Happiness

Well, I find myself in astate of complete happiness tonight.

I am struggling to try and pinpoint it. Maybe it is my current circumstances. I am sitting here doing schoolwork (usually something that doesn't make me happy! hehe.) listening to our wedding soundtrack with God-glorifying worship songs, sipping hot chocolate, and having just spent a wonderful afternoon with friends and watching a football game (the Bills actually won!). And I am feeling thoroughly loved by my husband, who is sitting behind me enjoying a video game at his computer. Maybe it is the glimpse of Thanksgiving, and thus the start of the holiday season, on the horizon. Even thinking of the word thankful makes me tear up. These past few years my mom has requested that I say the thanksgiving prayer (as probably the only active Christian in our family). In thinking about what I will say, I am overwhelmed with thankfulness for the past year. Two weddings, adding two new members of our family and another squirming, screaming, cute-as-ever 6-month old as been added too. The growth of our family has been so wonderful. Just thinking of the flux Sal and I were in this summer with moving and back surgery and school and working and our wedding...it's so wonderful to see how everything has settled.

And my relationship with God has been growing exponentially over the last few months. I have been spending more and more time reading the Bible and thus feel more and more filled with the Holy Spirit. My Monday night Bible Study has been amazing. Learning more about who I am in Christ and the promise of who He is and what He has done, is doing and will do...I'm more and more amazed with the God I serve.

Perhaps it is all of these factors combining into one. I feel very blessed and very thankful for the life I am living right now. Thanksgiving should be a cinch ;-). I have a feeling God is going to bring me to my knees in an overwhelming sense of thankfulness which tends to nurture a true spirit of humility, as I hope to experience in the coming days.

I'm excited to see what He has in store. For now, I am going to take a break from school work and settle down onto the couch with the man of my dreams to watch a movie on this chilly Sunday night. I am content.

- Erica

"Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. 'Come now, let us reason together,' says the LORD" Isaiah 1:17-18