Gateways to Joy

I loooove these women and am soooo thankful for their writing ministries.  I've been so blessed by their writings and I hope you are blessed by these conversations! These are real women, with real concerns. Enjoy ladies {and my men followers too!} Renee Swope website: Reneeswope.com Ann Voskamp blog:   Aholyexperience.com

Gratitude is defined most simply as 'the condition of being thankful.  ... gratitude is literally one of the few things that can measurably change peoples' lives.'  But, and here's the self-help angle, 'gratitude (or thankfulness) is an effortful state to create and maintain.  It is not for the intellectually lethargic.' ... preliminary findings suggest that those who regularly practice grateful thinking do reap emotional, physical, and interpersonal benefits. ... Grateful people experience higher levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness, and optimism ... The practice of gratitude as a discipline protects a person from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, greed and bitterness.'  That cultivating gratitude can fight depression is no small deal, as antidepressants have become the most prescribed medication in the nation.  Not only all that, but being grateful can, or might, also protect us from heart attacks, lessen p...

R ight into the heavenly.  Did you know giving thanks could do that?  She told us, made us aware of it: "All is grace."  And now seems like I'm seeing it everywhere: Grace.  Gratitude.  Beauty.  Gifts...more abundantly. Remember, "The difference is Christ in me, not a different set of circumstances." ~ Elisabeth Elliot

Y ou might call it ugly.  Unattractive, but to us it's where the laughter, the talks and the love takes place.   The training of the next generation.   Husband and wife lovingly loving.  It's our home.  Once we called it "beautiful," but then my husband hired someone who really wasn't worthy of the work.  The door-to-door salesman understands how hard it is to provide for family on commissions.  Some day's, he knows, you make zero.  Nothing.  So when he met a guy who said he would transform our home —a guy who was out of work, down on his luck, he hired him wanting to help him out. Well, our tile got pulled up before we had new tile to put down.   The door with the oval glass that I loved so much got taken down and replaced.  The glass screen that I'd wanted for so long is put in incorrectly .  The painting of the walls...fireplace was started on, but was never completed....