I Choose to Be Thankful

6:15 AM

to Read (

Words)

I choose to be thankful. Every day we make choices. Life happens. Challenges occur.

Our response to challenges shows our true colors.

After all, it's easy to be thankful when life is going well. But what happens when bad things happen and life gets hard?

This past week I've been busy. Since Heidi wasn't there, I got to work with Barcia. And as four year old Indira always says 'she's Miss Debbie's friend'. Barcia loves the children.

One of the little girls in our class is named Sara. I call her Sara Smile. Hall & Oates had a song called Sara Smile many years ago. Sara keeps asking me if she can hear her song. So Barcia pulled up a YouTube video of the song for her. She loved hearing the words 'Sara smile'. Of course, Brody and the other children had to gather around to listen to Sara's song too. :)

My next door neighbor Caroline is celebrating another birthday. So how does she celebrate? She hosts a birthday celebration of exercise! Caroline has been teaching a weekly exercise class at a local church for over 30 years. Maybe that's why she's in such great shape. She certainly looks much younger than the number of candles on her birthday cake.

What a fun evening as we did a combination of step aerobics, Pilates, weights, and stretching. Caroline creates her own tracks of Christian music. She also begins and ends with prayer. I loved exercising with a roomful of people of all shapes and sizes, ages and backgrounds. A little taste of heaven maybe?

Susan (front), Anna May, Linda, me, Helen

And then there was Sunday! At church, I got to see my good friends Pete and Susan who are missionaries overseas. They're on furlough for three weeks. I'm looking forward to spending more time with them while they are here in Arizona. The photo above was taken a number of years ago.

I'm so excited about something that happened on Saturday. My friend Sue's husband Jim was able to work on my broken computer and he fixed it. My computer crashed in June, along with the book I was writing. It was in Word and I wasn't able to access it. I was so discouraged and have been trying to rewrite it from scratch. Well, now I have my document so I'm back writing.

I continue to count my every day blessings ...

#953 Good friends
#954 Celebrating a birthday with Caroline
#955 Visiting with Pete and Susan
#956 Watching Sara's face as she listened to her song
#957 Getting my computer fixed
#958 Access to my book
#959 A sermon that spoke to my heart
#960 A sermon that confirmed what I am writing about is right
#961 Finally creating a Facebook page for Heart Choices
#962 Receiving 82 'likes' the very first day
#963 Heidi will be back to work today
#964 Hearing my niece Katie's voice on the phone
#965 Walking, swimming and enjoying exercise
#966 Receiving a personal email from a lady named Vangie who reads Heart Choices
#967 I was blessed by her words of encouragement to me

I'm linking up with Ann of A Holy Experience for Multitudes on Mondays.