As I write this week's article, I admit to occasionally stopping to add another item to my lists: What to Pack and What Still Needs to be Done. In just five days I'm off to Saskatchewan and I can hardly wait.
In another seemingly unrelated series of thoughts, today I'm thinking of Mom. In spite of a list of ailments that make my catalog of "items to tend to" seem small she lived life with a daily attitude of "I can hardly wait". She's been gone too long but I continue to learn from her because in spite of her many medical appointments and regimes, every day she looked forward to phone calls from her children, visits with her friends, entertaining her fellow care home residents with her piano playing and above all, to any event that could be construed as a holiday.
Mom loved holidays: birthdays, Easter, Christmas or any of a myriad of things she considered worth celebrating, she lived them to the fullest. As the mostly single mom of five children (dad waltzed in and out of our lives with regularity) she never let her poverty stand in the way of a birthday cake or a house festooned with Christmas decorations. She showed me by example what it means to live life to the fullest, even when her circumstances made it appear to be mostly empty. Although I often wondered how she did it, my life has been richly blessed by who she was.
The Psalmist David also knew the secret of praise in spite of circumstances. Listen to his declaration of celebration: "Many, O Lord my God, are your wonderful works which you have done; and your thoughts which are toward usif I would declare and speak of them they are more than can be numbered." (Psalm 40:5 - NKJV)
Let's celebrate!
