Blessings & Beauty

Anyone else counting their blessings? I'd love to hear yours too:) Today's my bday and I'm blessed to be hanging out on vacation with my hubby. He was gone last week on a business trip, so it's great to have this time to play catch-up. Made it one of those weeks where it seemed easier to notice God's hand around me.

Blessings:

1) my hubby's safe travels home

2) soft, white sand to dig my feet into

3) the glassy blue of the ocean

4) rest

5) a warm breeze

6) 41 years

7) the taste of salt on my lips when I'm by the ocean.

Beauty:

All right. I'll be honest. I debated about putting this picture up here. Because, well, it's my legs. I even went so far as to put another picture up top at first so that this one wouldn't be my thumbnail when the link got shared other places...but then God reminded me what this year is about and what he said to me. So here it is, all by its lonesome...;)

For so many years I struggled with these legs! They made me too tall, were too white, too knobby, too big...and those feet? Flat as can be and not cute in sandals. I didn't look like the other tan, short, cute girls that flood this area I live in. It's been a lifelong struggle that God has seriously worked on in pieces. The older I've gotten the more I've become comfortable in my own skin, but still, I can heart that struggle when I put on anything that shows them off. As I stood in this water looking out at God's amazing, unparalleled beauty this week, God whispered, "look down". Then he preceded to remind me, "You are beautiful. Every part." And he took me through all these legs have done. Brought me to him. Bent before him in countless prayers. Walked me down the aisle to my husband. Been the strength that allowed me to run and play with my children or carry them when their legs cannot. They have always been there, without a thought unless it was a negative one...and how can that be? Because sometimes we get so twisted in the world's perfection that we cannot see the beauty in what God has given us. 

Oh, let's stop doing that, shall we? Let's work hard to see the living masterpieces he's made us in so, so many ways.