Dear Reader:

Have you ever just been going along in life…living it pretty normally and then suddenly you are filled with such happiness and peace that it is momentarily overwhelming? This doesn’t happen often to me, so that is probably why it is so special…I think it is just a taste of what our arrival in heaven will feel like one day…total immersion in unconditional love that flows through us like water falling from great rocky mountains.

It happened to me early yesterday morning. I was talking to Vickie, my across- the- street neighbor. We always talk lawns, plants, flowers….house upkeep, etc. We love puttering around in our homes and gardens. Our main subject, yesterday, was our shared rose bush at the end of  my driveway. (It got so waterlogged after Matthew that it uprooted (half-way) looking like the leaning Tower of Pisa.) Vickie got it anchored back in and we were talking about how amazing it was…still blooming in spite of all the craziness done to it lately.

The sun was flickering through the trees onto my front lawn and porch…Vickie said that I needed to get a photo of it with the light just right…so I did. In the corner was the beautiful rose bush and the rest of the house was peacefully sedate and happy-looking at the same time.

Suddenly I was filled with such a feeling of love for my home it caught me off-guard. I started walking all over the front, back yards and garden snapping photos….as if seeing everything for the first time again. I was falling in love again…with fall…with home !

Somewhere, in all my hidden delights, lay the thought that I was suddenly aware of a huge benchmark in life… one nearing the end of my personal dreams. Everything I was seeing before me was no accident, but the direct result of something I had planted or done to or for the house and yard earlier in my life.

Whether it was money spent on home renovations, planting seeds, starting a garden or simply watering plants…everything catching my rapt delights had been planned and executed towards this goal of my “dream home” over a lifetime. And now here it was before me.

Come with me and see what I saw yesterday that kept putting smiles all over my face.

Ernie and Lance came yesterday and we cleaned out the fountain, trimmed bushes, they did a lot of weed-eating….Ernie helped me changed light bulbs….These two are my handy men and I really count on them to help me keep my home going. They never disappoint.

Ernie put in the new lights for the deck a few weeks ago…don’t you love them…much more subtle with the downward light but still magical?

Please stop by Marigolds if you haven’t since they moved a few weeks ago or even more lately…I went yesterday and they have such beautiful things in the store and a 60% Fall Sale going on outside the entrance. Look at my new candy cat bowl….filled with candy (that mysteriously disappears each evening…those darn ghosts!)

I reflected on this crazy love that was consuming me yesterday and thought that perhaps it was the universe’s way of paying me back for a rather disappointing start to my favorite season of Fall….(with unexpected medical procedures, diagnoses,  waiting for life-altering results =considerable stress.) Or perhaps it was an epiphany, an insight into everything I had done over many years to bring the house to where it is today. Whatever it was…thank you God…I needed an “Universal Hug” and I got it yesterday.

So until tomorrow:

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

* I might have just discovered another epiphany that happened yesterday….since starting Chapel of Hope Stories Part Two…returning on November 23 two years ago (2014)…I just wrote my 700th blog entry with 70, 700 views and 730 daily subscribers/followers (not counting FACEBOOK followers)…I think the stars were aligning yesterday in preparation and I was given the guest of honor seat for a few short hours of observation…perhaps seven?

*A shout-out to Pat (McTeer) Jackson who headed up a local Palmetto team relay breast cancer team last week in Columbia. Their team raised $1200! Way to go Pat!

The Race for the Cure (Legally Pink) donation period ends next Monday on Halloween…the last day of October. Our team is ten dollars shy of our new goal of $1500 this year….confident we will make the leap here on the last hurdle…and thanks for all the donations…and thanks for keeping them coming this past week. What a lovely surprise!