Still Grateful

This week has been so weird. Mostly hard. Some good. I still have hope. I’m still focusing on gratitude.

Robert crashed his truck on Monday while taking Ethan to school. He slid on ice and crashed into a guard rail. He’s okay, Ethan is okay, and the truck isn’t too banged up. But we just don’t have extra money to put towards fixing a vehicle. We don’t have full coverage on it because it’s 30 years old. It’ll be okay. It was just a weird way to start the week.

In addition, some big, hard stuff has been happening with one of my kids, and we aren’t sure what to do about it at the moment. We have a bit of direction, but it’s so hard to determine how to handle some things and what decisions to make. There’s no perfect decision. We are asking God for wisdom and supernatural change in this kiddo. It has been ongoing struggle that just escalates every time.

My anxiety has been extra high these days. I’ve had a lot of physical symptoms which feel debilitating some days.

This morning, we found out that Trump won the election. I’m not going into my thoughts on that because I HATE talking politics. I have mixed opinions and feelings and can see people’s thoughts and feelings on both sides. I’ve had people get angry at me for not living in fear or being angry with them (on both sides, through this whole season), but I just can’t. I won’t even say who I voted for because I didn’t think there was a great choice to start with. I just did the best I could. Carlos Whitakker says, “don’t stand on issues, walk with people,” and I agree wholeheartedly.

And today we woke up to a LOT of snow with more to come! We are at about a foot at the moment. In the next few days, we may get another 40″! This is so crazy. Apparently this isn’t even normal for this time of year here. Record-breaking stuff. I took these pictures around 11:30am today. It’s still coming down. We are at over a foot so far.

Here’s the forecast for Thursday and Friday (through early Saturday morning). We will see!

We already set up Christmas. I set it up early every year, but knowing that we had a bunch of snow coming made it more fun this year. It actually feels like Christmas time! Our tree looks tiny in our new house. It used to feel big in our living room. I think we will get a bigger one for next year.

As I said, despite hard things going on, I will still focus on gratitude.

I’m grateful for a snow day in which our family is forced to slow down.

I’m grateful for our needs always being met.

I’m grateful for a warm, cozy home.

I’m grateful for Christmas lights and music.

I’m grateful for friends and family who are always by our side.

I’m grateful for hot drinks, homemade food, and the ability to buy that food and those drinks.

I’m grateful for the resources that we have here.

I’m grateful for growth and learning what’s truly important in life because of hard things that I have been through.

I’m grateful for our church.

I’m grateful for our camp family.

I’m grateful for family time as we have these snow days!