Update since "Empty"- A heart of Peace and Praise

I am so thankful for the blog entry I wrote a little over a year ago, titled, "And I Come Alive;"  it was about the property God blessed us with.  For on the eve of us having to sell what we'd hoped would be the land we would build our home on and being an emotional wreck over it, reading that blog gave me comfort and helped me have a godly eternal perspective that I was struggling blindly to grasp and that I might not have ever attained it had I not read what He had me sovereignly write a year and a month ago.  And excerpt of that blog:

"As we pulled up [to the property], unloaded [our tools out of] the van, and began walking down the worn out tire track make-shift driveway I could not stop smiling on my face from the joy that swelled up from the depths of my soul.  I put my arm around my Mom and I said to her, "Mom, I come alive here!"  I come alive here.  That is the best way I can describe it.  Everything I feel I was designed to be comes to LIFE on this property!  A wife who works alongside her husband outside on our future, a mother of several little ones who thrive in playing and also working alongside their parents in the canopy of the large old oaks as we're all touched by the cool breeze and serenaded by the birds of song.    Surrounded by the glory of His in the beauty of His creation.  And I come alive....  We have plans for our future; but they are just that, our plans.  They may never come to be as we desire the Lord's will above our own.  (Jeremiah 29:11 "For Iknow the plans I have for you...declares the Lord....")  After all, our lives are His first always.  We want to be in His will because that will be better than anything we decide and make for ourselves.  So we're planning to begin building in 10 months, but we're planning with an open hand metaphorically.  We're not clenching this dream in our hearts with a "closed fist" but rather placing that plan in an open hand knowing that at, any moment, God may desire to take that plan away for something else He has planned.  This causes tension within me to think about in the present- that our plan might not happen, but I know that if/when He calls us to whatever He has planned, He will prepare our hearts for it at the right time."

So, although we no longer have that land due to events out of our control and completely within HIS, I am grateful for the time we did have working it together as a family.  I am grateful for the retreat that visiting and working on it was.  I am grateful for the overwhelming joy it brought me.  I am grateful for the memories of exploring down the San Gabriel river that we did because the neighborhood had private access to it.  I am grateful to my God for that year of memories with my family; for the Lord gives and the Lord takes away.  

"The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”

Job 1:21b