever met anyone who just read the Bible and got it? How many people can read the Bible straight through and think they understood it? Whenever someone tells me that they read the Bible and that there are things they don’t believe to be true and just, I will have to assume that they have never STUDIED the Bible and that I can help them understand, at least from a human perspective. When people do have an argument, at least in my juvenile years as a Christian, I have found that it is some stereotype of what someone says or thinks the Bible says, whether they read a verse without understanding, or whether it was hearsay (ex. women should submit to their men). Did they not get the part about how men are supposed to treat a woman, and that he should hear her opinion, but someone has to make the final call? Nowhere in the Bible does it say that men should treat women terribly while they wait on their husbands hand and foot. It doesn’t say we should be beaten down and treated like doormats with a smile on our faces.

What I see in the Bible are examples of how poor the human spirit is without God. I see people who make mistakes in their lives, and some of them are HUGE! It matters not, as our dear Savior loves us all the same amount, as long as we trust in Him. I hear people tell me about how they have lost faith in God for this reason or that reason, but it seems to me that those are the very reasons we are to have faith.

Death seems to make people question God.  This is bizarre to me! How is it that you can believe in God, know that death is inevitable, and then when someone we love dies, you question God? Why? Did you think it you and your loved ones were exempt from death of the physical body? Do you think that because you believe you should be exempt from the selfish pain that comes with losing a loved one? Truly, it is selfish, especially if loved one is saved. I can imagine being heart broken over losing a loved one who was not saved, but over a believer, that is just ridiculous. After all, as a Christian, is that not the goal? To serve my Lord wholeheartedly until the time when He calls me home to Him. We grieve because we will miss that person in our lives, not because they have suffered some kind of loss. They, after all, have just been awarded a vacation in eternity.

It feels like people want to cling to their sadness and misery. I remember being in a place so low I had no idea how I would ever climb out or that rut, but I was determined to keep climbing until I could see the light, and what a light! I talk to people now, in whom I recognize a lot of my past trials and lessons. I feel sad that so many have an”I can’t” or an”I won’t” or a “what will it matter attitude”.

I have one friend who is afraid of Christianity because she believes that she will go to hell if she sins. I had a lovely conversation with her the other day about it. Thankfully, she is much more open minded and positive, and even through very negative questions and perceptions, was willing to listen to me talk about the joy that comes into you when the Holy Spirit fills you! She listened to me tell her that I believe that we are all sinners and that no one is better(or Holier than though) than anyone else, aside from being saved and knowing Jesus. She listened for hours while I answered her questions to the best of my ability. It was truly a blessing, as the day before I had been sobbing and begging the Lord to work on her heart. Imagine my surprise when she came to me the next day, full of questions, and telling me that she knew it was coming, she just hadn’t had the “big epiphany” yet. I tried my hardest to explain to her that the only sin that will truly condemn you to hell is not believing. That the whole point is that Jesus saved us from our sins and that as long as we trust, repent and live in Him, we are saved. I think she might have really gotten it for the very first time. I hope she comes to church with me soon.

I am so full of joy and blessings. It really is pretty simple once you grasp the concept. Oh how I long for my loved ones to finally understand!   Have a blessed day!