A Week of Christmas – Day 1: One Thousand Gifts
To kick off this season of giving and thanksgiving, Christian Military Wives and Wives in Bloom are giving away one prize every day for the first full week of December! Today, for our first prize, we are giving away two copies of “One Thousand Gifts,” by Ann Voskamp, one for you to keep and one for you to share.
Book Description: “Just like you, Ann Voskamp hungers to live her one life well. Forget the bucket lists that have us escaping our everyday lives for exotic experiences. ‘How,’ Ann wondered, ‘do we find joy in the midst of deadlines, debt, drama, and daily duties? What does the Christ-life really look like when your days are gritty, long–and sometimes even dark? How is God even here?’ In One Thousand Gifts, Ann invites you to embrace everyday blessings and embark on the transformative spiritual discipline of chronicling God’s gifts. It’s only in this expressing of gratitude for the life we already have, we discover the life we’ve always wanted…a life we can take, give thanks for, and break for others. We come to feel and know the impossible right down in our bones: we are wildly loved–by God. Let Ann’s beautiful, heart-aching stories of the everyday give you a way of seeing that opens your eyes to ordinary amazing grace, a way of being present to God that makes you deeply happy, and a way of living that is finally fully alive. Come live the best dare of all!”
If you’d like to win, all you have to do is leave a comment answering the question: “What are you most grateful for right now?”
Please, just one entry per person. No entries after 11 p.m. eastern time. Winners for all giveaways will be drawn at random.
Tomorrow we will announce the winner, as well as the next giveaway!
I am most grateful for my family. A couple of years ago I was headed along the wrong path & started to realize that. So I prayed that I could find the right path & started doing things to change that when I received a phone call from an old friend. Well needless to say a loving relationship formed & we were married & now have a year old son. God has given me the most precious gifts in the world!
My salvation, without Jesus in my life there wouldn’t be anything to be thankful for!
I am most grateful for a wonderful loving husband, someone who is willing to grow with me and stand by my side. Even in the midst of deployment, I can feel his love from thousands of miles away, and I am able to smile and know that he will always be there for me.
Right now I am most thankful for this little miracle baby that lays next to me, that is opening his little eyes to watch his momma. He was born on November 22nd 2011. Last year at this time, I was tne 30 year old momma of a two year old boy, battling thyroid cancer, and told that having anymore children might not be in our future. I was grapping with the realization that I might have to give up on my dream of having another baby. Then on April fool’s day the unbelievable..I found out I was pregnant. We spent the first trimester very scared of a miscarriage due to the fact that I no longer had a thyroid because of my cancer, the 2nd trimester we found out our little one had a pretty serious case of bilateral hydronephrosis, both of his kidneys were severely enlarged and the 3rd trimester we battled another side affect of my thyroidless state, gestational diabetes. We were told he might spend weeks in the ICU due to blood sugar issues, we were told he might need immediate surgery to take out one of his kidneys, we were told that there was no way to know how severe things might be for him until he was born. Well he was born and his blood sugar was perfect and his kidneys, while severely enlarged, are not at present causing him any life threatening problems and we got to bring our sweet Elias Luke home 2 days after birth on Thanksgiving Day. I stare at him soemtimes and just marvel at how much God loves me and how much God has blessed me. I am overwhelmed with how God’s plans are always so much bigger and better than anything I could ever imagine. A year ago I was grieving the medical “fact” that more children might not be possible..and now am staring at my miracle baby.
I am most thankful for my relationship with God. He is speaking to me and I hear Him now , I could not before. Without my relationship with Him I could not make it – through Him all things are possible.
Also, that my husband will be coming home for R&R in about 18 days!!
I am grateful for the wisdom, strength and courage the Lord has given me and my family. This deployment seems lasting forever.
That this year is comjng to an end.
It has been an extremely lonely, sad and difficult one.
I am so grateful for my husband and children and that we get to spend this Christmas together despite TDY trips in Dec and Jan and an upcoming deployment…life is good!
Right now, I’m most grateful that God is providing so generously for me. My fiancé just came home from his first deployment and we’re getting married in 2 weeks. God has shown us favor by letting us find a fixer-upper house for a good price and letting us (21 year olds with no credit) get approved for a loan. Our friends and family have been so generous in helping us out…we already have most of the furniture and everything we’ll need to get started. All of this has been such an answer to prayer, and I’m so grateful!!!
What am I most grateful for right now? My two sons (one working on his Master’s degree and one in the Air Force) will be spending time with my husband, my two daughters and me during the upcoming Christmas holidays, God willing. We will able to go to church together as a family!
I’m thankful for God helping me get through this deployment.
The body of Christ, and God’s divine protection is what I am most grateful for. The measure of faith I have to trust in Him who is able to do more than I can ask or even think, so thankful for this!
What I am most thankful for is my beautiful family. For what has transposed in the past 20 years together is amazing. I met my husband during Desert Storm. We married and through the years our family grew to 5. We have 3 great daughters and have been blessed in many ways. I feel though when I look around at my daily life we truly are special. We’ve made it through 3 deployments & my husband being a 1st responder for 9/11. We have seen many lives lost and famlies fall apart some how, through the Grace of God, we have made it through it all. THe last deployment brought my husband home with injuries and three surgeries within a year. It took it’s toll on us. It was dark, so very dark during that time. I remember standing in the kitchen of our home and wondering if this marriage was even salvagable… I felt lost and alone. Never had I though we couldn’t make it but it was so very dark. The pain my husband endured and his shame in having me be his caretaker I believe was too much on him. I thought I’d lost him. We forged on and I kept a silen vigil. Time passed and he healed. I am sure my prayers were herd and I really don’t know how or when but it was ok. Once all the surgeries were done and we were moving forward we stood in the same place in our house and said, “Wow, that was the darkest year of our Marriage” I didn’t think we were going to make it. Together we grew stronger, together we found love and together we stand. We are still a family. We still have struggles but looking back and appreciating what we have done will get us through anything the future may bring. So, I am thankful for Gods Grace for he has blanketed us with his love. With his Grace our family is strong. WHy do some make it and others do not? I do not know but if I knew the secret I would share it for all.
I’m grateful for two miracle children, and that I will get to spend eternity with the five who went to heaven before me.
I am most grateful for God’s faithfulness; this past year on recruiting duty has been very stressful and hard not only on my husaband but on me as well and knowing that he has to get promoted by the end of 2012 or get out just adds to the stress. Through all the prayers and tears, ups and downs God has been right there and even though we don’t know what may happen with his military career we both know that God is in control and wants only the best for us. Rob and I are truly blessed!
I am so grateful for God’s forgiveness. He has an unconditional love that sees me through my dark times.
Right now, I am most grateful for a healthy pregnancy. Last year, just before Thanksgiving I delivered my son at only 19 weeks. I got to hold him while I was recovering in the hospital, but of course, because he was so young he did not make it. I am thankful that I got to hold him and keep him with me as long as I did, but now he is in Jesus’s arms.
I am now about 12 weeks pregnant, and so far with no complications whatsoever, so I am most thankful for that right now – after the trauma that I went through last year. <3 
I’m most grateful for my children’s health.
I am most thankful that I have Jesus in my life during this deployment away from my husband. Jesus is my strength and refuge.
Right now I am most grateful for my family and a roof over our heads. (Just read about a family who escaped with their lives but lost everything else in a fire.)
I am so very grateful that I have come back to having a close relationship with Jesus. I had wondered away for a number of years but the Lord knew exactly how to speak to my heart to bring me back. I am so grateful for that everyday!
Thankful that even in this dark world I can always see the light of Jesus. I love hearing and knowing how I might encourage others around me even when I feel like there isn’t anything I can give or do in the name of Jesus. So many don’t truly know the light and I am blessed that even in my sins He loves me and I know Him!!
I am grateful for God’s grace. He has given me more then I deserve and there’s no words to express my thanks!
I’m very grateful for my wonderful husband & our 2 fantastic children! God is good!
I am grateful for skype and to be able to “see” my husband often from a warzone. I am thankful he has taken the call from God to serve the soldiers in the US Army (he is a chaplain); to futher the Kingdom and to care for their well being, and their souls.
Our God Given FREEDOM, Protected by Brave Service Men & Women, Our Military Families, Veterans and Gold Star Families. They are why I Breathe! In this brief life time here on earth; I can never repay them enough. However they will have a Special Angel watching over them when I am delivered to God’s Kingdom. Praying for Peace for all Humankind.
The “Pillow Mom!”
I’m thankful for the word in my life, and how God is working in me and in my community.
My family!!!
I am thankful for my husband and two boys.
This is such a hard question! I’m oozing with gratefulness right now. My loving, benevolent God; my husband, our beautiful son….
I’m most thankful for the ability to pray and be prayed for.
I am most thankful for a brand new baby and a husband who isn’t deployed to Afghanistan this year!
I’m thankful for home-comings!
Thanks for a chance to win.
I am most thankful right now for the opportunity to mentor and encourage other military spouses to survive and thrive!!