One Is Just A Number

Today is the last Five Minute Friday for 2012. Even though I've only participated in a few, I've grown to love it and can't wait for the first one of 2013! Happy Holidays fellow Five Minute Friday-ers! Wonder - it's a word I use often in emails, when I'm unsure of what I'm asking. It's also a word I use when thinking about life, I wonder what it all means. I wonder how, even though I'm 50 years old, I am actually a grown up who takes care of a house and has a real job. But what I should be concentrating on is the amazing meaning of that word - the wonder that life is. The wonder of a family who loves me unconditionally. The wonder of the second, third, and fourth chances I've been given by people when I've been short with them or said ugly things out of frustration. The wonder of a God that loves me unconditionally, who extends His grace to me even when I'm short with Him or said ugly things out of frustration. The wonder of how c...

Today my parents' are celebrating their 54th wedding anniversary. Every year my sister and I tell them they should go out just the two of them but they insist on us accompanying them to dinner, usually at Olive Garden. All day long I've been marveling at that - 54 years together. They've raised two daughters, lost four parents, and prayed in hospital waiting rooms while waiting to hear if surgeries were successful. My mother drove my father to daily radiation treatments for cancer. After all of this, 54 years of the ebb and flows of life, they still hold hands as they walk together, their lives linked together as tightly as their clasped fingers. I have friends who are also celebrating their wedding anniversary today. Twenty-five years and three children together, one of which has been a special-needs child since before her first birthday when she suffered a brain infection. Through all the struggles of that challenging life, they are still in love. Last fall ...

Thank You. Where do I begin to list all the things that I have to be thankful for - things that I too often chose to overlook. Thank you for a day spent with family, two loving parents who I'm so lucky to still have and for a sister that is my best friend. Thank you for the aunt who joined us today, even though she has a broken heart, she left her house and brought pies and blueberry salad with her. What would a holiday be without Grandma's blueberry salad. Thank you for friends who reached out today, from across town and across the country to wish me a happy holiday. Thank you for an evening of memories made last night at a wonderful Carrie Underwood concert. I'm so glad I got to share that with my mom and my sister. Thank you for this roof over my head. It may have leaked a little during tonight's rainstorm (thank you for the rain BTW) but it is over my head and it is mine. Thank you for a job that lets me pay for that roof and so many other things. Thank...

Stay - did I say that word? Did I beg him to stay? Stay, just a little bit longer. Jackson Brown takes me back to my high school days. Stay or go? Do I stay in my job, do I go back to my old job? Stay or sell? Do I stay in my house or do I sell and move to something with less upkeep. Stay - weight please stay off. I do not want that 50 pounds back. You can leave for good. Stay in peace - God's got this, you don't need to fret over anything. Stay - please God, stay with me through this season. Stay - I think of all the hurting people out there who are asking a loved one to stay with them and not go to heaven. Stay the same or change? Stay - did the reader of this stop half way through or did he/she stay until the end? Stay in the past or move forward? Move forward, move forward. Stay open to new opportunities, to changes in plans. Stay, please God stay - the one stay that keeps popping up in my head and the one certain thing on this list because I know He's always with me....

I've spent a lot of time lately trying to figure out what I want in life - where do I want to live, what do I want to do for a living, what would I like to do in my spare time. I can come up with all kinds of ideas then my common sense kicks in and starts finding flaws in my plans. Flaws like, "yes it would be awesome to live in that high-rise condo but could you afford the mortgage AND the HOA dues. Probably not." "Yes you loved that job but it paid half of what you make now, you'd really not be able to afford that high-rise on that salary. You'd be living on ramen noodles." "Traveling would be awesome but see plans 1 and 2 for limitations on plan 3." I miss dreaming like a little kid. When you are a kid, there were no limits on the plans you could make. You didn't worry about how much things cost. There was no job that was too outrageous or impractical. The improbability that you'd even be in the same room as David Cassid...

Quiet - it scares me. The minute I step into my house, I turn the TV on so that there is noise that fills the rooms, voices that make me feel like I'm not alone. As I sit here typing this in the quiet, I hear the clocks ticking and the noise outside and it's true, I do feel alone. But am I really alone. I have family that loves me, I have friends, I have coworkers. I just don't have the one who left 5 years ago. I want to grab the remote, to turn the TV to the music channel so that the music drowns out the voices in my head. The voices that tell me I'm not good enough, that I deserved to be left. That I deserve to be alone. But what if the noise is keeping me from hearing Him. Hearing the one that always tells me you are enough, you are my child, you are wonderfully made and I love you. I've always loved you. You are not alone, I am here with you. Am I afraid of that voice? Am I afraid that if I listen he'll tell me things I don't want to hear. L...

I'm not a very political person. I watched the first debate because I was promised a meatball sandwich for dinner and had a side of embarrassment because of how little I knew about some of the issues covered. Most days I take for granted the rights we have as Americans to vote. But when I go to the polling place and stand in those plastic cubicles with my ballot, I'm struck by just how lucky I am to have the privilege to let my voice be heard. I think of the people who died on American and foreign soil to make sure we kept that right. I think of the women who so desperately wanted to vote but couldn't because it was against the law. And almost every time I vote, I see someone who had to struggle to get there to vote; people with aged faces and stooped backs who would not be denied their privilege to vote. One year I waited to vote because they had taken the sign-in book out to the parking lot to someone who could not make it into the building. Despite his immob...

Lisa-Jo Baker (lisajobaker.com) hosts a weekly event on her blog called "Five Minute Friday". The rules are 1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking. 2. Link back here and invite others to join in. 3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community.. So here's my first try at this. Today's topic was Roots. Roots – I think about my grandparents who lived on a farm until my grandfather’s diabetes worsened and they moved to a town with a hospital nearby. My father still says he wished he could have kept that farm. I think of my grandmother who was a widow for 20 years. Every year she would stand over my PaPa’s grave, wishing she was with him. I think of my parents, a product of those grandparents, how hard my father worked to put 2 girls through...