Biltmore House

Walking through the front doors of Biltmore House was like stepping back in time.  

I could feel the decades melt away as we passed through the front gate. A winding road led us through acres of woodlands. Our shuttle followed a small creek that cut through tree-covered hills and fields until the woods gave way to the most spectacular view of Biltmore House.

Biltmore is especially lovely at Christmas. The estate puts its best foot forward, showing off rooms cloaked in holiday trimmings and festive decor. Biltmore House, in all its Gilded Age glory, boasts tapestries, paintings, sketches, and other works of art from floor to ceiling. The window treatments, the furniture, the architecture display a stunning attention to detail.   

Our tour, although brief, took my breath away. 

To top it all off, Asher was a perfect angel during our visit. Two women stopped me during the tour to marvel at how well he was behaving. After the tour, I realized that we were either really brave or really crazy to bring a three-year-old who had just taken a 12-hour car ride to a Victorian-era estate where one fragile piece of artwork costs more than his parents' yearly salary.

In addition, the tour was a birthday gift from my wonderful husband who endured the estate's holiday chaos while listening to me read the informational brochure throughout the.entire.house. That's love, people!

Looking Forward

Last spring, a friend gave me a lovely journal. With its soft green cover and creamy lined pages, the journal begged to hold important thoughts.

Who knew a bunch of blank pages would transform my life?

I decided to use the green journal as a gratitude journal – a way of writing thanks, of trapping blessings on paper, of using pen and parchment to declare that every good and perfect gift is from above. Throughout the past several months, I have written thanks for the mundane (#93 – Marigolds in flower boxes) and the magnificent (#882 – The feeling of being challenged and out of my comfort zone but confident in God’s plan and purpose for me). And now? That journal holds 1489 gifts.

The pages fill as my pen scrawls gratitude on each line. But this habit, this discipline, this act of giving thanks is more than just a filling of pages. It is a filling of the heart.

You see, those pages are lined with God’s goodness. Whether mundane or magnificent, all 1489 of those gifts are ways in which an eternal, immortal, invisible, wise God has revealed His glory to me.

And that is life-changing.

A lot of attention is given to life-changing habits this time of year. I've chosen a few things to focus on in the areas of faith, marriage, and motherhood throughout 2014. My hope is to record my focus areas now and document my progress throughout the year. 

• Faith: Give thanks, focus on prayer, memorize scripture
• Marriage: Daily affirmation, quality time
• Motherhood: Practicing presence