Blessings in Review

We’ve made it through the holidays! I hope your Christmas season was truly blessed with quiet moments of divine reflection and a hope for the future.

It has been a rollercoaster for me. Emotions from the extreme joy with our kids during Christmas, to the emotion of sheer sadness at learning that one of my dear friends is battling a type of bone marrow cancer, have taken me to both extremes. Some days it’s left me speechless, some days I’ve cried. During the holidays, another dear friend’s husband was in a motorcycle accident. He is still struggling to recover.

All of these things really played havoc on my mind as I tried to focus on the season. Then a mixed blessing happened. A friend of mine dealing with dystonia (an early form of Parkinson’s) asked me why it had to happen to her. She is Jewish in her traditional thinking , but she is not a practicing Jew. Therefore she has a different concept of salvation.

I sat down with her and we talked for a long time. I don’t know that I was able to help her much, except to listen and share my faith with her, but she helped me a great deal. I realized what a great blessing my Christian heritage provides. It gives me hope, day after day. I know that this life is not the end of everything. I know that God has created me in His image and that I will have eternal life. I know that God’s own Son, came down from heaven, lived a human life and opened the gates of heaven all to enter. I realized just how vast my God is.

After considering this, I heard a song that mentioned the following (if anyone knows the author, please help me out): “my God is not the sun or the moon, but the One who created them; my God is not the earth and what it provides, but the One who created it.” I’ve paraphrased here, but the theme is what is important.

Each day heralds a unique sunrise and sunset. Everyday provides me with a new opportunity to do better than the day before. I can assess my actions, make improvements and do things better. Each day is a blessing rich with time with my kids, my husband and my family.

I may be rushing around like a chicken with my head cut off being taxi-mom or whatever, but I’m rushing around with my kids, having pleasant conversations and sharing each other’s company. I’m having just a few quiet moments with my husband, laughing and talking about the day’s events.

I’m praying very hard for my friends and their trials, and I hope you will too. But in the end, I hope you will see what a gift time is for us all. One of my favorite quotes comes from Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf says to Frodo, “That is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

I hope you will share some time with me this year as I explore new and interesting topics of creation and how the Lord is ever present in our lives. I look forward to a new year full of surprises, good and bad, and I look forward to having fun on this rollercoaster of life. Thanks for spending a few moments with me.