Begin the Week with Words

This weekend was a doozy! We traveled two hours from home to attend a music festival called Alive in Mineral City, Ohio. We spent the first day with things going wrong and the entire second day in the rain. And I mean every single minute in the rain. By the time we hit dinner we decided not to come back for the evening bands, which is a shame because they were what we came for. But it was so miserable...and every time we parked in their lots (aka fields + rain = mud pits) we got stuck and my dad had to pull us out with his truck. Every time = more than once.

I was really looking forward to this trip, especially after the rough start we've had to summer, it was very disappointing. However, I sit at the hotel pool this Saturday night, watching two of my three kids swim, with my husband at my side, and I'm reminded of Ann Voskamp's teachings about Eucharisteo. Thanksgiving in all things, with joy and grace as a result. And I recall these quotes from her book One Thousand Gifts:

"Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant—a seed—this plants the giant miracle." Voskamp

“I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep.” Voskamp

And I know I have to find the good moments and focus on those, because anything else is a thief of joy. And why be an enabler to that?

I also want to share one very cool moment from this past week, an addition I had done to my shoulder tattoo, which goes along with one last Voskamp quote. Consider it one for the road:

"When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?" Voskamp 

Wording and blue flower at end of "Eucharisteo" are original
tattoo from 2013.