Dear Reader:

The most popular word to come out of Jakie’s mouth these days is the word: “MINE!” Sunday Jakie will be 22 months old and in child development terminology… that must mean “Mine, Too, Too.”

What Jakie doesn’t realize yet, and what we adults have to keep reminding ourselves is that there is nothing “mine” in life. We have been given everything by our Creator. We must never forget that life is a loan.

We are all on loan….for an undetermined time until our loan is called up.…literally.

You might remember from an earlier blog this week on: Lost and Losing” that the author observed:

“You believe that you have lost something, which is impossible, because everything that you have was given to you. You did not make a single hair of your head so you can not own anything. In addition, life does not subtract things, it liberates you from them. It makes you lighter so that you can fly higher and reach the fullness. From cradle to grave, it is a school, and that is why those predicaments that you call problems are lessons, indeed.”

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It is when we lose someone over something that we really feel the loss and realize that the loss of somethings have never been that important…it has always been the someone’s in our lives.

It is the period following the loss of a special someone that tests our faith to the limit. We are hindered by the essence of our  mere mortality of “human”ness… with all the restrictions aligned to it. We are not privy to the on-going story of our loved one. We think in terms of endings when God has started our loved one on a new beginning in a new chapter with new settings.

It is these very same cracks in our faith that eventually allow God’s Light to shine through. Without the cracks of doubt, anger, and grief we would be consigned to the bottom of a deep dark pot where light never reaches. Instead our “cracks” allow, not only the light to enter, but the “living waters” from the pot to nourish life again.

One of the most satisfying feelings I know – and also one of the most growth-promoting experiences for the other person – comes from my appreciating this individual in the same way that I appreciate a sunset. People are just wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be. In fact, perhaps the reason we can truly appreciate a sunset is that we cannot control it.

When I look at a sunset as I did the other evening, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a little on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple along the base, and use a little more pink in the cloud color.” I don’t do that. I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.
– Carl Rogers –

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So until tomorrow: Help us  understand that nothing is really lost….it will turn up again, it will be found….because love can never get lost. It needs no compass because it lives in our hearts…the site of continual self-discovery in God’s greatest gift to us.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh*

*Brookie and little “Boogie”….her precious grandson, Caleb in the mountains….the Blue B’s.

• I thought Carolina, the Crab was over the moon but look at “Toddy” the Toad.…because after all that hard work Anne deserved one…a toddy I mean!

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