Before I get started - I want to share a website with you.  - 
A Holy Experience

This website authored by Ann Voskamp is full of resources.

Please take the time to swim around on her site.  The inspiration for this post, and really a new perspective is Ann's study titled A thousand Gifts. You can view the first lesson in her study here: http://youtu.be/JvHK2qe1LWU.

I am going to be happy. From now on - that's all there is to it. With your help(and Ann's),I won't look back.

Today I was thinking through the things that make me happy.  In the process, I realized so many little things frustrate me.  Why do I let those things that frustrate me take over?  They are such little things. So I am sharing a photo journal with you today.  Photos of the little things that make me want to scream. You will understand how this leads to joy....just bear with me.  

Number one: 



This work space - or "work space wannabe"





Number two: 



This porcelain sink - so hard to keep clean!





Number 3:

These 1970's inspired shelves - I have no cupboards!




Number 4:

Do I really need to caption this?






This is just a few of the things that cause me small anxiety attacks in the course of a Saturday morning. You can relate can't you?  

But here's the thing.  Why do I have these little icons of frustration?  Where did they come from?  Let's start with the work space.  That desk - it came from my mom and dad.  The fabric is to make pajama bottoms for my daughter.  She loves music! What a blessing! (you can't really tell, but it has music notes all over it.)  On the right side sits my sewing machine - a gift from my in-laws.  And if you look closely in the lower left-hand corner - there is a photo of my daughter waiting to land on a scrapbook page.  So many blessings in a corner of my humble home!

Let's do the next two together. That sink! It is impossible! But the bleach on the counter?  Such a blessing! And those shelves - well I hate them.  But look how full they are!

The last one - a picture of endlessness. Does laundry multiply in your house?  But oh the people that wear those cloths...the life they live that causes them to need washed. Nothing can replace the blessing in that. It's priceless.

So you see - the next time I ask my daughter to take her shoes to her room because she has 6 pair in a pile on my dining room floor, I will pause first and remember that someday - I will miss those shoes. And I will think about how precious the feet that walk in them are!

Try finding blessings in the things that pile up on you; the things that make you just want to pull your hair out. Sometimes it's hard to see the silver lining, but it's always there!