One of my nearest and dearest and some of our closest girls, took part in IF:Gathering live stream event this year early in February.  At the end of the event we were all challenged to write on a domino a step we would be willing to take to lay our lives down in obedience to God’s call.

In discussions with this “near and dear” (aka only one of the best friends on the planet. She’s the fearless female leader of the world renowned #iveyleague. Totally love her, her entire family and mostly that God trusted her with me – I can be quite the handful!)…. ANYWAY, discussing our baby steps of obedience, she mentioned how cool it would be to have a jar of dominoes with all the steps of obedience we have taken in following God’s direction for our lives.  And since I love her more than Reese’s (which is a lot) and pretty much want to be her when I grow up, I immediately went to work on making my jar. I loved this visual, tangible way to be reminded of God in my life.

As I thought about my own family and how awesome God has been to us, I decided to make it a family jar.  I put our jar right smack in the middle of our kitchen table.  We are using it for not only God’s blessings in obedience but also reminders of all moments God has blessed.  It sits where we eat, where we pass daily to the laundry room and where we set things when we walk in.  It sits basically in the middle of our lives.  We can’t miss it and rarely does it not get asked about in the short time it has been there.  This is literally our real life modern day Joshua 4 stacking of stones!

Some days we will put our domino in together and some days we are surprised by new reminders added while the other(s) weren’t looking.  And some days I am sure we will pull them out as we so desperately need to be reminded of what God has already done.

I certainly don’t look forward to bad days, but I have hope in knowing when the storms come, we have a jar of amazing God memories. In the storm, we will remember each as a specific point of faith, blessing and goodness.  And we can confidently trust God for greater and greater works in the future, because we have seen and experienced His past faithfulness.

In His Grip, Ashlee

Joshua 4:6-7…”In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”