"with thanksgiving let your request be made known"

     "Be careful [JST: afflicted] for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made know unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:6-7
     I have been struggling a lot lately. Mostly due to a very full plate which is unfortunately fixed for the moment. As much as I long to scrape some of it off into the compost bin, I can't. When people comment on the fact that I "must be busy." I usually retort with "Better busy than bored," or "A busy life is a good life." Yet, in reality I do think that there is a point where too busy is not better than bored and too busy is not a good life. I am there. I just happen to have too much on my plate right now physically, mentally, and emotionally. The interesting thing is that the only way I can deal with it is spiritually.
     I read the above scripture this morning and a peace washed over me. Of all the things on my plate, of everything I am worried about, I am counseled to be afflicted for nothing. If I pour my heart out to God in prayer with thanksgiving, His peace will keep my heart and mind. In times of strife and great stress, I am told to be thankful.
     November is one of my favorite months of the year for the very reason that it is the month of Thanksgiving! I am so thankful for the opportunity to focus on what we have and what we have been blessed with. I am going to post something that I am thankful for everyday.

My Amazing husband! (He will kill me if he sees this!)

     Today it is an amazingly wonderful husband. Last night I went to bed with a mind full of things I needed to get done before preschool this morning. I woke up around 3 and couldn't go back to sleep because of everything on my mind. Finally at 4:15 I got up because I was making myself sick with thoughts everything I needed to do. One of those things was clean up the basement. I hadn't touched the basement since our Halloween party at preschool. It was a disaster! I came downstairs and it was all picked up. Not only the school room but the whole basement. There was a huge pile of things that needed to be put away at the bottom of the stairs and it was all gone. The family room was a wreck but it had all been picked up. There were hundreds of foam stickers on the floor from our party and this morning, there was no trace of them. Sometime after I fell asleep, my husband must have got up and quietly came downstairs to do this for me. With tears in my eyes, I knelt down and thanked my Father in Heaven for such a wonderful companion. (I also felt slightly guilty for pushing him away when he tried to cuddle up to me!) 
     Marriage is tough. It is a refiners fire. Sometimes I get very impatient with the process of learning and growth we both go through. Today I am thankful for it. I am so glad that I was given the perfect man for me. Not the man that made my life perfect, but the one that helps me to grow in the ways I need to. No matter how hard married life is sometimes, I am glad that I get to do it with Josh. He is my favorite person to be with!