It's turkey time again and I find myself wondering - what do we really have to be thankful for?  For all of you homeschooling moms out there, what are the five things that you are most thankful for?  What have you learned since last Thanksgiving?  Do you think you've grown in the last year?  How?

This past year has been amazing for me.  What five things am I most thankful for this year?  Okay - here we go:

1.  Since last Thanksgiving, I have given birth to our 7th child, our 5th son.  He is so cute, with a head full of curly hair.  I think he has a smile that is to die for!  I am certainly thankful for him and his six siblings. 

2.  I can't be thankful for children without being equally as thankful for the wonderful man who helped to bring them into existence, my husband.  He is such a wonderful person and I am incredibly blessed to be married to him.  Next month will mark our 15th Anniversary (I still feel waaayy too young to have been married that long) and he still makes my heart skip a beat when he walks into a room!  I praise God everyday for allowing me to be his wife!

3.  As tough as homeschooling is, I am thankful not only to have my children home with me, but also for small victories!  One child I thought would never have a love for reading.  I honestly believed that I started her on formal schooling so young that I killed a love for learning in her.  Just this month, I was shocked to discover that this same child is outreading all of my other children.  She has become a voracious reader and I give all glory to God for it!

4.  I am thankful that God upholds me day in and out.  I am thankful that the Lord brings my attention to those small victories that I need so badly to keep going.  I am thankful that His Word is absolutely TRUE and that my children are in fact "taught of the Lord" and live in great peace!  He is such a Good God!

5.  I believe that I am most thankful for "do-overs"!  Remember them?  Remember playing a game when you were little and things didn't work out quite the way you bragged that they would so you called a "do-over"?  Well, this has been my year of "do-over". 

I am ashamed to admit that my past has not been "squeaky clean"!  There was actually a time when being a submissive wife was not a term that would have accurately described me.  The details are too numerous to bore you with now, but God is giving me an opportunity to get it right.  It is amazing how many circumstances have repeated themselves from years ago.  The major difference is that I am wiser this time around.  I know what happens when you make the wrong decision because that is what I did the first time.  I didn't like the result.

Now, I get to allow the Lord to work in my life through my husband and trust their judgments.  It should go without saying that the Lord is worthy to be trusted, but when he asks me to place that trust in the hands of my husband, things sort of changed in my head.  Don't get me wrong, I have a wonderful husband and I love him dearly.  He just doesn't always decide to do what I want done when I want it done and I kinda find that, well, irritating.  Sometimes, I just want to be able to call all of the shots, then I know that I will get what it is that I want!  The problem is, this is no at all what God has required of me as a wife.  Boy, has it taken a long time for that to seep into my head!

I know that many of the things that we have suffered through as a family is my fault.  I know that if I would have only obeyed the Word of God and been the wife that I was supposed to be, I would not have found myself in many of the difficult situations that I was in.  Worse than that, my family had to suffer through all of that with me.

So, I am thankful that God has given me the opportunity to revisit those challenges and make the right decisions this time.  I am thankful for the "lean years", the time God used to stand me in front of the mirror and really look at myself.  That was really hard.  I am not the picture of holiness that I thought I was.  But you know what, I am so glad for every test, trial, tribulation, heartache, pain, and tear that came between my first time around and now!  Only Jesus could do that!  Only Jesus could force me through the fire and have me come out thankful for the experience.  I appreciate the woman of God that I am now.  I appreciate the maturity that the Lord has brought me to.  And I am thankful that He is standing me in front of the mirror again, only this time the reflection resembles Him so much more.

I pray that each of you will take the time to really consider what you have to be thankful for this year.  Moreover, I hope that you are thankful for the process that God is putting you through to perfect you.  Maybe you are enduring pain or discomfort in your current circumstances and it seems like even God doesn't care very much for you.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  He loves you and wants to "buff" His reflection into you.  It could be, like me, that you will get a "do-over" and He wants you to be pleased with yourself the 2nd time around!

Have a wonderfully blessed Thanksgiving.  And number six on my list, I am thankful that you stopped by to read my blog today!

Until the next time....