Do we allow God to bless?

I found myself in a challenging position yesterday as Emily arrived at the door asking if she could come in for a visit. Emily lives next door with her brother Mitchell and their grandparents. She is in the second grade and loves to stop by for unexpected visits. Emily’s unexpected visit’s last anywhere from 10 seconds to 1 hour and typically involve a request to play with Ellie (my golden retriever). I looked down to greet her and noticed her honey colored hair covered half of her face and desperately needed a barrette. As I opened the door to allow her skinny little frame access to my very un-kid friendly home the bubble above my head read, you have a huge presentation next week and have very little prepared for it. However, as she began respectfully removing her shoes the Holy Spirit said, “You asked to be blessed today and I’m responding to your request”. Emily ran to the Africa room and jumped behind the couch to find Bob the Builder toys and began talking to Ellie as if she were her playmate. “Ellie, do you like Bob the Builder?”

I finished a phone call and sat at the dinner table watching as she seemed to be in her own world. It didn’t take long for me to realize the opportunity I had just been given. I consistently pray for God to bless me and use me as His conduit for His kingdom. Emily was one of today’s blessings. I walked to the guest bedroom, grabbed the Rubbermaid box filled with crayons, markers, construction paper and finger paints and invited Emily to create something with me. As we sat down at my new dining table Emily said, “Danette, you are the nicest neighbor I’ve ever had. Have you always been this nice to everyone? Thank you for playing with me.”

Emily wasn’t seeing me, she was seeing Jesus. Jesus is never too busy for coloring, playing cut outs or simply listening to our child like conversations as we go through our day. Spending that one hour with Emily reminded me of Phil 1:10a “So that you may surely learn to sense what is vital, and approved and prize what is excellent and of real value” {amplified version}

Baby Jack: My special blessing

Jackson has just turned four and he wanted me to know that I was his special Baby Jack. His official name from Mom and Dad is Jackson. However, Aunt Danette insists on calling him Baby Jack. This has been tolerated my Baby Jack's Mom for four years now. It is simply a good thing that his Mama is my best pal or else she would correct me each time I called him by "his special name".

Not long ago he and Heather came for a weekend visit to bless me for my birthday. The last evening of their visit I sat on Baby Jack's bed and asked him if I could pray with him before he went to sleep. He said that would be "just fine". After I prayed for protection, guidance and for him to come to a complete understanding of Jesus we hugged and said good night. As I got up to leave, Baby Jack said "Aunt Danette I so appreciate you." Ok, now I had to stay and give him one more big squeeze and another kiss. The preciousness of those words melted my heart. I love that Jesus knows how to melt our hearts with the simple words from little ones. What a blessing.

Quality Time

I've been wondering over the past weeks what my definition of quality time is. It is one of my "love languages" so I thought I would spend some time really investigating what quality time really means to me. My life is filled with work, friends, family and duty jobs ie:house work. (don't care for it at all)

Here are my thoughts on quality time. When you actually skip the pleasantries and get right to the heart of conversation with people. I love when you forget about the clock because you are more interested in what your company has to share with you. It isn't the fact that someone remembers to call you back, it is when they call you first. A good cup of java always accompanies quality time. More on this later.

Recently I was able to spend an early morning with the Ya Ya's. (A.K.A. Sara and Mary) What I loved the most about the time was that they didn't seem to be in a rush. We laughed, cried, read the WORD and spent time listening to each others hearts. What a blessing to have close women friends I can feel at home with.

Here is my challenge. How much quality time have I spent with my Savior? It has nothing to do with desire or conviction, however, everything to do with discipline. I miss out when quality time with Jesus is abandoned.

Intention 

Time, where does it go?

Time.

Have you ever stopped to consider where it all goes? Working Mom's would tell you that their time is divide up as such: Five hours for semi-sleep, however, not to ever be confused with REM (rapid eye movement)because they haven't seen that since college. Two hours for Taxi driving, One and one half hour to prepare meals (yes, Wendy's and Donutland are considered prepared meals even if Mom's didn't prepare them personally), one hour forty-five minutes for bath and bedtime (presuming there are clean towels, corporative toddlers, no phone calls and no floaties in the bath water to which the three year old exclaims, "look Mommy, raisins"). Eight minutes of Honey time, nine to ten hours at the office and the list goes on and on.

We are each blessed daily with 24 hours of it. Some of us have more time to give in some areas than others do. Recently, I spent lunch with someone living with breast cancer. Her time allocation is completely different than mine. She spends a significant amount of her time with family, friends etc. Her priority is relationship building and maintaining. I don't expect many escape a conversation with her with out hearing how special they are to her. Another friend has spent several years in a corporate position with a Fortune 500 organization. She would spend about twelve to fourteen hours with office related business including networking, entertaining clients, reviewing spreadsheets etc. Her relationships tended to be more along the line of how the client and she could develop a win/win. There was typically little time for "deep" conversations as the "intention" didn't warrant it. More time was usually spent building trust and reviewing financials.

Do we applaud the "intention" of the cancer survivors time and shake our heads in disappointment at the business tycoon? If we parallel them we do. What if I told you they were the same person? Would that change our judgment? Are we empathetic with the working Mom who essentially has two full time positions or do we insist she spend more time "working the numbers"?

Time. Working Mom's wish they had more, business tycoon's wish it would go faster and cancer survivors are simply blessed to have one more day.

A Familiar Day

Being blessed beyond belief is something I see on a daily basis, however, have recently realized how many of us miss out because we lack taking time to pay attention to detail.

As working professionals, our day typically begins with a toddler's wet diaper, sassy five year old who insists on wearing shorts in the middle of a snow storm, a strong willed pre teen stating they just can't possible eat another bite of school food so "would we please fork over $5 for vendo-land?"

We haven't even made it to the bathroom ourselves to brush our teeth when the phone rings and it's our Mother wanting to know when we plan to stop by because she "hasn't seen us in ages". We continue to gently remind her, we actually do much more than she really realizes and had just been to see her two days ago. Then the dreaded guilt sigh comes barreling through the phone and she says "well, whenever you can find the time to come see me it would be nice." The conversation ends we shake our head as we jump into the shower and pray for hot water because the leak in the basement still isn't fixed.

We finally make it to breakfast and are ready for battle. Pancakes won't work, it takes too much time. "Who wants cereal?" We open the fridge to find someone has placed an empty gallon of milk on the top shelf. Our first thought is," Do we have enough money in reserve to fly to Cancun for the day?" We finally decide to pop peanut butter and toast into everyone and we are out the door.

Did we see our husband this morning or was that the water man checking the leak in the basement? Anyway, we are off and running the day has begun.

Blessings you say, what blessings? As our day's begin we often focus more on completing the task and less on the journey.

Take our toddler for example, did we see how he squealed with excitement when we walked into his room this morning? What about the way he put his finger up his nose then in our eye and said "eyes mommy eyes"? And as for the five year old, she wants to show us she is a big girl and really can dress herself even though she has no idea that we actually have seasons in the Midwest. Our teenagers are starving for our time, acceptance and encouragement. And even though our Mother's timing might be really really poor, we still have a Mother.

Being Blessed Beyond Belief is something I want to encourage each of us to look for on a daily basis. God says He has come to give us life and give it abundantly John 10:10. Being blessed isn't something that happens by accident. God wants to bless us and we need to expect it to happen.

How has God blessed you today?