Joy In The Journey: My life in another world!: Grace to Gaze

Let me explain my title this morning. It is what God has been challenging me to do this past week. Gaze at Him. I will include a short excerpt from a little book I use with my English students to teach them how to interpret from English to Portuguese. Besides the fact the stories are short, they have powerful lessons to teach us about LIFE.

"Gaze at Jesus and just glance at men and you will always be an optimist. Gaze at men and glance at Jesus and you will be a pessimist. Gaze at Jesus, glance at yourself and circumstances, and the peace that passes understanding will always be yours. Glance at Jesus, gaze at yourself and your circumstances, and you will surrender to decay." Abiding Stories, pg 71 by Michael Wells

I have perfected the art of gazing at men, myself and circumstances to perfection. It is no surprise then that I often tend towards pessimism. This week God is calling me to bask in the grace to simply gaze at Him. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that liberating? Freeing? I have failed often the last weeks to keep my gaze on Jesus. But how grateful I am for His amazing, unending GRACE. Truly it is sufficient, on a minutely basis!

So, switching gears, let's talk about pictures...or in the case of my poor little blog, the pitiful lack of pictures! So, I am going to skip posting more about our special April visitors (I know, I promised but this time forgive me for not delivering!) since I am two months behind and just say we miss them dreadfully but LOVE our special memories! Let's also skip most of May. The children and I spent most of May battling horrific colds: you know the kind that don't send you to bed but leave you utterly and completely miserable for weeks on end? Yah, that kind hit our house and kept me in survival mode for most of May. So, May really did not exist here!

Now here we are June. The END of June, actually. World Cup Month. First day of WINTER month. Cold weather month. Final month of this school semester month. Here are a few pictures for your enjoyment to prove we are alive and well!

Brother is sure it is his right to eat whatever we are eating. This was his first cake ever: Fuba Cake, which is a corn cake that is a family favorite of ours. He loved it!

How can you not help but oblige him when he flashes this smile???

Can we say begger boy??

Our green eyed princess!

They are completely in love with each other. Their delight in each other brings so much joy to my days!

Noah's first strawberry ever...it was a sucess...of courrse!

With Avo Rosa and Avo Jorge

Still examining his strawberry! I think he found the tiny seeds interesting.

Where there is no garden or yard, my child invents one! This project kept her busy for over an hour...and Avo Rosa busy for about that long cleaning up later! My inlaws are marvelous in letting my kids make messes at their house. I learn from them because sometimes I miss the opportunity for a good play time because it creates such.a.mess. Sigh. Maybe its the difference of being in the grandparent mode versus parents mode?!

In case you are wondering where the dirt came from, so was I. It came from my father-in-law's potted plants. Oh, dear. He said later they survived just fine!!

All I can say I was relieved mother-in-law offered to wash that shirt for me!

And this is the little guy's latest favorite passtime...he cracks himself up doing it, too!

Yesterday we received very fun packages from Auntie Jo: of all the wonderful clothes she sent Miss Chloe, this was her first pick for an outfit. "It was Alli's, right Mom?" as if only Alli's clothes warrants being worn! She loves Alli's hand-me-downs that look brand new and are a huge blessing for us. I remembered yesterday with fondness getting bags of cousin B's hand-me-downs and remember how it felt like Christmas all over again.