Blessed and thankful

I want to take this blog to relate how intensely blessed I know myself to be. I have been given an insane number of gifts like my beautiful, funny, and loving wife, and my sweet, beautiful, healthy daughter. My health, many opportunities, my family, my many amazing friendships, the chance to live here in the U.S., and the ability to use my mind to read, converse, consider, and appreciate are just a small handful of gifts in my life that not everyone on this planet has been blessed with. One of my many chief failings is that I so often lose sight of the most important fact about all these things I just listed: in spite of how many times I used MY they are not mine. I pray that my eyes would get better at staying on the giver and not the gifts. I pray that I would grow consistently aware of the fact that these gifts are meant to be responsibilities and tools as well as blessings. I pray that these gifts would not be idols. Finally, I pray that rather than allowing them to become idols, that they would be ripped from me if that is what it takes to worship You alone as God. Thank you, Father. Please teach me to walk in Your ways.