Thank you God. You, and you alone have blessed me with yet another year on this earth.

Another year of trying to get it right, feeling like I’m mostly getting it wrong.

This past year I thank you a million times over for your grace. For your life vest of mercy and unwavering favor that covers the heart of this undeserving sinner you still call yours. Every day. Every time.

I am flawed beyond comprehension yet you still want me. You still seek me out, and call me by name.

I thank you for my family. I thank you for your daily reminders that time is moving at gale force speed with it’s sails wide open. Thank you for God moments you provide for me and my children. Thank you for guidance in rearing  an almost teenage daughter in what we pray is the right direction, and patience during Chutes and Ladders with a six year old.

Thank you for my wife. Oh sweet Lord thank you for her. This keyboard doesn’t hold the adequate strokes to display what she means to me. She holds the key to me. She knows the combination. Signed and sealed.

Thank you for my Momma and Daddy. The two precious people I share this day with. Thank you for their love and steady sacrifice. May they always know how much I appreciate them. They’re the sweetest of souls who can never be thanked enough. Their attention and devotion to mine and my brother’s spirit can never be repaid or matched. Ever.

Thank you for wrinkles and stress and hairlines that simply don’t exist anymore.

Thank you for giving us more than we can handle so we can give it back to you… where it should have always been.

Lord thank you for the lessons learned, the grief, the pain, the sun, and the rain. Thank you for the unbearable days when we wear the weight of this world like scuba gear breathing only through a tank. Lord thank you for the ashes we settle in at the end of every day and your grace that cools our burns. These are the times that try these tired souls and pull us back to you like hurricane tides.

Thank you for the hard seasons we endured barely holding on to the foot of the cross reaching for your Son’s feet.

There. Right there at the bottom of this ocean of undeserving grace and mercy and hope and love… we always find you. It’s devastatingly breathtaking.

Thank you for shifting sands.

Thank you for peace at the river where you so beautifully wait for us.

Thank you for your Son and the water he walked on.

Thank you for the life you give and thank you for not being done with me.

In Jesus name.