Celebrating God’s Gift in Today

Celebrating God’s Gift in Today:

Living life Anticipating God’s Gift in Today changes our who perspective!  

Over the years I have created two different personal blogs and want to slowly move what is in the other one over to this one.  But just for today I want to be sure that there is a link to my original blog on this one.  

Gift Of The Day With Barb Blog

Today’s gift was reviewing the past gifts I have been given!  What about you?  What Gift did you receive today?  It might be small or large.  It might just be seeing something beautiful in God’s world.  It could have been a hug or a call from a friend.  Or it could be something dramatic!  Celebrate your gift no matter that it is!  

Irises For Easter

 Irises for Easter

by Barbara A.

One of the gifts of learning to live in the moment is the the discovery of the gifts of God's natural world. 

I have never had much of a green thumb.  I have many gifts, but gardening has not been among them.  So when we moved this year, one of the adventures has been to discover what the land would offer to me. 

Each day for well over a month I watched the stems in a particular corner of the yard.  It began with green just sneaking out of the earth.  Slowly they grew and grew into strong stems and leaves. Not being a gardener, the longer they took to grow, the more I was convinced that I would have tulips for Easter.  Or maybe even a lily. 

Imagine my surprise when they all bloomed on Easter morning.  As the dogs and I walked out as we do several times a day, there were the richest of deep purple to the brightest of violet touched by God's paint brush with yellow.  It is of interesting note that I immediately looked up irises when I got back to the house after seeing that they had bloomed, but I had not ever googled to see if I could determine what was going to bloom.  The adventure was too exciting to ruin it before hand. 

The Iris got its name from the goddess of the rainbow, Iris.  She was known to have been the messenger of the God's, riding the rainbow to deliver messages robes of many colors. 

I challenge you to enjoy the wonder of God's natural world.  See what you might be delighted in in days to come with new eyes of wonder if you learn to enjoy God's gift of today. 

My iMovies!

This is a work in progress blog that I have yet to completely set up.  But as I can post my iMovies here for friends to see, I am letting you know about it! I hope to begin to post more things on here this summer. I also have a link on THIS blog to my other one: 

‘Gift of the Day with Barb’.

The first will begin my presentation the second will end it!

A Father Forgives

This weekend God gave me a tremendous gift, to be a part of the restorative power of forgiveness.  I shared at a conference and discussed the four P's of not forgiving:  Power, Pride, Protection and Punishment.

A father spoke to me later that day and told me that he had long ago built thick walls to protect him from being hurt as his son's struggled with addiction disease.  The walls got thicker as they strugglesd and by the time they found sobriety, he didn't seem to know how to let them back into his life.

He has two wonderful son's, both over 5 years sober, and both at the conference.  He shared his struggle, and his fear of letting down the wall.  I shared that the gift of having them in his life now was much greater than the what ifs'. A few minutes later I witnessed a father and his son's embracing.  The Gift of Family Forgivenss in action...