Life is a Series of Moments

I am thankful.
My family and friends give me reason to smile every day.

Even when I look back at the events in my life that brought intense pain, I see how they have served to mold me into the person I am. I was not always thankful for those times but I was thankful in them because I believed that God loved me and even if I couldn't see His purposes at the time, I trusted in that love.

There were desperate days that I clung to the hem of His garment begging for things to change...and in His grace they didn't. But that past pain has now brought depth and feeling to areas in my life that could have remained numb. It's brought deep growth when complacentcy could have kept me shallow.

Most of all, it's made me thankful. Embracing the good times with family and cherishing my sweet friends that I share laughter and tears with. Holding moments of love tightly in my heart and turning from the clutches of bitter unforgiveness and offense.

Life is a series of moments.

Don't let the moments get lost in the momentum.

And laugh. Laugh a lot.

This is an entry from a my journal when Lauren was 5 years old...it still makes me laugh, I hope it brings a smile to your face today too.

Hearing loud music coming from her bedroom, I crack the door to hear Toby Keith blaring and see this child siting on the bed with her motorcycle helmet on surrounded by our two large dogs while "talking" on her cell phone. She looks up at me and says without a second's hesitation..."oh good you can be the Grandma."

I hope your Thanksgiving has many wonderful moments.

Much love,
Sue

Teaching Our Kids to Be Thankful

Yesterday I stopped into Meijer to grab my Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey was pardoned at our house this year, so I picked up ham, potatoes, corn and all the other traditional goodies to make our meal.
With a full cart I wheeled into the fastest lane. Yes, I pretend to live in a parallel universe where the lines are short and fast the week of Thanksgiving.

There were two people in front of me. A frazzled women with an overflowing cart full of groceries and clamoring children was at the register while an older man who had the face and the belly of a Grandpa stood between us. He looked remarkably like Santa Clause but he wore a black World War II baseball-style cap and there were no reindeer in sight.

The woman was a coupon-er. I am not a coupon-er but have the utmost respect for them. Unless they are in front of me in line. Then I have to wait while they finagle argue sort out their coupons with the cashier who is not conviced that they have all the correct sizes for the coupons in hand.

While I wait, I impatiently happily check my phone and catch up on the tweets I've missed. As the minutes tick by I search for anything written by Ann Voskamp because surely that will calm my nerves, quiet my heart and probably bring me to tears in front of God and everyone in Meijer.

But the sweet World War II veteran in front of me obviously doesn't have an iphone or Ann Voskamp's twitter name. He also seems to be shifting back and forth on his legs and his face shows the ache of many years and maybe a war or two.

He quietly slips out of the lane leaving his two items on the belt. He shuffles his feet to the other side of the store and settles on a hard wooden bench. He looks tired but relieved to be sitting. I see a slow breath leave his chest as his head looks down to the floor.

The coupon woman noticed that he left and apologetically pleaded her case with the cashier and I. She didn't mean to be taking so long, why had he left?...where did he go?...was he angry?...she was embarrassed and even more frazzled. I told her that he had walked to the bench and surely just needed to take a break from standing.

As she walked away the cashier reached to take the mans items off the belt but I asked that she leave them. I would take care of it.

I paid for the grocerys and walked towards the door to the man on the bench. I reached over and handed him his bag and he burst forth with explanation that his legs had grown tired while standing there and he couldn't do it any longer. I nodded that I understood. He then reached for his wallet and tried to pay me. I shook my head no and thanked him for his service. He struggled to pull money out of his pocket but I was already walking through the door and I repeated my thankfulness for his service to our country as I slipped out of the store.

I know it was a small gesture, but I can't tell you how wonderful my heart felt to thank that man for his service to our country and it occured to me that being thankful is not something that we do just to bless others, it is a gift we give to ourselves.

A thankful heart is peaceful.
A thankful heart is not anxious or wanting the best seat at the table.
A thankful heart brings humility and it respects others.
When we are thankful, we esteems others as greater than ourselves and that is a beautiful way to live.

I want to live in that beauty and I want my children to also.

As parents we have the opportunity to train our children to be thankful. The best way we can do this is to live with a thankful heart. Children are smart, they see how we live and they live that way too.

I mentioned a couple practical ways to teach our kids to be thankful when I spoke on Star 105.7 this week on our Real Moms of West Michigan segment, they are:

• Teach them to say thank you. And not just a half-hearted mumbled looking at the ground “thank you.” But we can teach them to look in to the persons eyes and clearly say thank you.

I had to work on this with my 7 yr old because someone would say to her, 'oh you look so pretty' and she would just smile and nod. As if to say- yes I AM darling.

No, I taught her, you need to look them in the eye and say thank you.

• Another thing that is helpful is to ask your kids at bedtime, what are you thankful for today? If they don’t know…teach them the things to be thankful for:

“That we were kept safe every time drove in the car”
“That we are all healthy”
“That we have a warm home to sleep in”

• Also, teach your kids to be thankful
  by giving to others.

I read about a great idea on the Happy Home Fairy blog to teach your kids to be thankful for others…they took individual bags of un-popped microwave popcorn and attached a little sticker/tag to it that said, “we just want to pop in to say we are thankful for you…and then signed their name”
You can hop over to the blog for free printable tags.
Give them to teachers, mailmen, bank teller, coaches and anyone else that touches their life. It helps to get our kids thinking about who they are thankful for.

Thankfulness is not just something to focus on during the holidays but if it opens the door to have the conversation, by all means walk through it. Use this time of year to teach the kids what a heart of thanksgiving looks like.

It will grow them up to be beautiful people.

The "Real Moms of West Michigan" airs Tuesday mornings at 7:05 AM EST.

If you are not in the West Michigan area, you can listen online at iHeart Radio:
STAR 105.7

And visit Tommy and Brook at:

STAR 105.7 on the web
STAR 105.7 on Facebook
@TommyAndBrook on Twitter

Guest Post ~ Thankful Journal

A guest post by my girlfriend Denise, click on the picture to get to her blog.

On Thanksgiving Day, 2007, I started a ‘thankful journal’ for our family. When dinner was done, we would read a family devotional (i.e. Gotta Have God for Boys or something like that) and then we would go around the table and list three things we were thankful for that day.

We followed this faithfully until harvest season this past year and got out of the habit and we JUST started it up again. Flipping thru the book, it’s so fun to see what we have to be thankful for, and how our boys have changed. For example……..

DS4 (son #4) said he was thankful for Daddy, Elmo (my mom), Papa (my Dad), tractors, my Tigers (a cat)
What you have to understand is that when he says he is thankful for Daddy, my husband gives a huge silent cheer,
when our son says ‘Elmo’, my husband says ‘she’s mean’(all the boys say “noooo! Oma is nice!”),
when he says Papa, my husband says that is ‘okay’,
when he says Tigers my husband says ‘Tiger is a stinkin’ varmint’.

It will go like this thru the whole ‘thankful for’ list.
DS3 said Daddy (silent cheers again), plant potatoes, so I can be a good farmer
DS2 says Daddy (can you see the pattern, notice no Moma!), my bird (he had rescued a baby bird fallen from the nest), all eating dinner together
DS1 says Daddy, we had field day today, fun playing with Isaac
Daddy says my boys, my asparagus patch and Moma (hooray for a ‘Moma’ vote!)
Moma says spent the whole entire day with my boys today, my super cool new camera, & we have clean sheets today.

They are little snapshots of our life, they also help us know when we started getting the asparagus in, when we planted potatoes, when we harvested the pumpkins and so forth!

I also keep little extra notes on some days, for instance, he heard Moma’s tummy growl and looked at me and said “you have frogs in your tummy”.

When they saw all the lilac branches being trimmed off, one of the boys gave me a hug and said “it’s okay, Moma, we’ll get you a new one”.

On DS3’s first day of school, we asked him if he made friends at school that day.
“No” he shot back, as if we were totally clueless, “we made FROGS! Not friends, FROGS!”

As I said, we fell out of the habit. When we are back to it, I imagine it’ll be like it was before. The boys watch for my last fork full of food and literally race to see who can get the ‘books’ (Bible, Devotional, journal) to Moma first. The devotion helps sparks some good conversation, and see into our boys lives at school and what they struggle with. And the thankful journal keeps our spirits high; on a down day it helps to find three things that went well. And flipping thru it, it helps remind us of God’s goodness to us.

Try it, start collecting your families lifetime of thankfulness to treasure.