Count your blessings one by one....

Sitting here eating my Lucayan salad from Calypso for lunch....mmmmmm.....and thinking about the funny little things that God blesses us with.....

....do we see them??

I've seen a few the last couple of days.....

My kids are such a blessing to me each day. In the busyness that is our life, I many times overlook the little sprinkles of joy they drop on me. But I caught a few recently....

Over the weekend, Rick was cleaning the playroom and I was cleaning the kitchen or something, and I didn't really pay attention to what the boys were doing too much. But when the night was at the end and we were getting ready to tuck the kids into bed, I noticed that the boys' room was cleaned up. It had been in disarray for a while. We are bad about laying folded, clean clothes in the floor by the boys' dressers until we get a chance to put them away....mostly because there never seems to be enough space to put them away. Anyway, this night, the floor was bare and everything seemed in place. I thought Rick had done it. But it was Matthew. I thanked him for being such a great helper...especially without prompting....and kissed him goodnight. This was on Saturday or Sunday. Last night, I went into their room to take clothes from their hamper (which we had just cleaned out on Saturday) and it was completely full....to the brim. I came down the hall asking how in the world it could happen that a newly emptied hamper could be so full. Matthew looks up innocently and says, "I did it, Mom. I threw all the clothes in there that were in the floor." I couldn't help but laugh.

Our other little blessing had me laughing last night, too. Rick was helping him with his homework. He's going to be tested next week on knowing all of his personal information. We've been practicing his address, phone number, birthdate, etc. Never really considered that his name might pose a problem. They want them to know their name....not just the whole name.....but each part. So Rick asks him his first name.

Luke.

Okay....check that one off.

Middle name??

Pie.

Uh-oh. Rick and I looked at each other and shook our heads smiling. What have we done?? You see, Luke's pet name....don't ask me how it got started because I couldn't tell you....is Luke Pie or Lukie Pie. I tell you....these are the things that are going to haunt our children. Oh, but how I will cherish the memories of saying that pet name and getting the biggest hug ever in response.

Other random little blessings....

A lady in front of me yesterday at Starbucks paid for my coffee. The young lady at the window smiled and told me this woman does that often. She's blessed to be a blessing to others she told the cashier. Wow! The impact on my morning was big. How much bigger an impact would a gesture like that make on someone who is having a bad day??

And then today.....

Last week, Rick found a Blackberry laying in the middle of a winding little back road in Williamson County while he was working. He almost ran over it....but saw it and stopped to pick it up. He brought it home and tried to plug it into our computer to charge the battery so we could get a name and number out of it, and hopefully, return it to its owner. But it wouldn't charge. Then Sunday morning as I was getting ready for church, I saw a light blinking out of the corner of my eye. It was on. I scurried trying to find a pen and paper.....thumbed through what seemed like a hundred options on this device.....and found a few phone numbers.....before the battery was gone. I could tell from the pager and office number that I found that the gentleman works where I do. So I paged him to let him know we found it. He laughed....had been looking for it for days....they thought it was lost in the house. He said his wife had taken it for a bit and his daughter must have thrown it out the window. He wanted to come get it and save us any further trouble. I laughed then. I asked him if he had seen those commercials with the little gnome who travels the country and takes pictures everywhere it goes. That's what his blackberry had been doing. If he really needed it, he was welcome to come and get it, but he would have a drive to get to our house. So we decided that I would bring it to him at work. I dropped it off this afternoon. He handed me a card. He and his wife had written the loveliest note of thanks and given us a Target gift card. How sweet was that???? And totally unexpected.

What little blessings have fallen on you lately?

Better yet, what are some ways we could shower a little blessing on someone else??? Impacting the world around us....one little blessing at a time....