blessed to be a blessing!

so today is a great day on so many levels: of course for the usual things like waking up, a working heartbeat, sunshine(!), and family...but also because (*drumroll please*)...i just scored MAIN FLOOR tickets to see JHud on Saturday night...for $50...and PC will be with a sitter-auntie who is FREE!!

yay me!

so, as i was basking in my pre-concert glow, i changed my FB status to reflect the happy ocassion. one of my friends (who is also a co-attendee to said concert) commented on my status and said 'Lucky Girl!' i laughed and replied 'Better than lucky-blessed!" we started dialoguing about that, and it got me to thinking about this whole notion of thanking God for the 'blessing' of material things, without really thinking about the meaning (and purpose) behind those things that we are blessed with.

one thing that irks me to NO end is the sight of luxury cars with personalized license plates that have something to do with God 'blessing' them with this Benz/BMW/Hummer/Lexus/etc. I see them ALL the time, but the thing that irks me is not so much the fact that these ppl feel like God has 'blessed' them with this whip, as it is that you rarely see something similar on less-than-luxury vehicles. did God not bless you with that too? or do you not want to draw attention to your older car--which defeats the purpose of praising God for the blessing to begin with?! we ought to be thanking Him for both the big things and the small things, even if we're not 'ridin clean' (or as clean as we would like).

i remember some years ago a close friend of mine was going through some financial difficulties. she had fallen behind on her car payment, and the financing company was threatening to reposess her car if she didn't come up with a certain amount of money by a certain date. my friend didn't have the money, but she prayed about it and made peace with it in her mind that they were going to do what they had to do. Through all of this, she trusted that if it was His Will, God would somehow make a way for her to keep/pay for this car so that she could continue to be a blessing to her church members--picking up and dropping them off for service, running errands for the various ministries that she was involved in, taking her son safely back and forth to school and to visit family in another state, etc. she always reiterated to me that it was never about the car (she would walk/bus, if she had to), but it was about how she used the blessing that she had been given.

i thought about that today as i was celebrating my ticket. though the concert is gonna be a wonderful time and i'm getting a great bargain, it's not about the material aspect of it. it isn't about the concert itself. i feel blessed for two major reasons:

first reason: my friend and i had originally looked for tickets at the end of February. all the good seats were sold out, so we scrapped our plans. last week, her friend won a contest and got two AMAZING seats to the event. of course i was hating (in a loving way, LOL), but was happy that she could go with her. she kept encouraging me to get on this same contest site and see if i could win because she knew how bad i wanted to go, but no luck. some other tickets came available thru HER friend and as distracted as i was with other stuff going on this week, she kept giving me gentle reminders about these tickets (cause i surely had forgotten). needless to say, i got some great tickets, great seats, and a big part of that is b/c my friend was keeping after me because she knew how much this would mean to me!

second reason: i'm scrambling to find a last-minute sitter that won't kill my extracurricular budget, and reached out to PC's STL Auntie (who has since moved back to CHI). STL Auntie used to keep PC for me when i was traveling to STL for my old job and was truly, TRULY a Godsend. when she moved back to Chicago recently, she reached out to me to let me know that i could lean on her whenever i needed a sitter, so i could have a 'break' from time to time. reached out to her today, and even though she had some tentative plans Sat evening, she is working PC into those plans b/c, in her words 'the concert is something that i shouldn't miss!' and she is happy to help.

so, you see, i am reminded today, that blessings are much more than material items. blessings come in the form of the sacrificial love of friends, through their thoughtfulness and kindness. RLH & KRD--thank you *hugs*

i'll let you all know how the concert turns out ;-)