Blog of the Month @ Joanne's "Blessed" blog!

Alright friends... you will not believe how CRAZY excited I am today. Seriously... out of my mind excited. You have no idea...

Anyways, I'll get to the point of my crazy excitement:

A wonderful woman named Joanne has a blog called Blessed, and every month she picks seven random blogs to be on her "Blessed Blogs of the Month" list. I was totally surprised and elated this morning when she left a comment on my blog saying that I was on this month's list! How cool is that? So if you are here for the first time because of Joanne, WELCOME and I'm so happy to have you! And for all you readers that don't know Joanne, click on the link below to visit her blog:

Maybe I should actually blog a bit today, instead of just talking about the source of all my excitement....hmmmm.

I suppose I shall talk about my brother. This is so neat too because his birthday is today! He turns the whopping 18... I can hardly believe it. If you want, you can hop on over to his blog to tell him congrats. Maybe even become a follower if you want. He has been my best friend since I knew what that even meant, and I love him SO MUCH!

I love new months. Something about them just feels so pure and clean and exciting! August is such a lovely month too. Summer is my favorite season of all. I can't believe that fall classes start up this month though... life keeps getting faster it seems.

Well, since I was up until five in the morning last night (chatting with friends from home because of the time difference) I am utterly spent and can't really come up with anything wonderfully exciting or brainy to say today.

However...

God's just awesome, isn't He? He continues to remind me over and over again of His faithfulness and sovereignty, even in the midst of anxiousness and uncertainty. His love fills me up to overflowing and is so much more than I could ever ask for or imagine on my own. I hope you take a moment to just CELEBRATE his awesome gifts today... however small or insignificant they seem. A gentle rain, beautiful flowers, clean air to breath, being able to hear the birds sing, plentiful food and shelter, being able to read... how many times do we forget to praise and thank God for the intricate little things that make life truly beautiful? I know I do. I get so caught up in the here and now... and the "me" that should be guided in the right direction is only encouraged in it's trivial pursuits through my selfishness. How humbling to know that Jesus has given me so many precious gifts that I'm not even fully aware of. Take a minute to just be still before Him today...and if you can, think of just one simple thing that you're extremely thankful for...and praise Him for it.