Thankful Thursday: An Honor and Blessing

Did you ever have one of those days when you just felt grumpy, but didn’t quite know why? Uneasy. Out of sorts. Per­haps a bit anx­ious. You run through your men­tal check­list of things that could be wrong in your life, some­thing you might have for­got­ten … but every­thing seems to be in order, except, of course, you could use a bit more sleep and maybe an hour to your­self with a cool drink and good book would help. That isn’t on the sched­ule for quite some time, unfortunately.

So you trudge along, work­ing, shop­ping, man­ag­ing the house­hold, tak­ing care of the kids … and hop­ing that you will feel bet­ter soon.

And then it hap­pens. Out of nowhere! When you least expect it! And your whole per­spec­tive changes.

That’s pre­cisely what hap­pened to me a cou­ple of days ago. I was sleep-deprived, over-extended and hat­ing my inabil­ity to say “no” when I decided to log onto my com­puter for a few min­utes to read e-mail, etc. And there it was: A com­ment from Tami, telling me to check out her site.

There are no words ade­quate to describe how I felt when I real­ized that she con­ferred the Thought­ful Blog­ger Award upon me, explain­ing this way:

Though I’m not sure why, I have found a big fan in Hope­ful Spirit. She boosts my ego con­sid­er­ably by leav­ing com­ments con­tain­ing words like “bril­liant”. She is very unselfish in On the Hori­zon, fre­quently pro­vid­ing links like this one to the blogs of other writ­ers. I appre­ci­ate her can­dor, her will­ing­ness to be vul­ner­a­ble and the courage she dis­plays when say­ing things which may not be pop­u­lar. She inspires me with her seek­ing nature.

If you have read Tami’s writ­ing at The Next Step, you know why I am a fan. She is a gifted, insight­ful and extremely com­pelling writer. I am always excited to visit her site and see what she has writ­ten since my last visit because her writ­ing passes the all-important “did it stay with me?” test. In my opin­ion, good writ­ing plants a seed in your thoughts, the words lingers in your mind and as you go about your daily tasks, that writer’s ideas and thoughts come back to you, caus­ing you to con­sider the world in a slightly dif­fer­ent way or from a lit­tle dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive than you did before you expe­ri­enced their writ­ing. Tami’s posts have that impact upon me. Long after I’ve read one of her entries, I will find myself being reminded of some­thing she said and real­iz­ing that her intro­spec­tive yet open writ­ing has con­tin­ued to res­onate with me.

I am extremely hum­bled that Tami hon­ored me and because of her thought­ful­ness my steps have been lighter this week and I’m feel­ing re-energized about my own writing.

So today I am thank­ful for Tami and other blog­gers like her who inspire and enlighten me. That such lit­tle bless­ings come to us in those moments when we are caught off-guard and really crave a lit­tle light in our some­times drab cor­ner of the world is truly the work of the Holy Spirit and a tes­ta­ment to its power in our lives.

Thank you! Every­thing in me says “Thank you!”

Angels lis­ten as I sing my thanks. I kneel in wor­ship fac­ing your holy tem­ple
and say it again: “Thank you!“
Thank you for your love,
thank you for your faith­ful­ness;
Most holy is your name,
most holy is your Word.
The moment I called out, you stepped in;
you made my life large with strength.

Psalm 138:1–3

This week­end, in con­junc­tion with Super Sim­ple Spir­i­tual Sun­day, I will pass the award on to five other bloggers.

Thank you, Tami, as well as all of you who have taken the time to stop by and read my writ­ing. You bless me more than I can articulate.

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