Are we thankful for unsought gifts? Are we aware of them?

It’s a long story that generated the title of this piece… I’ll start with when I packed to go to my Mom’s I left a giant pile of stuff on the dining room table for Chuck to pack in the van. Clothes and shoes for northern climates, paints, brushes, books. I only took a small bag to my Mom’s.  The paints are for afternoons spent gazing at skies and mountains, flowers and sunsets, trying to “capture God’s Grandeur” with color. Chuck found a wonderful hard sided “brief case” that I put many selected and beloved paints in so when I open it, I can see all the browns and greens, yellows and pinks, reds, tans, Paine’s gray etc… many rich and varied paint colors collected over the years, gifts from Sarah, Debby’s gift cards to Michael’s, trips with Karla and Mark to “Cheap Joes…” Rich and wonderful colors packed with a few brushes and some note stock paper for painting greeting cards.  Wednesday morning we went to the Observatory and then I settled down on the porch at the Hotel Limpia to paint the mountain view with the Old Texas Inn and some flowering trees in the foreground.  Chuck settled in next to me with a book. Then someone said, “I’m hungry” and I packed the brief case, a bag of waters, cups and paper towels, my phone and drinking water, the easel and watercolor pad and other stuff carried out there. Put it all down to unlock the room door, washed the paint brush, and went to lunch.  Returned to take all the stuff back out to the porch, brush, pad, easel, bag of waters…. Brief case with paint? No… not there.  I haunted the corridors of the little hotel, the porch, the tables and stacks of antique suit cases stacked in corners. Gone. In someone’s trunk headed for Albuquerque or Columbus I guess. Housekeeping didn’t see it and no one turned it in at the desk.  It’s hard to paint with a brush and water.  Mark carries a box the size of a chewing gum wrapper and three colors and he tried to get me to do the same. “Mix your colors,” Mark sagely said.  … I was really sad, but realized I’m supposed to be writing the book I proposed last July 19. So I got out one of the two Bibles I have with me and read and wrote that evening. The next morning (yesterday – Thursday) we drove 4 miles to a Nature preserve and gardens and as Chuck paid our admission, I browsed the 50% off table and found a lovely hand painted journal called Drawn to Nature Through the Journals of Clare Walker Leslie. She is a teacher, artist, and journalist. I was drawn to the cover filled with water color drawings of a bird singing and skies over a farm, a city, and mountains.  Can’t lose for 50% off.  We walked through the desert gardens, chatted with a couple with 2 big lab/other fluffy dog mixes and arrived back at the visitor center needing to sit in the rockers in the breeze and read.  I whipped out my new book and read… “My greatest wish is that your eyes may always be watching nature… ‘Mother Earth, Protect Her, She is Us.’ See. You might say you have no nature around you where you live… Take five minutes. Look up, and enjoy!”   I was a little freaked out as I just wrote something very similar to that when talking about singing the Psalms about God’s glory – “look up and sing!”  Is this lady whose book just fell into my hands from the bottom of a stack of books in a nature center in Fort Davis Texas a soul sister??? Chuck meanwhile looked over and saw me gazing raptly at the mountain in the distance, flowering bush in the foreground, lots of scrub in between, he said, “You need to be painting.” “I have no paints.” “We’ll get some.” A Dollar Store just opened in town. Grand Opening yesterday. We moved from the garden center to the Dollar Store and purchased water colors. Well, if water colors are good enough for 3 people (Mark, Sarah and Janet) who have been trying to get me to use them, and for my new soul sister, Clare Walker Leslie, then I guess they’re good enough for me.  My first painting looks like a 3 year old did it, but I’m going to read the book and occasionally “copy” my new friend to try to learn a wonderful technique, water color painting.   See? Long story!  And once again my brain is all wrinkled up trying to understand if my loss of all that stuff is God’s gift as he tries to get me to try something less burdensome? Something new?  Look up! And enjoy.   We’re up this morning, having moved to the Harvard Hotel just to try the competition (and loved it) and we’re off for Carlsbad Caverns. It’s Friday and we’re on the road again.  Love to you and God bless you and help you to see the gifts he is giving us!