Dear friend,

Have you ever noticed that when you stub your toe you seem to stub that same toe more often than normal after the original stub?

Sometimes I think our thoughts are that way too. The more we think about something, the more we notice that something. Like to do lists. The more I think about all the things I need to do, and should do, and haven't done yet, the more my mind starts coming up with more things I need to add to the list.

And in another way, the more I think about the blessings in my life, the more the blessings seem to pop out at me. The more I think about the Lord, the more I notice the Lord at work around me.

Which makes me think about what we look at, what we dwell on, and what we ponder. If we ponder on negative things, we may be training ourselves to notice the negative things. The little inconveniences and delays and frustrations seem to be huge billboards demanding our attention instead of minor detours.

And I notice that the world is so distracting. There's constant information and input and data and noise just coming at us. A lot of it from our little devices we have all over the place. And even the noise trains our brains to look for more noise.

It makes it hard to train ourselves to look for the good things in the midst of so much noise. It's much easier to just take it all in as it comes at us and not try to filter what we dwell on in any way.

When I was a kid, growing up in Zambia, we would buy rice from the market in town. The women had mountains of rice piled on their little tables in the market. My mom would buy how ever many scoops she wanted, and the lady would scoop the individual rice pieces into a bag for us, often a sack like a Walmart sack.

By the time we got home, after all the steps the rice took to get from the field to the market table and then to get to our kitchen counter, it was quite dirty and incredibly hard break-your-tooth-kind-of-rocks would be hiding in it.

So it was my job to sit in the dining room and sift by hand all the rice and pick out the rocks.

It's crazy how little things that are not helpful for digestion at all can be mixed up so stealthily with the nutritious rice. It was sooooo boring to sift through two cups of rice. I'd do one handful and then the two cups of rice would seem to double. It would have been so much easier to just dump it all on the pot, rocks and all, and hope our teeth survived.

In the same way, if we don't sift through what we dwell on in our minds, we'll end up with rocks that pile up in our hearts too.

So I painted this as a reminder to check where my focus is. To notice what I'm dwelling on and what I'm noticing in my day. A reminder to stop and notice the lovely beautiful little things. I hope it's a reminder for you too.

Because like the bear filled with flowers, when we stop and notice the little blessings in life, I think it creates something beautiful inside of us. It softens our hearts, it makes us quicker to be a blessing to others because we remember we're blessed ourselves. Joy slowly blooms in our hearts when we focus more on the Lord.

I don't know where your focus is or what you may be facing, be it blessing or frustration, or trials. But whatever it is, this is a reminder not to let the negative distract you from noticing the goodness of the Lord. There's blessings in the hugs, in the cool morning air, in the smile from a stranger, in the Bible passage you read, in the worship song you sing, and countless other things around us that quietly wait for us to thank the Lord because of them.

What's a little blessing that has touched your heart recently? Reply to this email to let me know! I love hearing from you!

Happy Friday!

~Isabel Grace

P.S. The print club letters are going out today! If you're in the club, keep an eye out for your letter! If you're newer here and don't know what the print club is, you can read about it HERE.

Also, if you want to check out paintings and prints I have available right now (including the bear painting from this email, it's under "originals") you can check them out HERE.