Lucky?

I am not Irish and have not really figured out why Americans celebrate St. Patrick's day anyways. It is a Irish Holiday, celebrating the arrival of Christianity to Ireland. Saint Patrick was a priest who was a missionary to the people of Ireland, a people who actually kidnapped him as a boy. He escaped, went back to Britain to go to school to become a priest and then return to Ireland. The symbol of the Shamrock was Patrick's way of explaining the Trinity of Christ to the Irish people. I am not sure how the drinking in pubs and wearing green came about since the color was officially BLUE. But anyways, I love green better then blue.

Our family never really celebrated St. Patrick's day. As I said we are not Irish, (that I know of) Growing up, Lucky was a bad word in my family. If any of us ever said "I am so lucky" My dad would give us a sermon about Luck having nothing to do with it. He would ask us if we wanted the SHORT version or the LONG version and both were about the same length. He would say we are BLESSED! And God blessed us so richly and it has nothing to do with Luck. I will spare you the LONG and the SHORT version and if you want to hear them just mention LUCK around Dad and you can get it personally. But early on, unless I wanted to get dads attention, I would never say I am so Lucky, I learned to say I am so blessed. Which I am.

Though with kids now, I am trying a new way of celebrating holidays. Kaden and I are all about the decorating part of the season. When one holiday is over he is ready to decorate for the next one. So Kaden and I came up with a tree to have up all year and we just change the decorations off it. I went out and cut some branches off of a Birch tree and we hung white lights, gold beads and Shamrocks on the tree. This tree I call my blessing tree. Each time I look at the shamrocks I remember all the blessings God has given me. I love how the symbols of the shamrock is about the Father, Son and the Holy spirit. What better way to show how God can be all three to us. So I wanted to teach Kaden the reason we celebrate The "luck " of the Irish is because God blessed us so richly for the things around us. So today on this "Lucky" Day think of all your Blessings that God has given you and every time you see a Shamrock remember what God has done for you.

Here are some things that I am blessed with on this Top of the Mornin!

• 2 wonderful healthy boys, that keep my life interesting and keep me on my toes
• A wonderful loving husband, that makes me laugh
  
• A warm home ( where we live that is very necessary)
• A wood pile that keeps that house warm
• Friends who help cut wood to stock that wood pile
• A Community that helps you out if you need anything
• Spring weather(for Galena 10 degrees is Spring and we are enjoying it!)
• A Food supply
  
• Clean water
• Sweet Grandparents that call to chat and see how we are managing.
• Close friends cheer me up
• Awesome Parents that I will see in 30 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  
• 4 airplane tickets to ZAMBIA!!
• Living in a country where I can have all of these things
  

Our Blessing tree
-kind of hard to see with it dark out side but you get the drift.

I am so blessed and hope you celebrate this Lucky day thinking of how blessed we are!