May your soul bloom

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
― Marcel Proust

(blooms in Julie’s yard / Julie Cook / 2014)

To be grateful, this beautiful springtime Saturday in April, for the ones I hold dear.
To be grateful for those who care enough about me to shower my small family with love.
To be grateful that I am blessed with health and my five senses which enable me to drink in the headiness a day such as today.
To be grateful for a father who has been gracious and generous to my small family.
To be grateful for a son who has found a special girl to call his own—forever.
To be grateful for a husband who is a most kindhearted man.
To be grateful for friends who have chosen to honor both my son and his fiancé today with their hearts which are full of kindness, generosity, and love.

These are the moments of life that could easily be taken for granted, or even overlooked in the fray of the craziness of this thing I call my life—but I have been made consciously and palpably aware of the blessings before me.
I am the type of person who is usually hesitant and leery of being overtly grateful as I’m usually the one waiting for the proverbial “other shoe to drop”. . .don’t be too happy because if you don’t watch out, tragedy is just waiting around the corner to descend and cause pain and sorrow.

Yet this overwhelming sense of wonder, the realization that I am blessed in this life of mine more than I take time to recognize, must be acknowledged and not shunned due to some paranoid sense of fear.

So it is with a grateful heart that I offer my thanks and praise to a God who is my God–
A God who is there through not only the good of my life but through the bad that besets itself upon my world as well. To a God who has been and who will always remain a constant in my life despite my not always acknowledging that He is indeed a constant in my world.

Tomorrow all hell may break loose but for today, I will rejoice and be glad. . .

Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”
Deuteronomy 3:16