Day 10: The Gratitude Challenge

Those who are very close to me know that I am completely and madly in love with my husband. Nothing brings more pleasure to me than serving him and making sure all his daily needs are met. When he is happy and content at all times, I am joyful.

I am not sure if this is a common feeling among married women to feel this way and this much for their husbands. The reason I am wondering is there is a struggle to this kind of situation. (If you find yourself feeling the same way, please reach out to me because it is so hard to figure these feelings out on my own)

When something or someone deliberately tries to put him down, I feel extremely over-protective of Robert and yes, sometimes angry at the source of my husband's distress.

As I mature in my faith, I am learning to handle most these situations with much more grace. I usually breathe deeply, hold my tongue, turn to prayer and cling to God desperately.

I also do not want to create a situation where people will be tentative on throwing a joke or two at him because it might generate an unpleasant reaction out of me.  Believe it or not, we still love laughing at ourselves!

However, on a few occasions, being in this situation usually gets the best of me. Yes, the enemy has something to do with it and uses it to attack me. But at the end of the day, I take full responsibility when I do not respond to anger in a loving manner.

I can recall a recent situation where I know I could have handled my husband's "bad day" a little more graciously. I unwisely went for my initial reaction: to go hard for my baby and fight for him. (Disclaimer: Robert does NOT approve this kind of reaction in any way)

As things started to make sense and realized I should have reacted with kindness and compassion, I decided to ask for forgiveness from God and from the person I hurt.

Further reading and quiet time led to me to pray for my husband and myself with these points:

1) That he may have a reputation that is untarnished

2) May people always speak highly of him

3) There would never be any reason for bad things to be said of him

4) To trust God enough that He will defend him from his enemies and those who rise up to do him harm. No need to take matters into my own hands.

5) May he never be put to shame


Today, I am thankful for the weaknesses that I couldn't control nor fix on my own strength because it makes me turn to God -- the only source of true strength. I am grateful for the opportunity to forgive and be forgiven.  To be in this situation truly puts me in a place of humility that I know I need to always have in my life.

Day 10: Ocean

Exploring the Depths of Forgiveness

Today’s Bible Verse
“Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” (Ephesians 4:26-27)

I was excited to get up today. I have been looking forward – for a long time—to attend a Sunday service in Bethel World Outreach Center.


It is the church headed by Pastor Rice Brooks and is part of Every Nation Churches. Pastor Steve Murrell is my favorite preacher ever but Pastor Joey Bonifacio and Pastor Rice tie for a very, very close second.

Pastor Rice wonderfully talked about what we see – as human beings – as hopeless, Jesus sees a HARVEST.

Sometimes you and I get so caught up in this uncontainable exhuberance of sharing to other people the joy we have found in God.

That is actually a great thing.


But there are times when what we share is not met with any kind of enthusiasm – we might see it as hopeless.

Sometimes when we invest so much time in people to help them get their lives together and they don’t – we might see it as hopeless.

On occasions when we see someone we love so broken and lost and has not made any progress – we just give up and see them as hopeless.

Or… we just see them as a lost case, give up – because they are hopeless.

But through our Father’s eyes they are a HARVEST – the cream of the crop. Jesus sees the kind of people they can become no matter how miserable circumstances are for them at the moment.

It just reminded me once again that people’s most defining moments are not according to my terms but God’s.

I am grateful that God used Pastor Rice to remind this of me again today. He is such an awesome communicator. He always makes me feel “wow I am human to feel this way and I can do something about this to make it better.”

After service, I had an American Idol geek moment. We were talking to some people after service and then I stopped in my tracks, held Robert’s arm and said “Scott Savol!”

If you are not familiar with who he is, he is the 5th place in American Idol in Carrie Underwood’s year. And because I am a nerd, I shamelessly asked him if I can have a picture with him!


Robert and I decided to have lunch at Applebee’s right by the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville. I like trying things I have never eaten before so I ordered a quesadilla burger. Boy that was delicious!


We heard about how grand the hotel was so we decided to walk over to the Opryland Hotel and look around. Look at the picture below. Yes, that’s inside a hotel.


There is a mall right across the hotel called the Opry Mills. We went inside Dave and Buster’s and decided to go try the photo morphing booth – just curious to see how our future son will look like!

How do you think our “son” turned out?


I also got to shop a little bit in the Opry Mills mall. Lots of nice outlet stores! Looved it!

So how did my day have to do with today's challenge in exercising forgiveness? Absolutely nothing! I am grateful to God on directing me to another path to learn from and blessing me with such a happy day.