Dear Reader:

I can’t believe that it has been six years since I (with trembling fingers) touched the keyboard and started telling my story, along with St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope (benchmark) role in it.

When I first saw the chapel and felt the spirit of Beverly Barutio (creator of the chapel and former fellow cancer veteran) calling me to go a different direction in my life (while life still flowed through it)….I really thought it would be my first and last visit. I was there for an assignment and that would be the end of my association with it.

I figured Honey (my guardian angel) had been designated to take me there to get instructions for the direction I should go….which ended up with the creation of the blog. (The enigma of time to accomplish my mission would remain a mystery and still does today.)

Six stands for earthly beauty….finding intricate secrets of life within daily life…..as in seeing the six points in a crystal snow flake.

Six is the most harmonious of all the single digits and is the cement that holds the other number together as a team. 

I like the metaphor of the snow flake. It was “little c” (breast cancer) that gave me the ability to appreciate and fully recognize the tiniest gifts of life in nature and in people that I had missed most of my life. So starting today I think this year is going to be very special….I can feel it in my heart and soul.

How can I ever thank all of you, my loyal friends, for taking this journey with me? For providing comments and responses that have reassured me I am still on the path I was destined to walk….but not alone any more.

It is rather strange about this anniversary being the sixth….because Eva Cate is now six (she had just been born when the blog started) I am a “double six” and the year is 2016. It is like the stars are aligning for a most memorable and remarkable blog year.

It is, not only the chapel, but the beautiful little river behind the chapel… the “springs of hope” that continue calling my name and pointing me in the right direction.

Last Sunday the youth service concluded with all of us singing the old African-American spiritual…“Down by the River to Pray.”

For the first time I realized the connection between the last stanza line of the lyrics “Show me the way” and what the little chapel and “river” did and continues to do for me…they showed me the way.

As I went down in the river to pray. Studying about that good old way. And who shall wear the starry crown. Good Lord, show me the way)

Scene from the movie “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou”

alison krauss – down in the river to pray,( o brother, where art

 I know of only one person who can wear the starry crown….Jesus and every time I take the time to go out on the deck and watch the stars I feel like this quote by Archibald Rutledge that I have always loved.

*As I put the blog to bed last night I was smiling. I am alive. I am blessed. I am thankful for the time I have been given to enjoy God’s most precious gifts…life and love.

My last God Wink has come in the form of raindrops falling outside my happy place….I just raised the window and heard the rain pattering down. Thank you God for providing needed water for yards, gardens, lakes, rivers, and ponds. I will sleep soundly knowing that You know our every need and provide for it.

Good night everyone. I hope you. too, sleep soundly and awake to the joy of a new day.