Finding Nuggets of Gratitude When Family Dynamics Are Adversely Impacted

How does one find a nugget of gratitude when life presents you with a family-altering event beyond divorce that actually impacts the dynamics of family as you knew it? How does one make preparations to walk and lead with head held high in a humbled heart state? Can the attitude of thankfulness and gratefulness be found? Is it really possible to live and love out loud with hope?

Well, please allow me to take you on a personal scenic outlook overview at a cliff that stood very high and hidden. Perhaps it shall reveal that those very real down deep questions and the nugget-finds of gratitude can be found. And let me say first, that the answers do not nor cannot lie in a one-person excavation of the precious gratitude jewel because often the actual nugget can be too massive to unearth alone. Remember that I am all about #givingyouhope. 

While there are numerous folk over the last 34 years who have been people of faith influences to me, please take a few extended moments to follow along of a few #standout vessels whose lives and words each incited the reverberating walk out the God-kind of agape love-out-loud and live-out-loud faith echoes in the chambers of my being. Here goes my account of live-out-loud and love-out-loud inspirational cliff-dwellers of encouragement with picks, shovels, jack hammers and all the necessary tools to assist me in finding my nugget of gratitude that led to this very 31st day of December 2016…

• My two awesome kiddos, Leslee and Aaron, of whom I am very proud and before whom I committed to the Lord and to self to guide in a godly manner a model live-out-loud faith and a love-out-loud love that rises #above ANY circumstance in life. 
• An associate pastor and his wife who actually came to my life before marriage and the birth of my kiddos. This couple now residing in Tennessee whose live-out-loud God-the-healer Jehovah-Rapha kind of faith was prayed over me in 1980 when first we met, as my body was lying very high-temperature weakened on the floor of a Contemporary Christian Choir touring bus that pulled up into their church parking lot. That incident turned out to be a divine setup for our lives to be forever entwined with an unconditional love-out-loud bond as I was adopted into their unbreakable commitment to God and family.
• A senior pastor formerly of Trophy Club, TX who chose to Deuteronomy 28:13 rise above the circumstance and 1Peter 5:6 humble himself and place a love-out-loud phone call to me regarding a mutual friend of his family and mine. He spoke these thought and life-impacting words to me through uncontrollable live-out-loud tears, “Rainey, I need the Lord to teach me how to love as He loves…a new and deeper kind of love.”
• A dear precious friend in Tennessee came to me in a love-out-loud manner in 1996, gently cupping her hands over mine, looking into my eyes with the compassion of Jesus and softly and tenderly exhorted me in a still quiet voice as that likened unto my live-out-loud Lord, “Rainey, always be gracious. Whatever you do, always be gracious.”
• A local senior pastor and his wife who accepted our family with a love-out-loud embrace in 2001 with an unconditional unspoken love commitment to our family from then through and beyond present and spoke words of live-out-loud faith-filled words of life and Jehovah-Rapha healer to my son over me in 2004. All of this was yet another Divine plan for me to regularly glean from that dynamic marital duo as they became senior pastors in 2007 to my redefined family and a live-out-loud model to do what love-out-loud love requires with grace and truth.
• An incredible newlywed lay couple couple in a Louisiana church we met 1998 with whom lives we became intertwined, who later accepted the calling of pastors. The wife and I shared an intentional live-out-loud intimate admonishing one another impenetrable bond of love and faith. In 2008 while in the midst of an excruciatingly emotional and physically painful stage 4 breast cancer live-out-loud faith, she painlessly expounded with words that rendered captivatingly enlightening wisdom to my many years of quandary in the 1982 obedient response and commitment to the Lord to a love-out-loud daily denial to self on a long journey which presented many twists and turns. 
• 46-year glorious friendship of two incredible women whose respective life journeys compelled them to stand firm in a commitment to live-out-loud in faith for healing through breast cancer and a vegetative stroke coupled with a stand strong love-out-loud above ALL adversities, whose lives resound as loud testimonies to me. 
• A remarkably coachable and teachable woman of God on Maui, HI, whose unbridled outspoken character began being tamed as yet another setting of live-out-live to teach to me to love-out-loud to a people I did not understand, yet for whom I was to be the vessel to bring increases to the Kingdom. 

So while there are many others to whom I have great gratitude, may I ask of you to #STOP in the midst of your own challenged circumstances to live-out-loud and love-out-loud? Then #DROP to your knees in humility before the Lord and the whomever/s He would or has placed in your life to help you #ROLL the care of the seeming madness onto the Lord by an unrelenting determination to dig deep in search of your nugget of gratitude. I think you just may find that amazing jewel of gratitude was found while in your drawn focus to THE bright shining #LiveOutLoud #LoveOutLoud Light of the world. Wishing you a blessed and prosperous 2017 of many exciting nugget finds of gratitude. 

Finding Nuggets of Gratitude When Life Happens in Stealing Hope

As I look at the #givingyouhope passionate mission in life that burns within, I believe its inception was set ablaze at age 4 1/2. That was when my daddy decided it was time for me to learn how to cook fried chicken. He carefully placed me on a chair in front of the stove with a cast iron skillet of piping hot popping grease, telling me to pick up and put the floured salt and pepper-spiced pieces in. My daddy additionally instructed and reminded me over and over again that no matter how much the hot grease popped, I was not to climb off the chair. Whoa! That stern drilling has translated into a valuable life lesson. It was made very clear that the option to jump down off the chair was a moot point. I had to truly believe in and tenaciously cling onto the hope that my daddy would not let me get hurt. That assignment to stay no matter the fieriness, positioned me to withstand the heated path on which my feet would journey. I could never give up nor quit before attaining the end. My life has been riddled with many hot fiery trials popping up since that pivotally defining point and time, intensifying along the way. With many reechoing moments of intended hope-stealing sweltering tests, I continually stand against the temptation to give into the gravity-pull of inertia to jump down and off.  

As I look in the Bible at Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego, who stood confident in the 7x’s hotter heat of the flaming fire, they chose to obey the word of God, to not place any other God before them. They did not cry ‘uncle’ or beg to be released. They clung onto hope. In their stand against the circumstances, they did not bow, bend OR burn! All eyes were strategically focused upon them, as shock, amazement and astonishment consumed the onlookers! Astoundment burned through the crowd when their eyes were opened to behold a fourth person standing in the flames with those 3 men, who refused to hail the people’s king. Those 3 guys remained steadfast in their faith and walked out with clothes not singed and not even the hint of smoke! Their staunch stance to not allow hope be stolen has time and time and time again given me hope to “…having done all to stand, stand therefore…” 

Folks, no matter how adverse the seemingly unbearable hotter than hot circumstance appears, I give you hope from the authority of the Word as well as from personal experience…God has got YOU! Hail to THE KING who not only gives YOU hope but who IS hope! Strength to remain tightly gripped to hope is found in the joy of knowing that He is the we the people‘s King, quietly walking along side His people through the fire. Let your nugget of gratitude be found in your impenetrably unwavering determination to not allow hope to be snatched away.