Brenda Rodgers

Tag: thankfulness

  • Why I’m Not Ready to Read Jen Hatmaker’s Book “7”

    A dear friend who I love and respect and look up to so much (I secretly want to be like her when I grow up even though she’s a little younger than me) posted on Facebook recently that she is reading Jen Hatmaker’s book 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess. She said that the book is “rocking her world” and she’s been “gutting her house and making packages for homeless people”.

    Oh wow! I want to want to gut my house and make packages for homeless people. I really do.

    But I’m not ready to read Jen Hatmaker’s book 7. (more…)

  • Are my tears worthy of thanksgiving?

    For a month now I’ve named how wonderful life is with all of my blessings. Thanking God for warmth and comfort and security. All things that are worthy of thankfulness because they make his presence known right here. And they allow me to see him the way that fits right for me.  Oh, that’s the God I hear and know and talk to – the one that gives me good things. Things I ask for and expect.  He is a God that loves me.

     But I have forgotten about those fallen tears, as I’ve counted all my blessings.  You know, the ones that make me turn my back and question his true love. 
    The tear that fell when . . .
    I lost my first friend at ten years old.
    I didn’t fit in with anyone around me.
    I was homesick and just wanted to come home.
    that college didn’t want me.
    my boyfriend didn’t choose me.
    I sat lonely in an empty apartment.
    I looked at my mom for the last time.
    gossip and slander took a friendship.
    my husband struggled to stay alive.
    I saw the baby I wish I had.
    I still don’t know where I’m going.
    I realized I am still so broken.
    My thankfulness is based on ultimatums and ones that I hold to tight.  If you give me, then I will give back thanks in return. Thankfulness is for the easy, but what about for those tears that fell?  Are they not worthy too?   
    Without them I would be a wreck of a person not knowing my own purpose.  For those tears may not have given me easy pleasantries, but they make the pleasantries possible. 
    Hope. Strength. Comfort. Perseverance. Worth. Protection. Faith. Rebirth. Purpose. Surrender. Wisdom. Humility.
    God doesn’t fit into my tears as nicely.  But I think they’re still worth his praise.  So today for each fallen tear I thank him and look from where he’s brought me.
    “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.”
    1 Thessalonians 5:18
      
     

  • Content with Bare Walls

    China, linen napkins, holiday dinnerware, special candles, that perfect black dress, the earrings your grandmother gave you.

    Are there things in your life that you keep hidden, tucked away, only to be seen on the “special days” that are just a little more special than all the others?

    Recently as I was cleaning the house I noticed all around me pictures and decorations that I have not yet hung on the walls.  We have lived here three years.  I know very well why I had not hung them yet.

    I was waiting.  Waiting for that “special day” when my house would be perfect with colored walls in each room.  Then I could make it home.  After the paint settled.

    As I looked at these things that I love and that bring so much joy when I look at them, I realized how often I wait and wait and wait  for perfection and in the meantime miss out on the enjoyment of what I have today.

    The problem is that perfection will not come in this life.  And as I anticipate it showing up at any time, what is here now becomes waste.

    My walls are still bare with the same dull white color that they were when we moved in, but yesterday became a special day.  I stopped waiting, took out the beautiful things around me, and made those bare walls perfect with my blessings.