Dear Reader:

“Thankful, blessed, and kind of a mess” just seemed to sum me up today. I am so thankful to be back on the road to recovery, blessed to feel God’s presence through this and blessed to have such amazing neighbors and friends… especially when we find ourselves in a mess like I found myself in this week.

I rarely get sick… sounds strange, I know coming from a metastatic breast cancer patient but truly I got through the coronavirus epidemic without getting it, strange other viruses people were falling by the wayside with this past year …nothing … so it really throws me off-kilter when I get ” something”?

Yesterday was my ” I am over all the symptoms-eating again, no fever, but just depleted” day. Got to build my strength back up. But I felt well enough to read and finished up My Magnolia Summer by Victoria Benton Frank. Two thumbs up!

For a first novel Victoria (and for me my first beach read) … it was exactly what a good beach read should be!!!Compelling enough to keep you involved and interested in the main characters without delving too deeply into their psyches, light hearted with humorous comments, southern expressions, history, legends and quotes…all the components of a good southern beach read. I hated to finish it last night… it has been my companion during these ” off” days.

I even read the Acknowledgments at the end of the book which reiterated to me that this novel involved more people than you could imagine… not just agents or editors but other authors, her mother’s beach read novelist friends, the list went on and on. It does take a ” village” to write a novel… especially a first one. And determination and grit… lots of time alone… which is hard when you have just married and two little ones running around.

But it was the tough times and other business ventures’ failures that became the plot line for her novel. As I was reading the different acknowledgments of gratitude to many varied people in her life… one made me stop right in my tracks.

It was to her husband and two precious little children-Victoria wrote : ” Thank you for being my WHY.” As I re-read it several times … it grew more powerful in meaning.

We rarely place WHY in a noun category ( it is usually known as an interrogative adverb when it begins a question.) But Victoria wasn’t asking a question, she was making a powerful statement of love and gratitude.

Why as in my existence, my world, my feeling loved and cherished… my life! Such a powerful observation! Best quote of all!

So until tomorrow….

Today is my favorite day-Winnie the Pooh