Roofing day is almost here. As we make our final preparations - meals, materials, tools, work assignments - I have to give a bit of pause. As I put my girls to bed tonight, we went through the usual routine including our bedtime prayer. During the prayer, I asked God to help us remember to count our many blessings. Sometimes, despite our failings, we forget how truly blessed we are.

As we approach this project, I see that our cup runneth over, in more ways than one.

1. Finances - You may have noticed that our 'Full Disclosure' progress bar for the roof fund has burst through the levees. Not only did we hit our goal, but we kept going. we knew that some materials would need to be purchased once we were through the tear-off. Fearing an under estimation, we kept going.
   
2. Skills - While I am far from an experienced roofer, we have a family friend who is. We've enlisted his help for the long weekend. While I'm leery of leaning on him too heavily, I've been told that once he starts shingling, to just stay out of his way - he is that fast.
3. Helping Hands - When planning meals, we realized what an out-pouring of support we had. 10-14 just doing the actual labor. We have others watching the kids, others preparing meals, other still offering to help as they hear about the project.
4. Time off - We scheduled these vacation days some time ago, hedging our bets that it would be a 'good time' for it. I always say, in terns of work, there's never a 'good time' to take vacation - there is always something going on. You just have to take it and not look back. This actually looks to be a 'good time', with a slight lul in projects and other efforts winding down, it's a great time when compared to the past two months of crazy work schedules.
5. Weather - I'm not going to worry about the weather. I'm not going to worry about the weather. I'm not going to worry about the weather. Seriously, Lord, it's in your hands.
   

Try this little exercise sometime. Tomorrow, next week... they don't have to be big things, in fact it's the little things sometimes that matter most.

Right now - count three blessings. What are they?