10-10-10

Good Morning Friends.  I am writing this Sunday morning from the balcony of a beautiful condo in Sandestin, Florida.  My husband and I are here for an extra long weekend, a time of rest and renewal.  As my sweet daughter-in-law Carrie told me before we left, "this will be a vacation, when the whole family comes, it's a trip!"  There are times for both, but she is right...this has been a vacation, long awaited.

I am on Day Eight of one of Beth Moore's devotionals entitled 90 Days With JESUS The One & Only. I should complete this one around Christmas. This morning's reflection was from one of my favorite passages in scripture, the verse from Luke 2:19, "But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart."

As I was writing in my journal and took note of today's date 10-10-10; and since I have time and haven't posted in a while, I wanted to do a "Ten" List. Very unorginal, but I'm inspired with the whole Ten-Ten-Ten date today.  This list is not a Top Ten, but rather ten things I have often pondered in my heart.

Ten Ponderings
1.  The amazing grace of God and why He loves me like He does...
2.  The blessed gift of a long and faithful marriage with the love of my life...
3.  How absolutely right all my friends were about the sheer joy of being a grandmother...the inspiration for Gran Jan's Joy
4.  The great delight it is to be friends with my boys, now grown men...and the thankfulness that their wives are taking such good care of them...
5.  How I absolutely love to garden and wonder if those things are truly inherited and if so, then it came from my maternal grandmother...
6.  Sometimes at night when I slip outside I marvel that God really gave names to all the stars and that He knows my name too... Psalm 147:4 "He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name."
7.  After my trip to South Africa last year, I think of the beauty there, but also the devastating poverty in the shanty towns, and I especially ponder a little boy that used a plastic bread bag as his hat. My South Africa journal for that day is here...
8.  How some songs are so anointed and touch me every single time, and how thankful I am to have my own music man for a husband and that I know I am and have always been his favorite choir member...
9.  When God allows me to serve other women even with all my flaws, His mercy overwhelms me...
10. The older I get the more I understand the peace of being quiet and listening more...and often wonder why I didn't glean this truth earlier in my life, but the ways of God are a mystery...

Well, 10-10-10 is here and I'm getting up to enjoy my last day on the glorious Gulf Coast of Florida!

Blessings,
Gran Jan

P.S.  10-10-10 is also some mighty good garden fertilizer.  I'm just saying...