<3 HAPPY BIRTHDAY PATTY <3
Knowing the 26th was just around the corner I began to wonder how or if this birthday might be any different than last year? Yes , another 365 days have passed and a few more gray hairs have appeared...... I sleep too much or not at all. I get dressed and find to my dismay a spare tire on not one but both hips! Pants do not zip and since I have not yet graduated to elastic I go to the stretch material :) and look to remedy this ASAP. Hello! are you kidding me? These spares are of no use to me and I want them gone. So I have stopped their care and feeding.
On a much serious note I have given a lot of thought to how I want to live my 52nd year. I have decided I want to embrace it with the joy and excitement of a child. At Sunday's service the sermon was THE FAITH OF A CHILD and as I listened I knew that was exactly what I wanted to experience. I want to be prepared for adventures to come and embrace new things and see what God has in store for me. As I listened I could see in my minds eye my grandchildren each one in their own wonderful way an affirmation of Gods love. I want to grow with them and learn from them. As we age we have a tendency to become a bit more sentimental at least I have experienced it. Those who know me may think I have been that way since birth and might wince at the thought of my being even more so today. Yet with every year that passes and all of the blessings that surround me I feel a twinge inside. Not a twinge of sadness or a what if kind of feeling I think it's closer to a feeling of humility. This past weekend Tony and I had the opportunity to spend time with two of my favorite siblings Wayne and Patty. I am thankful for these times and treasure the conversations that come from them. Both the short and the very longs ones. :) (Sorry Wayne). As we sat and chatted with Wayne and Katherine I felt my mind wander back to the time when we were children. A time when we lived in a neighborhood that was literally "our playground". When the biggest decisions we had were do we ride our bikes today and do we choose to do so down Waite hill....the steepest and longest of all our routes. Or do we explore the graveyard on Maple St.? Yep, we did that a lot. Some days we would walk to the school playground or the Dairy Queen on the way we would pass an old brick house where an elderly lady named Viola lived. At our young age this woman had the power to stop us in our tracks by simply looking at us or make us run like our lives depended on it. To this day I still have no idea why we were so frightened of her. We had unlimited options and Parents who gave us freedom to explore. So as we sat there and I looked at my brother I saw that little boy again riding down the hill.........hand in front of hand tackling the monkey bars.......... laying in his bed covers over his head as Patty and I sneaked into his room and slowly opened the closet with only one intention....... to scare him of course.
As children we enjoyed the luxury of good health and time was always on our side. It would be years before we would have to grow up or face challenges as adults. Well time stops for no one and the years have passed and our brother is facing a challenge unlike anything I can imagine. It is the "Monsoon" of challenges ALS . Six years into this disease he is facing it with the love and devotion of his wife Katherine and the 3 F's which are important to all of us, Faith, Family and Friends. Followed by his huge sense of humor and his take no prisoners tenacity.
| TENACITY - cohesiveness, courage, determination, diligence, doggedness, firmness, guts, heart, nerve, perseverance, persistence, resolution, strength, stubbornness, toughness | |||
| Yep. This is our brother. I love you Wayne, and I love that today with some differences and a lot of similarities between us we continue to learn and grow together. It is the same with my sister. Two little girls so different yet exactly the same. I'm thankful for what she has given me and what we have grown to mean to one another. So I embrace my 52nd year with a peace and a sense of security that God will continue to carry the weight and and watch out for us. In my pantry on a small piece of paper is a sentence I found several months ago.... SPEND WELL THE GIFT OF THE PRESENT MOMENT | |||
1 comment:
Praising God for the day you were born...
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