Dear Reader:

Yesterday was a “freeze-frame“day. One we wish we could “groundhog day” over and over.

After all my Goldilock “whining” about how one day was too chilly, the next too windy, and the next too rainy…my outlook changed completely yesterday…sunny, low sixties, no wind…yesterday was the perfect day.

As seen in the title photo shot…Hope was alive and well…reminding us that it is winter time after all…but mother nature decides occasionally to break the seasons with un-seasonal days…some to our liking and some not. But I think anyone living in the low country yesterday would have been hard pressed  not to have loved the blue skies and sunny sixties temperatures!

Though I have to admit that some, unexpected news early yesterday morning had already put a sunny smile on my face. The phone rang a little after six…it was from Mandy…immediately I jumped up…afraid something had happened…for her to be calling that early.

She called out excitedly…”Give me your primary doctor’s name mom“…(not what I was expecting) but I shook the cobwebs out of my head and gave the name to her…and she gave a quick response “We’re on to something…keep your fingers crossed…will call back soon.”

Immediately I was wide awake…perhaps ten minutes later…Mandy was yelling happily “We did it…John got in the link…you have an appointment to get your vaccination tomorrow afternoon at your Publix pharmacy.. where you shop! “

I burst into tears…this was too good to be true! I am one of the luckiest people in the world…having adult children and my nephew, Lee,  searching every vaccination avenue that has popped up…but like most  people…the timing has always seemed to be off or the link crashed.

I felt like the Velveteen Rabbit…“This was REAL…it was going to happen and so much faster than I ever dared dream.” 

So this afternoon…I will get my first vaccination followed by my second…around the middle of February. I am still pinching myself.

When I saw this message in a magazine I was reading the other day I snapped a photo of it…because I realized just how true this message is.

When I left my first breast cancer surgeon’s appointment back in 2008…Brooke had gone with me.

When I emerged Brooke said I looked like a ghost…the surgeon said he had to clear his schedule because he needed to perform the surgery in two days after I had received several blood transfusions prior to the exploratory/ mastectomy (he had no doubt it was cancer) since I was severely anemic.

I heard the doctor talking to Brooke but it sounded like a foreign language…my head was spinning….later she told me he just frankly said things didn’t look good…and he hoped he could give me two or three years at best.

I am now entering my thirteenth year…still living with metastatic breast cancer. And from out of that “bad thing” my life has been put “directly on the path to the best things that could have ever happened to me”

John and Mandy’s wedding, followed by the birth of Eva Cate, followed by the discovery of St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope in Trust, North Carolina, followed by the blog post-Chapelofhopestories– followed by Walsh and Mollie’s wedding, followed by Rutledge’s birth, then Jake’s, then Lachlan’s…followed by Tommy and Kaitlyn’s wedding…followed by Eloise’s birth. Whew!

Seriously…how could life have gotten any better?

Sure…there have been some scary times during these thirteen years when the cancer has come galloping back…but each time my amazing doctors, under God’s guidance, have beaten it back into submission again.

In the meantime…I just keep loving life…and even with the up’s and down’s I wouldn’t trade one second of it…if I had only lived three years…look at what I would have missed….never meeting my children’s spouses and/or grandchildren…and adorable grand-dogs! 🙂

We mortals sometimes just have to grumble a little bit about the weather or certain taxing circumstances that befall us…but there is not a single day that I don’t know I am a walking “miracle.” (Just in case you don’t believe in them) 🙂

So until tomorrow…(National Day of Prayer… Inauguration)

Opening Prayer
The Very Reverend Randolph Marshall Hollerith, Dean, Washington National Cathedral

Leader O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with
compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our
hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our
struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations
and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne through Jesus Christ our Lord.

People:  Amen.

*—“Prayer for the Human Family” from The Book of Common Prayer ©1979 Church Publishing, Inc.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

You know what I want today…Inauguration Day…for our country to be happy again…did you know we have been dropping in happiness over the past several years? Finland and Switzerland are at the top of the happiest countries in the world …while we are barely making the top 20 anymore…19th?

Come on now everyone…we can do better than this! Let’s work together to put smiles back on Lady Liberty and our children living here. We can do it! Get out your crayons! 🙂