Three times this weekend people have commented how amazed they are at how much I get done on a daily basis. As a wife, homeschooling mom, blogger, columnist, mentor and caretaker, they can’t understand how I take care of all my responsibilities and then some. I responded as I always do: “It’s the grace of God.” The last person who commented told me not to separate my organizational skills from the grace of God. “So often we think that we have administrators and organizers over here, and that is for the world and then over here we have preaching, teaching and fasting, and that’s for God. It’s all God’s grace.”

I thought about what he said and know that I have taken for granted that I have always had administrative skills, being organized being chief among them. I have just looked at my being organized as being something that’s a part of me and not something that has been imparted to me. My organization is a grace–an empowerment–from God, and I should always treat that skill as such.

Whatever gifts, talents, skills and abilities we have are from God and we all have to acknowledge that in how we use our strengths. Too often we take our strengths for granted and decide that we don’t want to use them when they weren’t given to us for us to decide when and how to use them. This is a habit many of us had that may have begun in childhood, but we are accountable today for how we use what God has given to us. Read more about that in my latest EEW column, which begins below:

Summer days make you want to be lazy, just hang out in the sun and have some fun. Who knows this better than kids? My youngest two have been having a ball, but my oldest is struggling a bit. See, he’s still in school, making up work that he had some difficulty completing during our scheduled home school year. He has been trying to negotiate with me, asking can he skip certain assignments that he believes he’s mastered. And as much as I want to give him a break, give the entire family a break from his whining and moaning, I say no, have to say no, because his desire to quit is more than just the summer itch; this is a pattern I saw in him long before the weather changed.

This giving up happens when he’s losing any electronic game, when a word search gets too hard or when he is told to redo some work that was not up to par. When something doesn’t come easy to him, he wants to give up so he doesn’t have to eventually suffer the ultimate defeat. This is how he is trying to define success. But I know, and you do too, that such a childhood pattern is the making of an adulthood pattern that will leave him stopping and starting everything from academic programs and jobs to relationships and, perhaps, even his faith. This is why our children need to know that they have to endure and don’t have the option of quitting when things don’t go their way. Quitting may seem the easy out now, but doing so will cause lifelong battles that they could avoid. Read more here.

My One Thousand Gifts List

#661-670
A wonderful Spirit-filled worship service
After lunch fellowship with Flynn
A restful nap
A chat with a 20-something woman who I believe God wants me to connect with
A love-filled text message from Nicole Washington
My boys in bed with me eating apples and watching Scooby-Doo
Justus’ smile
A pastor who keeps our focus on Christ and what He wants to do to and through us
Intense love for my husband where I now work hard to not point out his faults and flaws
Waking up without the jolt from crying boys or the need to prepare Joshua’s breakfast and lunch