May God's face shine on you.
May God be kind to you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24
And Mary kept these things and pondered them in her heart.........
Luke 2:19 and 51
I think about this year past.
Many things happened.
But not so much to me...
I've been an observer... a keeper...
Some days of my life that is not enough for me.
I want more.
I want to have made some kind of impact in this world.
A book, a body of work to out live me.
Something significant....
And then other days, like today...my heart is full to overflowing with all the blessings and gifts the Lord has given me in this life...
the lightly falling snow, the roast in the oven, the phone calls from the kids...
And suddenly it's not so much about some THING that remains,
but what is... family, love, home, freedom, life, faith....
These will remain.
I see it as I look at my photos of this past year...
I've seen it, it's a part of our life, it is good...
and it is enough.
It's about the little ones getting bigger...
and having little ones...
It's about us getting older...
Children get older and I'm getting older too......
The year began with our first born niece, who was also the first to marry, having her first baby.
Our new little grand niece was a month old in January 2009.
The first child of the next generation.
Since then, this fall, we've had another neice and another nephew marry... and they are both expecting!
It seems like just a few years ago when my husband and I were having our little ones.
JANUARY represents creativity it is a painting I did with our little ones when they were just toddlers...
It is a large canvas about 4'x5' which now hangs above our sofa.
The first thing you see as you come into our home.
FEBRUARY is remember. It is a set of tea towels that my husband's Nana embroidered before she married,
for her hope chest, her dowery...something unheard of these days!
I am so glad to be in possesion of them. I keep them on the towel bar next to my sink, where I see them every morning. They are beautiful and remind me of a different time and place...
She gave us quite a few things from her china cabinet when we married and told us to use them... "don't save your things for special occasions...use them for special people.
And we try to...
She was a very special women, wise and gracious.
My sister in law, the new grandma, came to the end of her year of working and living in Australia, and returned home safely to us...early in 2009.
She's not anything like I remember Nana, but she is the Nana...now
It is very interesting to begin seeing her in that light!??!
And soon I will be following her into that Nana world...
a different time and place...
Our son and his Vanessa will make us grandparents sometime in April...
We will be Pop and Noni...
MARCH is transition.
Last year we had a wonderful day of warm weather following a huge ice and snow storm.
The kids and I ventured to one of our favorite places; Hemlock Trail...
they invited me to go with them to hike thru the woods and along the ice covered creek.
They knew it would be beautiful!
Such a prophetic photo of all of them on the bridge...
the transition to the next phase of their lives....
where they make the decisions
and go where they desire...
APRIL is home...
I am the homemaker...not a house wife! (I am not married to a house!??)
I make a home... where they come from and where they return to.
I made this quilt for our first born son when he moved from his crib to his big bed!
It matches one that I made for my husband before we married, when he was still living in the dorms in college!
The sheets are from my 'canopy bed' when I was growing up, my favorite sheets, still smooth and soft!
Our daughter uses them on her first big purchase when she moved out... a beautiful antique bed and suite!
In MAY we had three graduations...bloom and flourish...'the heart of glory'.
Two undergrads, the son and daughter of our new Nana!
My sister in law insisted that her daughter finish her degree!
even though she was married and having her first child... and dutiful daughter that she is... she did!
In photojournalism...
We should have a nicely documented life story in pictures there!
And her son, the new Uncle Mike (we have three in our family!?!) graduated and did the move away thing for work, joining his sister and our daughter out in the world... and away from home...
And Uncle Billy received his masters and was gave the speech for his graduating class, with his wife, pregnant with their fifth child and his four children all appauding in the audience!
Then came JUNE... offering, trusting...giving
our first born son put on his walking shoes... Birkenstocks...
and flew to Spain to walk el camino de Santiago compestella...
On my birthday in the town of Aleson, he met a German girl also on pilgrimage,
and they fell truly, madly, deeply in love...
and have begun living their happily ever after... in Heidelberg...
where we will finally meet in April...when I go to help with the new baby.
It is an amazing thing to love someone you have never really met??!
I told her I don't know if I have come to love her so easily because I love my son and he loves her....
or if she is just loveable, part of the very reason he loves her?!?
We have written and skyped...
and through the wonder of skyp I feel I know her.
What she looks like, how she speaks... her mannerisms...
but I cannot wait to get my arms around her and finally meet this beautiful young woman who not only changed our son's life, but our family's as well.
In JULY my husband turned fifty!
Seems only right since he is to be a grandfather!?!
In AUGUST our son returned home (for a little while before moving to Germany)
and they had that baby number five...
SEPTEMBER held the two weddings... of two of the big nieces and nephews and the baptism of the newest little niece.
I love the photo of my father on the boardwalk taken at one of the wedding weekends.
All these things happening in his life too...making my dad... a great-grandfather...
Children get older and I'm getting older too........
and OCTOBER my mother moved from her home of 30 years to a little retirement community not far from where I live...
NOVEMBER Dom and Vanessa got their own apartment...
and DECEMBER...old habits and a fresh snow...
A whole new year, a new decade.
We will be in our sixty's... and will have been together thru five decades... at the end of the decade we just entered!
I know this because my husband felt the need to wake me New Year's Day with this 'good news'?!??!
In ten years our yet to be born grandchild could be Elizabeth's age........ten! with 4 little brothers and sisters!??!
Only the Lord knows what will come...
and I just pray...
that the Lord may bless and keep us, shine His face upon us, and give us peace....
No comments:
Post a Comment