For today, I am going to join HeavenlyHomemakers.com in counting my blessings.  If I start writing, I could probably go on for days, but I’ll just list a few things that I can think of right now.  Some, of course are obvious, and some are not so obvious.

• Salvation
• A loving, hard-working husband
• 7 precious children and one soon-to-be born
• A solid roof over my head
• Plenty of food in the pantries, the refrigerators, and the freezers (yes, I have multiples!)
• A job for my husband
• The ability to stay home with my children
• Freedom
• An acre of land for the children to play on
• My husband’s truck in the auto shop giving me another forced day at home!
• Schoolwork waiting to be graded
• Loving family and friends
• Health
• April snow flurries that ARE NOT sticking.  ;-)
• The promise of a visit soon from grandparents (Hooray!)
• Noisy children (well, at least they’re happy!)
• Birds, squirrels, deer, racoons, and other wildlife visible outside my window at various times
• A rich heritage
• A need to declutter – we are blessed with an abundance of STUFF
• A definite lack of boredom!

Okay, I’ll stop at 20 for now.  What things are you thankful for today?

“Delight yourself also in the LORD,And He shall give you the desires of your heart.”  Psalm 37:4

Have you ever noticed that the more toys/gifts our children are given, the more they want and the less satisfied they are? For that matter, we can be the same way. When there is an abundance of things, we tend to be a little more careless of them, so they break more quickly or lose their luster. There is always a newer, bigger, better thing that we think we want. There is always something else that we think we need to make us happy.

What are my hearts desires? Are they for pretty clothes? A nicer car? A bigger house? Nicer furniture? Time to take up a hobby? Money for all of the above?

There is nothing wrong with any of those things, but they should not be the deep desires of my heart. To be honest, yes, I would like all of those things. I don’t believe that they are what is being promised in this verse, though. If I am delighting myself in the Lord, these will not be the deep desires of my heart. I will desire the things that have more of an eternal significance. Things like children who are walking with and serving the Lord, a happy and fulfilling marriage, and a life that glorifies the Lord will be more important to me than material things.

Just as I delight to give gifts to my children, I believe that the Lord also delights to give us material gifts. However, I will be more thankful for them, more content, when my desires are for the things of eternal value. It seems almost like a contradiction, but I will enjoy the material gifts more when they mean less to me. On the other hand, if I can look back on my life when I come to the end of the road and see a husband who knows that he was loved, respected, and cherished, children who are living for the Lord, and people who were brought closer to the Lord through my life, I can have the contentment of knowing that my life was worth living. Those are the things that really matter, but those are the things that I will only see if I delight myself in the Lord.

“Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”  Hebrews 12:1

A few people know that, after 7 pregnancies during which I struggled with gestational diabetes, I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes just a few weeks before finding out that I was pregnant with the baby I am now carrying.  Because I had not yet had time after the diagnosis to get my blood sugars under control, there was concern about how the high blood sugars would affect the newly developing baby.

When I was merely 6 weeks along, I was put onto a rather high amount of insulin taken in 4 daily doses in order to get my blood sugars down as quickly as possible.  That high amount was still not enough, and the dosages were raised the following week.  However, I had come across the book Eat for Health written by a family practice physician ( Dr. Joel Fuhrman ) in New Jersey that detailed an eating plan that had reversed diabetes  in thousands of patients.  The basis of this eating plan is the formula  “Health=Nutrients/Calorie”.  In other words, you focus on eating the foods that have the highest number of nutrients per calorie (green veggies!) to build/rebuild your health.  I got my doctor’s permission to follow the diet, although he told me that it wouldn’t make any difference in my blood sugar levels.

Dr. Fuhrman has a member site with an “Ask the doctor” forum, so I joined and asked him what I needed to know before starting the diet.  He told me that I needed to immediately cut my insulin levels in half, because my blood sugars would drop rapidly when I started eating as he recommended.  Sure enough, after one week, my blood sugars were lower on half of the prescribed insulin than they had been with the higher dose.  Within just a few weeks, I was only needing to take one dose of insulin per day to manage my fasting blood sugar levels.

While my levels continued to be good during the day, I have had to continue taking the insulin at night, and it has even increased some as my pregnancy has progressed.  To be honest, I was getting discouraged.  Even though I’m still taking far less insulin than I was originally prescribed, I stopped seeing the tremendous results that I was getting in the first few weeks.  It’s true that I can’t follow the aggressive eating plan that would likely help me get quicker results, because I do need to consider the fact that I am building a baby!  However, my discouragement was causing me to get a little more and more lax in what I was eating.

Well, I think that the Lord has given me the encouragement I need to press on.  I got a call from my doctor this morning with the results of my latest blood test.  This test was a hemoglobin A1C test, which basically gives a snapshot of how my blood sugar levels have averaged over the last 2-3 months.  The way I have been eating has brought my average levels down to non-diabetic levels!  (For those who understand the numbers, I started out with a level of 7.1 last fall, went down to 6.1 after just 1 month on the eating plan, and am now down to a very normal 5.4.  My O.B. had wanted me down below 6, and I’m well below that!)

I am thankful that the Lord understands my need for encouragement.  Yes, I should have just kept my eye on the goal of health for the baby and for me, but I felt like I wasn’t seeing the results that I wanted.  I continued to eat right about 95% of the time, but I had started to allow little “extras” here and there – and those extras were increasing.  Now that I have seen concrete evidence that I am on the right path, I feel like I have the boost needed to keep running the race.

How many other areas of my life are there where I have started to allow “extras” to creep in?  In how many other areas have I gotten discouraged that I am not seeing the results that I think I should be seeing?  Am I tempted to let things slide in my training of the children?  Am I tempted to not try as hard in homeschooling?  Unfortunately, the answer to those questions is often “yes”.

Thankfully, the Lord often sends along encouragement in those areas, as well.  Yet, just as I wonder how much better my results would be right now if I hadn’t allowed those extras into my diet, I also have to wonder how much better my results would be now in other areas of my life where I have let things slide.  Furthermore, how will I ever hear “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” if I take my eyes off the goal to look at my discouragement?  I guess that I can take heart from the Lord’s response to Peter when Peter was walking on the water and took his eyes of the Lord to notice the storm around him.  As the Lord reached down to pull Peter out of the water, He said, “Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?”  But the Lord didn’t give up on Peter, who grew to be used mightily of the Lord.  Hopefully, I will also grow in my usefulness to the Lord with fewer stops to focus on my circumstance.

“The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”  Song of Solomon 2:12

Spring.  It’s my hands-down favorite time of year.  The dormancy of winter makes me feel as if I just want to crawl into bed and sleep until spring.  Then, as I see signs of new life in the baby greens and the glimpses of color, I feel like I’m starting to come back to life as well.

So far, I’ve only seen the barest hint of green and the crocuses are a gorgeous purple.  I was on the other side of the mountain the other day and saw the yellow of forsythia and daffodils just starting to show.  But I know that the beautiful redbuds, the cherry blossoms, the tulips, and the azaleas will soon be out in full bloom, and I will once again feel alive.

Cabin fever will soon be abated in our house, Lord willing!  All winter long, the kids are pretty much cooped up inside our small house, but the warmer weather brings with it time in the play yard with the swing set, trees to climb, a sand box, and a play house.  For the older children, bike rides become a regular thing.  And for me, walking our country neighborhood roads becomes a joy.

Yes, I’ve had cabin fever, too, and I’ve been enjoying the warming of the weather.  The other day I watched a mother bird land with a beakful of sticks as she pondered a place to build her nest.  It’s time to do some nest-building inside, too.  It’s time to do some spring cleaning and start getting ready for a baby!  :-)