Growin' Up Gregory

Wow, what a Thanksgiving week it's been for 2017!  Monday morning started with a scheduled C-section for Aubree, followed by numerous visitors, days and nights of sleeping for 2 hours at a time, countless prayers, coming home, and finally Thanksgiving with our families on Thursday.  I can proudly say that I have an amazing family, both immediate and extended.  But I must humbly admit that a large part of the reason I am who I am today is because of all of these people.  It's crazy as we stood around yesterday reflecting in my head on a memory and impact that each person there has had on my life.  Sometimes we tend to take family for granted and allow them to slip from being a high priority to falling behind friends, success, and wealth.  But our family has literally done it all for us over the past few days.  They have watched Thomas, cleaned, cooked, brought food, prayed, called, texted, delivered coffee (that I was without for 2 days), and made adjus...

How do you tend to respond to complainers?  Or when people complain about you, how do you tend to respond?  Are we quick to help someone who's complained about us, or not so much?  Let's be honest, no one likes a complainer.  And we have all have our limits of how much complaining we can take before we lose our patience (and most likely our temper) with someone complaining about us.  If you're like me and someone complains about how I do something, I have no problem simply not doing it at all and allowing them to handle it themselves.   Leading up to this story in Exodus 16, God has protected, provided for, and guided the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.  And yet somehow through all of that, they begin to complain.  Thankfully, God is not like us and He did not give up on His people.  He is patient, kind, and slow to anger (Psalm 145:8).  A month and half departed from Egypt, the Israelites find themselves between Elim and...