Dear Reader:

As sometimes happens…I started this post with one idea mulling around in my mind…but the “idea”  decided to take a detour and go in a different direction. Don’t you just love it when that happens?

Yesterday I went to Hallmark to get some greeting cards… I found this one (title photo) among others. When you open this note card….inside it says: (Live Out Loud)

“And have a day that makes you want to hit replay”

I smiled and began wondering if I were given the opportunity to choose one single day from my life to date…to be able to “replay“…which one would I choose?

The nice problem lies in the sheer number of days I have been given, thus far, that are definitely “replay” days….the more obvious ones like births, birthdays, graduations, promotions, awards, christenings, weddings,etc.

After going through those lists…the memories, slowly, start returning concerning deeper “replay” days like: the telegram letting us know Ben was no longer MIA; he was recuperating from non-life threatening wounds. Or pushing mother around the duck pond (at the Presbyterian Village) in her wheelchair while she held my hand with her one good one.

Or David telling me that he no longer tried to hide his disfigured body (we were at the swimming pool at  Georgetown Apartments where Brooke and I lived our first two teaching years)…that there were people far worse off than him. If someone had a problem with his appearance…that was their problem; not his. (He had found peace with his Marfan’s Syndrome disease… this was told to me less than a year before his death.)

There are about an equal number of happy and poignant “replay” days in my life upon reflection. The moments that touched me were definitely “larger-than-life.”

It was while I was researching the term “larger-than-life” that one word (in a list of dictionary synonyms) caught my attention. The word was: Brobdingnagian

Anybody want to guess the origin of this word? This following book cover should give it away…

During one of the adventures in Jonathan Swift’s satirical novel, Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver arrives in the land of Brobdingnan…the land of giants. There everyone and everything is “larger-than-life.”

Normally we associate Gulliver with being the giant….tied up on the ground by the little people…the Lilliputians.

The author (Swift)  is reminding us that on any given day…we can feel –larger-than-life (brobdingnagian) or timid and small (lilliputian). Like my brother David discovered…mis-perceptions from others can’t hurt you if you know deep inside that you are perfect just the way you are…and a much loved child of God.

* Now if you want to really show off your “extended” vocabulary …you can say something like…

” Santa Claus is known for his Brobdingnagian ideas on Christmas Eve… while working with lilliputian time resources to get all the gifts delivered to every good boy and girl.”

or  (on a more personal level)

“Though lilliputian in size, St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope provided a Brobdingnagian effect on my relationship with God.

So until tomorrow…Let us all strive to make every day a “larger-than-life” day because each minute of it is the first and last time we can live it.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

* Walsh sent these pictures of Rutledge playing with his best buddies on a summer day….With classmate Brawley on the tractor and with Poogan on the blanket… it was definitely a Brogdingnagian day all around!

* Thanks Marcia for the sweet “Lucy” card….it said it all…so kind of you to remember her passing. Hope your weather is better than ours….ouch! hot!

Betsy Clarkson Crick receives the results  of all her tests taken last week….Libby and Betsy are both anxious to hear the results and even more ready to get a plan (back to good health) up and going. Please keep Betsy in your thoughts and prayers  tomorrow – Wednesday (around noon.)