A Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts

Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet? Still mulling over a gift for that hard-to-buy-for person on your list? Remember the book A Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts! It’s a colorful book of heartwarming stories (including one of mine!), traditions, recipes, and other Christmas tips. And if you want daily stories and ideas, check out the blog by the authors of this book. It might be just the thing to put you in the mood.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a blessed and joyful day thanking the God from whom all blessings flow!

Giving thanks Day 24

I am thankful for my five senses—especially at this time of year!

Giving thanks Day 23

I used to dread extended school holidays—like Thanksgiving week—when my kids were small. Now I am so grateful for the time off!

Giving thanks Day 22

I am thankful that basketball is played indoors!

Giving Thanks Day 21

Thank you, Lord, that Your mercies are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness!

Giving Thanks Day 20

I am thankful that I am looking forward to getting together with my family for Thanksgiving dinner. I always know the food and conversation will be great. What a blessing to not have awkward family relationships to tiptoe around.

Giving Thanks Day 19

I am thankful to have all my kids back at home for a week. I know the days of the five of us will not last forever, and I will welcome in my new “children” when the time comes. But for now, I am appreciative for every day we have to make memories with our children who are quickly becoming adults!

Giving Thanks Day 18

One of the first steps I took toward “seriously” writing was attending a local Christian writers group in 2002. Little did I know what the Lord had in store! There I met two local ladies who asked me to join them in starting a weekly critique group that we named Life Sentence. We began meeting in May of 2003. They encouraged me to attend my first writing conference in 2004. There I met a whole slew of other writers, some of whom I now call friends. Then I joined ACFW and met even more writers, at conferences and via the web.

I am so thankful for other writers to walk with on this journey. Some I only know on my computer screen, some I look forward to seeing every year or two. Some I see often at the monthly writers group I first attended and now help lead. And six years later, Leslie, Mary, and I still meet weekly. God has done amazing things in all three of us, personally and professionally. I couldn’t have imagined it all when I stepped out of my comfort zone and attended that critique group all those years ago. God is so good!

Giving Thanks Day 17

I am thankful for organizations like Samaritan’s Purse that allow our family to participate in a small way in ministry that touches those in other parts of the world. Since my children were small, we have wrapped and packed Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes. In 2006, my daughter was blessed to help pass out some of these boxes in remote villages in Ghana.

If you haven’t yet filled your Operation Christmas Child boxes, do it now! Click here to find a drop off point or to pay for your shipping online and print your barcoded box labels. This is new, way cool thing. The bar code will be scanned at shipping and you will receive an email telling you the country to which your box was shipped! Amazing!

Giving Thanks Day 16

Yes, I am thankful for Facebook. It has allowed me to reconnect with people I’d lost touch with and helped me continue to keep up with them on a more consistent basis!  

Giving Thanks Day 15

I am thankful that my baby is 15 years old today! I love watching my kids grow up!

Giving Thanks Day 14

Thank you, Lord, that You love me so much that You won’t let me remain in my current state. You are always growing me, always prodding me toward maturity. And yet You never expect me to outgrow my need of You!

Giving Thanks Day 13

I am grateful for indoor plumbing, grocery stores, telephones, automobiles, airplanes, and most other modern conveniences! As much as I love reading and writing about other time periods in history, I wouldn’t have enjoyed living in most of them!

Giving Thanks Day 12

I am thankful for my family—both the one I was born into and the one I married into. I am grateful for their love and support and encouragement through the years. I love y’all!

Giving Thanks Day 11

Teachers are amazing people. I’m thankful for those that encouraged me to think and learn through elementary, middle and high school as well as college. I’m also thankful for the ones that have impacted my children thus far in their schooling. I am so grateful that God gifted these special people with the patience and the passion to walk into a room full of children and attempt to impart some knowledge to them!

Giving Thanks Day 10

I am thankful for all the men and women who have served our country in a military capacity—from the patriots that fought to free us from England to those who currently serve, stateside and around the world. Thank you for laying your lives on the line to keep us free.

Giving Thanks Day 9

I am thankful for my children. I am thankful for the joy they have brought to my life as well as the times they have driven me to my knees. They are not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but I love watching them become who God has made them to be, which requires a few bumps along the way!

It is fun to cheer them as they succeed and even to comfort them when they don’t. They have taught me what it means to love like Jesus loves. They have taught me the difference between the things that really matter and the things that don’t. I am changed because of them—for the better.

Thank you, Lord, that You give us what we need and not always what we imagine we want. I am so grateful that you gave me these three to love and nurture and steward through their childhood and teenaged years. And I thank you that you are growing them into such amazing people—people I like!

Giving Thanks, Day 8

Thank you, Lord, for Your provision of the necessities of life—food, shelter, clothing—but also for your blessings above and beyond those things. Let me never forget that those “extras” are not bestowed because of any “deservedness” on my part, but simply because of Your extravagant love for Your wayward creation. And thank you for allowing me to often be the conduit of Your blessing into the lives of others. The joy of giving is just another of Your gracious gifts.

Giving Thanks, Day 7

I’m thankful that Jesus “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:17)

Thank you, Jesus, for conquering death in order to give me life.

Giving Thanks, Day 6

I am thankful for variety. In the colors of the world. In the personalities of people. In types of music and books and art. I’m thankful that God is a creative God with a multi-faceted personality and that this world is a reflection of His nature.

Giving Thanks and Inkwell Inspirations

I'm thankful for a great group of ladies who blog together at Inkwell Inspirations! I love that the Lord brought us together, with all our different personalities and writing styles and made us friends!

Come join me at Inkwell Inspirations today where I'm blogging about Abigail Adams!

Giving Thanks, Day 4

I am thankful for contact lenses instead of coke-bottle glasses and for enough moisture in my eyes to continue to be able to wear them!

Giving Thanks, Day 3

I am not always as thankful as I should be for the gift of my husband. It’s not easy being married to me! I am thankful for our conflict because it helps me see the places in my heart that are not as Christ-like as they should be. I am thankful for our love because it isn’t based on the emotion of the moment. I am thankful for the fun times we have together and with our family. Mostly I’m thankful he has put up with and taken care of me for the past twenty-two years! Poor guy. He’s married to a crazy, fiction-writing wife who hates to cook and clean. I really don’t think he understood what he was getting into all those years ago!

Thank you, Lord, for the gift of my husband. He brings me joy and helps me grow. I wouldn’t want to do life with anyone else.

Giving Thanks, Day 2

I’m thankful for flannel pjs, blazing fires, hot drinks, fuzzy socks, and good books in the wintertime.

I’m thankful for swimming pools, air-conditioning, iced tea, flip-flops, and good books in the summertime.

Giving Thanks, Day 1

Thanksgiving is on its way. In between now and then we get to cheer our sons in at least one football playoff game, celebrate our youngest son’s birthday and enjoy our daughter’s arrival home for a week from college. With so much going on, I thought perhaps I needed to focus on the giving thanks part of the season. So I will try, from today to Thanksgiving Day, to post at least one thing I am thankful for.

Today I am thankful for good friends, ones that listen, advise, and encourage—and that let me do the same for them. I’ve learned, through the years, that reciprocal friendships are especially hard to find!

Thank you, Lord, for the blessing of friendships, old and new, ones that last and ones that are only for a season. Each one is a gift from Your hand. Thank you.

An Inkwell Inspirations Devotional

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