So blessed

This post is mostly for me to remind myself just how blessed I am. Sometimes I lose sight of the blessings. In our Sunday School class we were talking about this topic and one of the men was sharing that when we go through trails/struggles is when our relationship with God grows and how that is the biggest blessing that we can receive. I have been thinking a lot about that. When things aren't going exactly the way we want or things are just hard. First do we stop and lean on God through it and secondly do we count our blessings of the growth in our relationship to Christ through it? I would love to answer those questions both with YES. But if I really stop and think and I'm truly honest I think I do maybe 50% of the time or maybe even only 40% of the time. Let's just use tonight as an example. A typical day would be me picking up the kids and getting home at 3:50ish and Jeff pulling in around 4:10ish. Jeff would go over homework with the kids while I make dinner. Then we eat together and do the rest of the night together with the kids. Today I got the kids but Jeff didn't get home until 5:50 just in time for dinner, but he was still talking on the phone for work. He made it to the table right before everyone was done eating. He quickly ate and then left for a church meeting that will bring him home around 11pm tonight. Compared to my "normal" night these nights are somewhat stressful. Here is the blessing I can see in it. Today Red stayed home with me to go to a friend from church's birthday party. I had asked the teacher for his Monday homework last week so he was completely done with all homework for tonight. He is typically the kid we spend the most time helping and checking his homework. Thank you Jesus for this small blessing. There are others like it isn't shower night so it is a little more laid back. But I want to be able to count my blessings in the hard times and realize that they come from my relationship with God growing stronger!