Messenger 2012

Dear Friends,

May you be blessed with a new vision to celebrate all that is good and loving throughout this new year of 2012!

Such a common and simple sentiment… Let’s celebrate the New Year! However, our experience has proven that we don’t truly celebrate often enough and the joyful moments are mostly that, just moments. We seem to gear up and dress up for the big enough events like milestone family parties and weddings. Sometimes these happy occasions carry extra stress in the midst of the planning and awaited fun. We are filled with colliding contradictions. We want more fun, joy, happiness, a better year and certainly a better life. Yet we remain disgruntled, discourage, and disappointed in the daily mundane routines that are necessary and unavoidable.

So what is the solution? Is there a real answer to these conflicts of the constant shifts between wanting and lacking?

I would never be so bold or nor confident to state any inclusive cure. However, what I do know is that I had one of the best examples ever for how to live enjoyable and purpose-filled life in my precious beloved mother.

My mother was a little lady with energy that would exhaust the Duracell bunny. All my life, I witnessed and was blessed by her giving heart and faith filled habits. There were certainly many difficult times and years that caused our family suffering and uncertainly. Regardless of the events my mother truly celebrated something or someone for some reason every day.

The primary daily celebration was dinner. My mother cooked a full dinner every night till the day she died. She loved thinking about what she was going to cook, shopping for it, making it, and then eating it. She would tell you how good it was while we savored every bite. She cooked for us, sick people in need, neighbors, relatives, and anyone who wanted her to make their favorite dish.

At best mom was 4’10” in stature, yet she filled the kitchen, our house, and any space she was in with an ever-blossoming spirit that was bursting with “Something good was going to happen”.

No matter what was going on happy or sad my mother would always make a celebration for it. If someone was having a baby or tragically lost a baby mom’s response was, “Come over I will cook and we will eat and pray and thank God.” If someone got married, divorced, got a job, or lost a job, she still offered the same wonderful invitation. So naturally our dining room was always full and she always used her good china, silverware, and crystal glasses! We ate, laughed, cried, ate again, prayed, and then ate again. Every gathering was full and ended with our traditional long good byes and a container of “You’ll have something for tomorrow” for guests to take home.

This was our normal routine. Live to the fullest every day, eat together, pray together, and the Lord will take care of the rest. With this as our every day flow when the book, “Eat, Pray, Love” came out although it was great, I felt my mother was the originator and she did not have to go anywhere to find her truth.

My mother prayed all the time. She even prayed while she was cooking for someone else. This was her passion and divine purpose. I am so richly blessed by her steadfast example of God’s grace in action and how to make the ordinary moments simply delicious.

I share this story now because I believe we really need to have some mouth-watering reasons to celebrate our lives. My mother also taught those reasons to me. The primary reason for joy is a simple recipe. It’s appreciation for the people in our lives. Each one has been hand selected by the Lord especially for our needs. Every person fills us like a banquet of blessings. It’s time to celebrate them. Celebrate them now. Cook for them, call or visit them, hug them and thank them. Every day is really a celebration of something or someone, for some reason if we would just look for it, expect it and even plan for it.

Let’s make a promise to each other for this year and every year. Let’s celebrate with and because of each other! It’s worth the effort since the joy will feed your soul forever long after some may have moved on.

Thanks for everything MOM!

Many Blessings,

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