God Loves Me the Way I Am!

We recently bought an 8-passenger van for our family. It is not new, but "new" to us. We used to have a 15-passenger van but we are downsizing due to kids growing up and moving out. We have 12 children, but only 6 live at home now. It is definitely different! In addition to buying a new van, I recently bought a new camera with some money that I had been saving for 1 1/2 years from cleaning houses. When I brought the van home from the dealership all the kids were excited to see it and I wanted to take a picture of it so that I could share it with the rest of the family. The kids are exploring the van and I am walking out to the van with my camera. I hear one of my kids say, "Why does she always have to take pictures of everything?" I don't think he realizes that I am old but I still have really good ears! I told him that his comment really discouraged me, that I just enjoyed taking pictures. I told him that I loved my family, I love nature, flowers, clouds, sunsets, and that is why I like to take pictures. That is just the way God made me. So I told him that when he makes a comment like that is just takes the joy out of what I like doing. I don't think my little speech made any kind of a profound impression on him but maybe he will think about it in the future. Well, here is one of the pictures that I took with my somewhat reluctant children!

That night as I was reading a devotional before I went to bed, I came across a verse that really encouraged me. It was Zechariah 3:17: "The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing." I read that last part and it made me so happy to see that God rejoices over me with singing. He knows all about me, he created me with a love for taking pictures and somehow I can use that love for glorifying God. Now if I can just be patient for the glory of God as people keep interrupting me while I am trying to write this. I have not written anything in my blog for over 2 years and I have missed it, but don't know if it will happen very often at this pace! I probably need to work more on patience or writing in the morning before anyone gets up.