Thanksgiving!!

I sure do love this time of year and I really love that we slow down and take a moment to just be thankful.

This is the first Thanksgiving since we were kids that all the siblings AND my dad will be here (he usually works on Thanksgiving). Aaaaand, it's the first time ever that all of us are together with our spouses. Wonderful!

This has been a VERY tough year for most of my family. There has been a lot of loss and heartache. There's been a lot of hurt (and when one of us hurts, many of us hurt right along with them). There has been a lot of painful waiting...and silence from our great God. There's been higher than usual amounts of stress on most of us. There's been struggling on many, many fronts. Frankly, it's been really hard.

Except for God. Because of Him, that's not the end of the story. Our God has come to us and blessed us in more ways than we can count, and maybe even more ways than we will ever know. He has and continues to bring healing to our hearts and to the hurt that lingers. He has a plan in the midst of all the waiting...sometimes He shares the plan, other times, not so much. Even in that though, we are not without hope, we are not without faith, and we are certainly not alone. He has reminded us to lean not on our own understanding and to keep giving our stress and our troubles back to Him. NONE of us has gone without needs! God continues to provide for us in BIG ways. He hears our prayers and answers us and He comes to us in our time of need. I am so thankful for that and I am so thankful that I am in a family that celebrates that as well.

God is so good to us. Happy Thanksgiving!