Happy New Year!

It has been a busy month for me. Well, probably for most other people, too. Now that it is the end of the year, I am sitting here coughing up a lung (bronchitis) and bemoaning my stalled marathon training. But this is supposed to be about the miracles and bleassings in my life.

What better time to reflect on miracles and blessings than at the end of the year! I am blessed to live in our country where I am free to express and practice my faith publicly. I am blessed with a good man at my side and 4 reasonably behaved, healthy children. I am blessed with a secure, warm home; food on the table each meal; clothes on my back; vehicles in the driveway; and the ability to pay the bills. I am blessed to be employed at a time when many are having difficulties keeping their employment, or are suffering from severe budget cuts that create pay cuts.

I am blessed with many friends who genuinely care for me and my family. Tomorrow night, we gather together at our home to celebrate the last year and look forward to the new year to come. Our evening will be spent playing board games, card games, dominoes, and all other sorts of frivolity with friends of all ages, from adults to the young children. Several of our teens' friends and their families will be here. Some of my family are coming for the weekend. Some family friends will also be here. We plan to eat, drink, and be merry.

I am truly blessed. Even when I am bemoaning my break in training. I am blessed.

My Husband

I love my husband. He is a blessing to me. We have been married over 20 years. It hasn't always been easy; there was even a time I almost left. But, by the grace of God, we pulled it together and keep working on it. Our marriage is a constant work in progress. It ebbs and flows, sometimes better than others. But we are in it for the long haul.

He spent a good part of the last 4 years working away from home at various locations within a few hours of home so he could provide for us. He came home whenever he could, usually once a week. And we visited him when we could. The last year was the hardest since his locations were 6 hours or more away. Then last spring, he applied for and landed a similar position here at home! What a blessing that has been. With our older children away at college, and my job requiring evening meetings several times a month, he has been able to be the father he has wanted to be. He really missed being able to go to their sporting events and concerts and felt out of the loop on so many other things. He didn't know their friends or teachers any more and missed several of the youngest child's milestones.

He had become accustomed to spending Sunday afternoons in the fall at a sports bar with our teenager watching their favorite football team - the Ravens. They had developed a routine where they'd go watch their game, then he would drive the child home and go back to the location where he was working. Last year, he was too far for that. Both of them really missed it. Usually football isn't on very often at home, but that fall, I let that child have the TV time every Sunday afternoon. They would call each other on the phone several times during the game. I was so happy they were able to resume their routine this year.

He does little things for me that mean so much. On frosty mornings when I am leaving shortly after he does, he starts my car so it is defrosted and toasty. He helps with the children who are still at home, especially on the evenings I am at meetings. He supports and encourages my running, which with marathon training, means several hours more that I am gone. Often, he has a hot cup of coffee for my return.

So he went to the other side of the country for a few weeks after Thanksgiving for training. He comes home in a few days. I missed him when he was gone working away from home for so long, but being essentially a single parent became the norm and I managed to cope. Now that he is gone for a much shorter time, I find I am missing him terribly since I became so used to him always being home. I am so blessed to have a husband who works hard for us. He calls me every day if I don't call him first. Sometimes we talk just to hear the other's voice. I pray he makes it home safely during this major storm front that is covering the whole region.

Snow!

This winter has been a dud so far. I really don't like winter rain. In my opinion, there is no worse weather. Nothing makes me colder than a wet cold. It could be -10 F and clear or snowing and I'd be perfectly comfortable. But if it is 35 F and even slightly damp, I can't get warm. Chilled to.the.bone. Snow, on the other hand, is beautiful. It insulates. It creates a quiet blanket over everything. You are in a fairytale land of magic crystals that twinkle and sparkle. Even when it snows in my face on a run, it is so much more refreshing, calming, and enjoyable than cold rain.

Normally, our area starts getting snow in October - even if it doesn't stay around at first. Most years we have solid white by mid-November at the latest - the variety that stays until April. This year, uh, uh. We had a few light flurries in November, but I mean real flurries. Just enough to tease. I kept looking twice to see "was that really snow or was it my imagination?" Nothing stuck. Mostly it was all wet rain. And a lot of it. We have had some really cold days and nights, but never in combination with precipitation. Last week we had one day with an inch of snow that was gone by the time I left work in the evening. :(

I went for my run late last night. I am slow, but I go pretty far. When I left the house there was a cloudy, snow sky. Given the weather this year, I wasn't worried and figured I'd be back before anything exciting happened. Flurries started early in the run, and a huge, rogue snowflake smacked me in the eye! An hour or so into the run the flakes were coming steady. A half hour later they were flying in my face. I know it really wasn't snowing that hard, but it looked and felt like a blizzard! I couldn't keep myself from smiling all through the next several miles! The snow was still on the ground this morning and is still there tonight! I feel like a giddy child. :)

I'm almost afraid to hope, but I think we had a miracle last night! Snow is a miracle, the beauty of the crystals, the insulating value of something so cold to keep other things warm. The variety. I've experience snow so wet it is almost slush falling from the sky and snow so dry it won't pack into a snowball no matter how hard you try. Flakes as tiny as pin points and as large as silver dollars. And everything in between. I really hope this is the stuff that stays through Christmas, Lent, and up to Easter. But I do have to say, by March I'm done with the white stuff. :)

Time to get the sleds out! Wahoo!!!

Introduction

OK, so, I'm really technologically challenged but have wanted to start a blog for a while now. I've even had the name picked out and decided on the theme of the blog. This is a learning experience for me so things may get kooky sometimes. I don't really know.

I want this to be a place for me to celebrate the miracles and blessings that come into my life. I sometimes find myself dwelling on negativity and I don't like myself when I go to that place. I think it is ugly and hurtful to others. I am not trying to write a humorous blog, and I definitely don't want to complain here. Enough of that in RL. But, at times, there may be funny events or funny ways of looking at what otherwise may be a bad situation. And at other times, there may be situations or events that happen that I haven't found the blessings or miracles, but will share and revisit when I discover the blessings and miracles.

A little about myself. I am the average woman, trying my best to have a positive effect on my world. I have been married over 20 years to a wonderful, patient man. We have 4 children and live in a cold, rural area of the east coast. I work for a non-profit. I like reading, running, and old movies. I volunteer at my church and in my community. Hmmmm... what else.... the rest of my family lives a day's drive away, so we see them a few times a year, but that's it. So now you know what is important to me. God, family, knowledge, volunteering, and fitness.

I believe that we can find blessings in even the worst situations. We just may have to look for them, or wait for the situation to pass to find the blessings. For example: In the summer 3 years ago, I had finished my MS in literacy and began running in earnest again. I was a runner in high school, but had set myself a goal of running a marathon before I turned 40. Those of us who are a certain age, know the need for these "before I'm 40" goals. After a few months of gradually building up to a 3 mile run, I discovered, much to my surprise, that I was pregnant! Now this threw me for such a loop because our oldest child was a high school senior and our youngest was a 6th grader. I was terrified and swore my husband to secrecy not to tell the family until Christmas. I didn't want to be pregnant. We were not in a place in our lives for babies anymore. I was in shock and wanted to be OK with it before I told them. At this time, I was in a small Bible study with a few friends and we were reading Ester together. If you know the story, one of the themes is that God has a plan that He reveals on his schedule. I kept wondering, what is His plan for our life with a the new baby? Then the day before Thanksgiving, I started spotting. It is still hard to write about it now. We told the children and went to the hospital to get checked. They sent me home on bed rest. On Thanksgiving, I miscarried and was devastated. I was only 6 weeks along and hadn't even accepted the baby yet. I kept questioning why. What's the plan?

After the doctor cleared me, I began running again. It was my therapy. I had a hard time coping through the holidays on restricted activity. My grief and guilt was eating me up. Slowly, I began increasing my distances and speed. I was no where near as fast as I was as a teen, but I sure could run farther! As my running improved, so did my mood and outlook on life. I ran a 10 mile race that May and was scheduled for a 15K that summer. A week after the 10 miler, I discovered, you guessed it, I was pregnant again! I was very cautious, had the go ahead from my midwife, and continued to run through the pregnancy. We now have a toddler, a 14 year old, an 18 year old, and a 20 year old. Life is interesting. I believe that the first pregnancy had 2 roles in God's plan. First, to give me the power, empathy and knowledge to support another friend who miscarried last year. Second, to prepare our hearts and minds for the baby born to us.

So that is the hidden blessings and miracles of the really difficult, the most difficult, time in my life. I couldn't see it while I was suffering. But it was there.