The Blessing Tree

Do you ever just take a minute and just count your blessings? I think it's a wonderful practice. Corrie ten Boom was one who could make a blessing out of a commandment and I've always been in awe at how people see that glass as half full, when I view it as half empty.

In the blessing loop, I was just blessed by a visit from my husbands family. How on earth they stuck it out at my house for 5 days of toddler chaos and 106` heat, I will never know, but they walked out (rather briskly now that I think about it) to catch their plane (...oh maybe that's it) on two legs and upright. So I guess that's a good sign that they made it through the week none the worse for wear.

I am always blessed by my online buddies, and a conversation with Judy sparked a memory of when I was 4 years old. I had one grandma, my mother's mother, and she lived in Arkansas, and we lived in Los Angeles. So we would go back to see her every summer when I was a kid up until about when I was 12 years or so then I just don't remember if we visited that often or not. We would drive accross country.

It would take us about 4 or 5 days I think, my memory is a little foggy. We didn't have airconditioning and we would drive through the deserts at night in Nevada, Arizona and Texas. We would get a big block of ice and put it in the car to try to cool it down, my dad would dip a wash cloth in the melted water and try to cool off with it, I don't know how we did it all those years ago. We had a coup.

It would be pitch black and they would have the radio on. I remember Doris Day singing Che Serah Serah and I would just sing along at the top of my lungs in the pitch black desert in that car. I'm lucky they didn't pull over. But I do remember desert stars, the sky is filled with them suspended in mid air. There were always a lot of turtles on the road. And the biggest bugs that you have ever seen in your life!!! Or maybe I was a itty bitty kiddo, and it all just looked bigger. I don't know.



In my snoopings and ramblings I found a really nice poem/song from Amy Grant that she wrote about her grandmother. Find complete here: http://www.amygrant.com/amysblog.htm. Its a wonderful story that inspired this;

We sowed our seeds. Watered with tears. Waiting for signs of growth.

Took months of days and then took years.

We took our steps. We took our falls.

Somewhere along the way we just got lost and we lost it all.

Nothing ventured nothing gained. The risk of living is the pain.

And what will be will be anyway.

Oh, it's better not to know the way it's gonna go.

What will die and what will grow? It's better not to know.

Those tiny stems became these trees.

With dirt and storms and sun and air to breathe.

Like you and me.

And some fell down and some grew tall and those surviving twenty winter thaws

Have the sweetest fruit of all.

But innocence and planting day are both long gone. So much has changed.

And if we got to do it all again ...

Oh it's better not to know...

(Amy Grant)

Take a look at the canopy of blessing words overhanging my house. I hope you allow your self a handful today!