Dear Reader:

The past couple of days have been filled with medical appointments…and I am glad today is a “freebie”…any day that I don’t have an appointment is a good day for me.

In one waiting room I overheard a receptionist talking on the phone to someone saying that she sure missed the janitor who normally came in and cleaned up at night…apparently he had the flu and had been out a few days. She was telling the caller that if he didn’t get back soon she was going to have to start dusting the waiting room area before starting work.

I then heard her giggle and she responded with something like: “You are absolutely right…how does so much dust accumulate in a place where all the people do nothing but wait. Go figure!”

I found myself smiling while flipping through the magazine on my lap. She was right…I wasn’t doing anything…everyone else was staring down at their iPhones or at the television set. Yet, it was apparent that dust had settled in from the early morning rays coming through the glass entrance…dancing merrily along shimmering as they fell on to the tables, chairs, rugs, and floors.

I remember as a child one time wondering if a person stood perfectly still and did nothing…if he/she would age. Today, of course, I know that answer…that, not only would they age…but faster than everyone else because the muscles would atrophy and since no part of the body was being used…everything would start failing…outwardly and internally.

Life is about movement…the more we move and stir the dust the better off we are. It is the way our bodies were made to carry us through life.

Tommy and Kaitlyn picked me up from the airport when I returned home from Ireland a few summers ago. I had cleaned and cleaned before I left so I could return home to a nice, sparkling, fresh-smelling house. It was not to be.

I had left the air-conditioner on… but at a high level so it wouldn’t cut on much to save energy/money, the windows had been closed and locked…so I returned to a hot, dusty, stale-smelling house…all that trouble for nothing. And no one had even been there.

The house looked like, smelled like, and felt like like a dusty, rusty old museum. It didn’t smell like home. It was as if when I left I took all the energy of the house with me and all that was left was a facade of what once was. The “Happy Room” was very unhappy!

It took me a few days to get the house and me back in the routine of daily life again…to let the dust blow back in from the movement of people coming and going…not just stale dust from nothingness.

So until tomorrow…Isn’t sparkling dust, falling with the sun’s rays so much more natural than layers of old dust caught in a dark corner? Humans were made for light and life…returning to dust only when life is over.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*I love this last stanza of the poem “Still His” about remembering the person our Creator originally made…not the one molded by others after birth. Diane Peacock came up with the idea and her friend, a noted poet, Laura Lauzon, wrote the poem.

We forget the original artist.
We forget the one who formed us from dirt,
who had his hand on us first,

who placed his original print
on the underside of our soul.
We are more than decorative.
And if we took time each day
to tip ourselves over
we’d see the engraved print of his finger
standing in relief, marking us as his,
marking us as godly original.

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Two Happy Birthdays Today!!!.…my wonderful nephew Lee and Mollie’s especially loved mom… Marcia! I hope both of you have a wonderful day surrounded by those who love you and many others who wish you well on this special day!

*Ambika, our “darling from Dubai” shared this picture she took on a road trip where she saw God. Beautiful Ambika!