Let Us Give Thanks for His Wonderful Deeds

OK, I admit it, I am a pack rat...keeping letters, cards and journals, but that is my love language. I love to send cards almost to the obsessive side and have to police myself on this and I love to receive cards and letters. Those mean more to me than most gifts when someone has taken the time to write their thoughts and feelings...so at times, when I am down, I can pull out a few cards and encourage myself. I know it should be the Word and I get to that, but you know there is nothing like a sweet card from someone to soften the heart before taking in the Word.





With this in mind, I got a card from the Lord this morning, a little encouraging love note. I cannot be faithful to one devotional and on top of that I think I am being put in a box when I HAVE to read the devotion for the day. So, I skip around. This morning, I used Praying Through the Psalms by Eugene Peterson and I read and prayed a devotion for September. The verses were in Psalm 107...which is one of my all time very favorite Psalms. The verses in study were the repetitive verses of, "Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men." The prayer this morning was, may we be aware when we stumble upon the wonders of God. May our eyes be open to the presents of God and then immediately give thanks for the wonder we have stumbled upon. After reading and praying this, I went about my morning getting ready for work. I loaded up my junk and headed out to my car. In the parking lot in the middle of the driveway something caught my eye, but I walked on. I stopped and returned to look at the object that caught my eye, it was an amber colored rock...shaped like a heart.

Now that is kind of special and a wonder but wait, there is still more to the story. Yesterday I wrote about a continuing happy and love filled marriage, but how it started out on very shaky ground. I think it was so cool of the Lord to have Roy and I work together when we were working through some of the most difficult times. If we hadn't, it would have been so easy to keep doing our separate things...his work, my softball and volleyball leagues. We met at Pennzoil and after several years we began working together for a consulting service. We were oil and gas auditors and we traveled together, worked together, stayed in the same hotel room together and yes even through the difficulties we were sharing a bed together. Now I am a very social person, love to be with people, but I need no I HAVE to have alone time and it just wasn't happening. God was forcing us to be together. It was on a trip to Westport, Conn that we finally had the serious talk. We had never mentioned divorce and thought it was wrong, but we were beginning to think we didn't need to punish one another with our presence and maybe it would be better to put an end to our shared misery. We were walking along a beach there in Westport and Yankee beaches don't have beautiful sand or even ugly Galveston sand, the beach is rocks. Oh what a metaphor...we were on rocky ground in our marriage and we were having the most serious discussion of our then young lives on rocky ground. We stopped cause we didn't know what else to say and decided to pray. We asked God to lead us, we wanted to do what was right, we desired to stop arguing and fighting and asked God for a sign. When we finished praying there was a rock at our feet in the shape of a heart. We picked up the rock and said OK, if we do decide to divorce, we have to come back together to this beach and bring back this rock. I know that doesn't make sense now, but it did at the time. This was a turning point for us, instead of despair, we had hope. It wasn't a magical rock because the journey from that point was still difficult and hard at times, but we began praying together more often and arguing less frequently. We decided the best place to learn about loving and serving one another could be found in the Word. It is totally a testimony to God's great patience and love. I used to say that Roy was a good husband, but he wasn't friend material. He is a great husband and my best friend.

Fast forward to this morning. Now you see why this little heart shaped rock was a card or love letter from God this morning. His mercies are new every morning! It was such a wonder that I stumbled upon. If you don't think I had a little praise and dance moment right then and there...well, you don't know me very well. All my neighbors were leaving about the same time as I was doing my little praise dance.

Note to self- As much as I wanted to call Roy and tell him about all the happenings of this morning, I didn't. It is a crunch week for him, he didn't get home until 9:00 last night. If I was to tell him about the little rock right now, his reaction would be from his work mode and then I would probably get my feelings hurt. That's is what I would have done back in the day. Hopefully I am a little smarter now...I will tell him about this little rock when he gets home tonight. He'll be in a much better mood and in a better place to hear the story and celebrate our little milestone.