Learning to Recognize God's Love

My beautiful daisies and blanket flowers, gifts from Tina in Rexburg!
Also my beautiful Salvia from one of my neighbor friends!

In my last post I mentioned the book Choosing Real by Bekah Pogue.  The book gave me more than one gift, and the one today was about recognizing, and seeing God through all of our senses.  This resonated with me because I see His love so easily in the beauty of nature, and in His amazing creativity shown through the amazing variety of people, plants, animals, bugs, etc.  I even see his love in the silly turkeys that show up in the Winter when I am dealing with the winter blues, and make me smile.

I have found His love in answers to prayer that come in the form of sounds.  In the familiar tune of a hymn, or a song, or the gobbling of turkeys (when I was worried about them and hadn't seen them in so long that I asked if they were okay and heard them that very day!).  I remembered today that, for me, even the sound of a clock can be a reminder of both sets of grandparents (who were gifted the same clock by my parents) and how I would go to sleep at their houses listening to the ticking of the clock.

Derek and I tend to be anti-perfume, and avoid some smells, but I love the smell of pine trees and cinnamon.  They remind me of Christmas, one of the best reminders of Heavenly Father's love for all of us since He sent us Jesus.  I love the smell of baking bread because it takes me back to my Mom's kitchen and because fresh baked bread and honey has been a favorite snack for a very long time.  What a blessing to know that smell, and to have a Mom who made bread!  I love the smell of rose soap made by Avon, and Dove soap because it takes me back to Grandma Fuller's house.

Taste is another great reminder of the creativity of God and His kindness in making so many flavors.  I sure don't like them all, but Grandma's applesauce cake was sure a favorite!  I love soft vanilla ice cream, fresh baked cookies of many kinds, but soft ginger ones with cream cheese frosting?  Mmmmm!

And then there is the gift of feeling.  I love hugs, and a soft touch on the shoulder to say hello or goodbye.  I love the wind on my face, and the feel of waves lapping at my feet.  I realized today that I can even be grateful for the feel of a numb, tingly shoulder that is annoying because this body God created is letting me know something is wrong that needs to be fixed.  

Reading Bekah's chapter about this had me paying more attention to the now.  It had me smiling as I walked through Walmart, and being grateful for all of the people, whether they smiled back or not.  Of course, I was extra thankful for the lady who told me I was beautiful!  Hopefully she thought that because I was smiling, and she could feel God's love for her in my smile!  That would be awesome!