Count Your Blessings

We've all heard the song:
'Count your blessings,
Name them one by one...'

But some days it's a lot harder to look at things as blessings. We've talked on here before about changing your perspective, focusing on the good instead of the bad but this week let me give you some examples from my last couple of days.

It started Thursday night when I was heading up to bed and my dog decided she wanted to go out again before she settled down. It was cold outside and I was already in my pajamas but rather then let my irritation get the best of me I tried to be thankful that I wasn't asleep yet and I took her outside
.
Then came 3 a.m. when she decided to wake me up again to go outside. This time it was a little
harder to find something to be thankful for but I thanked God that it wasn't raining and it wasn't too cold and I took the time to ask Him to keep me from being grumpy when it was time to get up Friday morning.

6:30 rolls around when a huge gust of wind pulls up some of the roofing and makes quite a racket but I was thankful that there was someone else to get up on the roof and deal with it. At this point I realize we've lost power but there's nothing I can do about it so I went back to sleep, another blessing by the way since I didn't have any trouble falling back asleep.

7:30 and my alarm on my phone goes off, there's still no electricity so I can't start the laundry that needs to be done or work on my computer and after our middle of the night outing the dog is perfectly content to stay in bed for a while which means I got to sleep in!

Finally it's time to get up and guess what... still no power =( but at work Dad had thought ahead and made coffee and put it in a thermos so I still could get a cup of hot coffee despite no electricity. (This, combined with the extra sleep, made it much easier to not be grumpy and was answer to my prayer.) That's about the time I discover that with the roofing coming up earlier some water came in and the floor's partially flooded but never fear because we have the blessing of a mop! And a mop bucket on wheels which makes life so much easier. Plus when the rain came in none of it hit the shelves so none of our products got wet! Thank you Lord!

Next chore was to get the generator running and once Dad was able to do that he set stuff up so we could keep the store running Friday and run the fridge and freezer so we didn't lose any product, he hooked up WiFi so I was still able to get some stuff done and even hooked up the stove so that it didn't get too cold. Although one of my thankful prayers did include the fact it's not winter so even if the stove wasn't running we wouldn't freeze.

Well, it was a little concerning when the power company had no idea what time the lights would be back on and it put everyone's plans for the weekend in jeopardy but then, one of the best blessings of the day, the lights came back on! We didn't have to open the store late or close early, I was able to get home in time to take care of several things that needed done (including my laundry) and no one had to change their plans! That's a blessing!

So yeah, the power was out for 11 hours, the dog was restless and the storm tried to mess up our roof but the power came back on, the dog settled down and slept much better Friday night then she had the night before and the roof stayed in tact. Definitely a lot of blessings from this adventure, including the one where God reminded me to keep focused on the good He was providing and not the crazy circumstances I sometimes find myself in.