Today I had a little free time because I am at the Tennessee Farm Bureau Women’s Annual Meeting in Columbia, TN, so I thought I would catch up on a post here on my blog. I also thought that since I had been ask to give the devotional for the morning, and it went over fairly well (nobody fell asleep or ran out of e room screaming) it might make a fairly decent blog posting.

Often as we are coming together for meetings, we are looking forward to the joy of renewed friendships, travel, and learning new things. These are things that I look forward when planning to travel for meetings as well, but being a small town family doctor, Farmer’s wife, and Mother of three leaving home, even for a few days, takes intense planning. And all to often, I find myself getting caught up in the difficulties involved in being away.

Unfortunately, even with the best of planning, when I travel, I get phone calls like I did this morning where a patient got missed on hospital rounds in our hospital ICU, which lead to more phone calls from Columbia to my partner to make sure that the patient got seen. (They did). Or the seemingly never ending phone calls from the nursing home while I am away, even though I am not on call. So, when you add all this up, and factor in our farm and all the million things that need to be done every day on a working Angus Beef farm, getting away for a weekend for Brian and I is even harder to do. But, Brian and I choose to be involved in Farm Bureau and in Agriculture because we both feel that being a positive advocate for agriculture helps to ensure that our children will be able to farm on our farm when they are grown.

When I get stuck getting through all the difficulties that I have to work through to go to any meeting, I have a choice, I can be negative and suck all the joy out of my time at the meeting, or I can do what have always chosen to do. See, I was taught a “coping skill” by my grandfather, my Pa Doc. He never knew what he was teaching me would have been called a coping skill in 2012, but that is what they were, and most all of his teachings were either based in scripture or common sense. This skill was based in scripture and has helped me through some of the most trying times of my life. I was reading this to my grandmother as she took her last breath, and have often read these verses after dealing with the loss of a patient. They are also quite comforting in times of joy like the evenings after the births of my children. So, here is how my PaDoc taught me to see the world’s challenges in a positive light by counting my blessings as taught by Jesus in his sermon on the mount in Matthew 5:3-12

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are they peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Thanks PaDoc for teaching me to Count my blessings. And thanks to Farm Bureau for my many friendships across the state and Nation.