Month of Gratitude: Christ

The temperature is cooking for Florida and it's perfect. Perfect for chili, cute coats, and definitely coffee! All of these things make me thankful for warmth this season. I am thankful all 365 days of the year but during this #MonthOfGratitude I will be narrowing it down and sharing with you all things I am grateful for! Since there are 26 letters of the alphabet and Thanksgiving is on November 27, this is how it goes: 

Post something you're grateful for that begins with each letter of the alphabet each day leading to Thanksgiving. It's a great way to focus on the blessings in your life and not the stresses of the holiday season! 

While I am thankful for the outer garments of warmth and delicious bowls full of warmth, there's another type of warmth that I feel year round. It comes from the inside and nothing in this world can provide it or take it away. 

For me, that is the warmth from knowing I am loved. Not just conditional, family oriented love or take me for my flaws and put a ring on it love, but an ending unchanging love that existed before I was born. That love comes from none other but Jesus Christ. I don't always understand how I can be loved by someone I reject in how I treat others, or how I can be loved by someone I've never physically seen, but when I've been at my lowest, when my daughter smiles at me after her fever breaks from the flu, when someone tells me they got tested or started using condoms because they heard my story of living with HIV, I honestly feel Jesus' love. It's through these things comes a warmth of compassion when I can choose chaos, gentleness when I can choose to grieve, love, when I can choose hate. 

To know that before I was created, I was created in the image of the same God that created the heavens, was loved eventhough this same all-knowing God knew I'd sin and reject Him, and that she sent His only son to die for my sins just because He loves me... Blows my mind. There is no other God in all the religions I've studied that sent a part of themselves from the throne, to accompany His creation made by dust, to live among us in our hatred, greed, hurt, sickness and evil. No other God I know that took time to impart a face to face interaction with His creation and then die for that same creation, inviting them the opportunity to receive salvation by simply accepting Him. 

And because I have found no other (and honestly not looking), I have this inner warmth and am grateful for my Christ that loves me and loves you too.