Bittersweet Ramblings

January 2 is a bittersweet day for me. On this day I remember a brother's unexpected home-going and celebrate a son's birth. This year, 23 and 21 years ago respectively.

The grief has been so close to the surface again lately. Someone selects a song about heaven at church and I'm a puddle of tears. An ambulance goes screaming by me on the highway and out of nowhere I get a lump in my throat and pray for the persons involved in whatever emergency is in progress. One of my favorite quotes on grief is "Grief is like peeling an onion. There are many layers and it makes you cry a lot." Truth. Even decades later.

That's when Heaven pierces through the clouds of darkness,

and the glory of the Father shines through Heaven's open door

And the Son of Man standing at the right hand  of the Father

with a warm embrace gives welcome and the angels are rejoicing

and the Father with a voice like rushing wind says 

"All Heaven has been waiting - Enter in!" 

When I was "home" for Christmas last weekend, we stopped by the graves of my brothers.
I miss them.
I would take flowers there today if I could.
If it wasn't always cold & muddy & miserable this time of year in the cemetery, I'd sit by their graves and talk to them.
I long to be where they are. Where there are no tissues, and it's never muddy & miserable.

And then there is the birthday. For the past 21 years I cry in secret, then pull myself together and celebrate the birthday. 

With one hand, He brings sorrow to me.

With the other hand, He holds me up and comforts me. 

And so, I am safe in His embrace. 

This is my sometimes quiet, sometimes goofy son that is more like his uncle than he knows. He is 21 today. He has been given more years than the uncle, for which I am so very grateful. He is married now, so for the first time I'm not buying him a birthday cake and making his requested menu today. I'm not sure how I feel about not having his birthday to get me through the day. 

Happy birthday, JS! 

You are loved more than you know, and your mom is praying '17 will be a blessed year for you. 

Starting a New Year

Happy New Year!

I usually have Praise & Worship music playing on a Sunday morning while we get ready for church. Partly to get myself in the right frame of mind for what comes next, partly because I grew up with that (and when the music got cranked up, it was the family alarm clock- you knew it was high time to haul yourself out of bed and get ready for church), and partly because on the rare occasions I get inspired to sing along it does limber up the vocal chords before congregational singing at church. Anyway, I loved it that Pandora selected "Day One" by Matthew West as the first song of the morning today, first song of 2017.

It's day one of the rest of my life / It's day one of the best of my life /

 I'm marching on to the beat of a brand new drum / Yeah, here I come / 

The future has begun / Day one. 

I'm not so much a New Year's Resolutions kind of person as I am a goal-setter. For example, I am currently working on my daughter's scrapbook; I set a goal to have my children's albums caught up by their HS graduation. It's painfully obvious that I'm not going to make it with hers and she asked me why it even matters. Well, because I need that pressure to keep me moving forward. I'm so far behind that I would give up in utter discouragement -I have to set smaller, more do-able goals to keep me plugging away at chronicling our family life. And completing other goals, too.
 
So I have 2 goals set for 2017. So far.
1. Finish this project.

Years ago I started crocheting a star quilt afghan. Somewhere along the line I got discouraged with it and stuck it away in a closet. That was maybe 10, 15 years ago. (Possibly a little longer, but that's all I'm willing to admit to.) I've been thinking about it recently and decided it's long overdue for finishing. Honest, I don't have very many abandoned projects stashed away- that's not me; I've got too much bulldog tenacity in me.
When I resurrected it from the closet depths (a closet that didn't even exist when I originally stuck it away) this week, I was amazed to find it was a lot closer to finished than I remembered. I'm having fun working on it -in spite of constantly changing colors, which results in frequent untangling skeins of yarn. Goodness, why did it take so many years of perspective to make this fun again? Is it possible I stuck it away back in the era when it was difficult to crochet because little fingers just got into the yarn and made a mess of the skeins, and the constant interruptions of little people made it hard to keep my place in a pattern? Never mind. I am definitely going to finish it. This winter. Before there are the next generation of little fingers pulling at my yarn. Before the hot flashes get any worse and it drives me completely crazy to have a warm blanket over my lap. Then the non-flashing members of this household can use the afghan while I sit in front of a fan. lol

2. Try even harder to say "No".
Refer back to paragraph 2 above. The reason I am so far behind on scrapbooking and other personal projects is because for too many years I have viewed myself as everyone else's savior. Someone calls and wants a favor and I can't see past "aww, this person has a problem. What can I do to help?" I'm all puppy dog eyes and scampering underfoot. I don't know if I have some weird addiction -a need to feel important/needed or what, but we have figured out it has got to stop. Hello, Mrs. Miller! The world won't stop spinning if you say no. They can find someone else to solve their problem. It was insightful for us to be gone for a whole month last summer and arrive home to a church family that was still functioning & intact; see, they can manage just fine without us. So I have been practicing saying no, but I certainly haven't mastered it. I still have my fingers in too many things. I still slip back into my former habit of saying yes before I consider the ramifications. So if you call in a favor and I say no, I hope you realize what a hurdle it has been for me to squeak out that little word. It has nothing to do with you or your problem or selfishness on my part.

2017. A fresh start. The past several years I started out hoping for a calm year, less drama than the previous year. We all know how that turned out! So, I'm changing my hopes for this year. I even bought a journal that says in big bold letters "To live will be an awfully big adventure!"  A dear friend commented recently that our life is so full of good things. Hard things, but good. It was a jolt of reality I needed in that moment and I'm going with it. Yes, my life is overflowing with good things. I want to live fully, even in the white knuckle moments at the top of the Ferris wheel. Here's to adventure! Here's to 2017!