Thankful Thursday #196!

"When you obey Me, you are living in My love, just as I obey my Father and live in His love.  I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete."  ~John 15:10-11

Today, I thank God for...

1.  My new writing room!!  Potentially a future nursery room, but I'm so glad it feels brighter and less messy and unfinished now.  I've ordered a cute office chair, but outside of that and the desk, we were able to use furniture and wall decor I already had, so yay!  

...Annie F. Downs has a library/writing room at her house that was once a nursery room for the people who lived there before her, and she said, "In this season of my life, I'm carrying and birthing books instead of babies," and I felt that.  On a related note, Christine Caine's latest podcast has me thinking about how conception follows intimacy... I want a deeply intimate walk with God that allows His dreams and character and the story He wants to tell through my life to take root and be alive and grow inside me, eventually sharing it with others in book form (probably a 2025 project, written from my raspberry-pink writing desk)! ❤

2.  Mom, who spent 11 hours with me yesterday working on decluttering, building the desk, moving furniture, and changing up the wall décor!

3.  Still hoping and praying for a child someday, and hanging this up with continued faith for that over five years later! ❤

4.  Loving this paperback book cover (the hard cover I read a while back was different).  "This is a book about getting back up."  YESSSS!!  Makes me wish I'd written it. lol  But I will write my own book eventually, and that'll be pretty exciting to see in print, as well!

5.  JaceMan's excitement about his newly purple hair and the "sick" photo collages I made for him! lol

6.  I didn't mean for this post to be totally décor-centered, but I took these pics this weekend as I looked around and felt really grateful for my house and my cheery living room... so many little details about it that I love, and now that's officially true of EVERY room in my home!!

7.  Supportive friends. ;-)  My group texts with Chet & Sarah + JEM and Chet are both fun, and the multitude of gif reactions to my Crumbl text made me pretty happy!

8.  Sarah Elizabeth, who has a birthday tomorrow - yay!  Fun fact: All of my current and former besties have summer birthdays, JMM being the only one not falling in the specific month of July!

9.  In scrolling through old pictures, I came across this meme I'd saved in March then never posted (to my memory).  I may have been thinking about gross bugs and lovely perennial flowers, but the metaphor hit me immediately today.  I feel like the past couple years have been a Spring season in my personal life with lots of messy new growth and vibrant color.  I'm grateful that God has the power and cares enough to resurrect certain hopes and dreams we have buried... for the ways He reawakens our spirit in areas where we have been on autopilot or felt a lack of purpose for years.  And I'm grateful for the hope that other dreams may simply be asleep or on pause, awaiting His best timing.

10.  As I walk the mini-hills in my neighborhood, I've gotten in the habit of reassuring myself: "All hills end - just keep going!"  And in so many ways, that's a metaphor for life... which I've thought about far more than I think about the actual tangible reality.  We conquer hard things one step at a time, and eventually, we get back to a lighter and easier flat road, until we inevitably run into the next hill.  Our choices are to quit or keep moving forward, so we go on, and we realize along the way that we're stronger than we once imagined.  The resistance may be intense, but our resilience is stronger.  You can expect loads of metaphorical gems like this whilst I train over the next 10 months! lol

"All hills end - just keep going!"

❤❤❤