Day 7 Project GRAPEful

Project GRAPEful

Sharing Grape Stuff’s Day 7 Project GRAPEful…

We aim to bless our readers who, for the most part, have had a very difficult year in 2015. For the next 21 days until Thanksgiving day, we will be sharing inspiring stories and things we are “GRAPEful” for. We pray these tidbits bless you and that you and your family will find peace and strength each day. (Aside from being able to enter to win prizes which you can read more about by clicking the link above.)

The Blessings of Pain. I’m going to be sharing parts of a blog article I wrote for JoJoisms.com a while back in eleven parts. Part one is here today.

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Okay. JoJo’s gone off the deep end! Brain fog has taken over and she’s completely out of her mind! I hear ya out there. You’ve stuck with me through some of my other unusual posts, but this one’s gone too far. Stick a fork in ‘er, she’s done! As someone who is in a fair amount of physical pain as I’m typing this, I understand your horror at this title, but give me a few minutes of your time and I think you’ll see my sanity returning and you’ll be blessed.

This idea started as a debate topic. You see, (those of you who may not have known me long) in a former life I was an author and speaker on communication skills at www.ArtofEloquence.com. I used to teach speech, debate and communication classes both online and off. Nowadays, I’m too tired, overwhelmed and in pain to run my business much less teach so I only do that on rare occasions. This month was one such occasion. I am teaching a homeschool co op class on debate. One of the topics I picked was Pain is Good. I figured it was something with which most teens would be unfamiliar and would be a good life lesson as well as a great debate topic. Pain keeps us from more harm. Even babies would remove their hand from the fire, right?

As I began putting my week’s lesson plan together, it occurred to me that, while I am not a fan of pain (emotional or physical) itself, enduring it can bring some blessings that I’d never have had the opportunity to experience had I been healthy. There are some lessons you only learn from pain. There are some lessons life cannot teach without it. There are some blessings you will never notice unless you’ve been through a day where you felt your head would explode or years when you thought if you woke up without pain one day, you would HAVE to be in heaven.

Pain itself is bad, but enduring pain can be a good thing and bring blessings you’d never have known-but you have look for them. They can’t always been seen by the naked eye or heard above the white noise of the TV. But as soon as I reveal to you how pain can bring blessings, you’ll never look at it the same way again. There are several ways in which pain can bring blessings into your life and the lives of those you touch.

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So today, I’m thankful for the Lord showing me how pain can be a blessing. Tune in tomorrow for part two!

What are your struggles and what are you thankful for today? Please share as a comment down below this post. And please share this post with your Facebook family and other social media friends to inspire them to come and share their own as well. We’ll be praying for each person listed below.

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Here’s what will be awarded for the contest so far:

1. The most inspirational story

2. The person who shared our blog posts the most

3. The most insightful thing gained from doing this project

Prizes will include: