Year's End 2009

I don't know who it was who first said: "A journey of a 1000 miles begins with one step!" or "The Doing a really difficult or dreaded task gets easier after you at last make a beginning!" It could even be that the last one has never been said just so before, but what I intend is something along that line, anyway! The point is that I have at times thought of writing this way...even before "blogging" was a term; so it is without much forethought and with little understanding that I begin this. I rather feel as if I am beginning in the middle of something...but isn't that the way life is?

My title about Years End comes from the way the last several years have ended. My older son, Chris and wife, Mary and their four children Ann Marie, Beth, Morgan, and David have made their once a year trip back to Alabama ever since they moved to Washington State some 7 years ago (I think that is right...). So every year right around this time everything gets exciting as efforts are made to "plan" ahead (which planning usually means). They come in Mid-November and return to the West just as we hit December.

Christopher (for that is what his mother and I named him!) has only one brother. Mary has four siblings. Collectively, they (ChrisandMary) have 8 or so nieces/nephews. There are also many friends and other relatives to be visited or received as visitors. And so their roughly 2 weeks go by rather quickly. Their time is split in likely a hundred directions. Chris' brother, Jonathan, really wants time with his older brother and wants Chris to be around his 3 sons, Riley 6, Ethan 5, and Joshua almost 3. One the other end of the state and the age scale, Chris and Jonathan have grandparents and other relatives in Dothan. There is a mutual love and desire between these relations and there just isn't enough time.

So........what we have is a feeling of flying into December...and the other family and sharing opportunities and church family opportunities and before we can say Lickety Split, a very strange sounding year will have arrived! Can you say Twenty Ten..or hear it said, without a pause of a second or so and a puzzled look?

So with this effort, my first blog is done and I register my first step....this feels like the bottom and I can only learn and go up, right!?
(i kdid just decide that i will be an "e e cummings" sort and not use the convential capitalization rules..frankly, not to be a rebel , though that i may be....but because of the arthritic pain in my right shoulder with all the typing so i think this way will be a little more comfortable and allow me to think and be creative and not be concerned with more pain....i have enough of that upon that which i sit..
my very favourite sign off phrase will be the one i use most often,
because He lives, I can face tomorrow , indeed all my tomorrows!
I hope you are in agreement! I will endeavor to include a favourite Scripture verse most days and perhaps comment there upon some of those. I am an informal student of theology...more on that next time.

P.S. My wonderful wife, Robyn, just came in from an all day outing with her sister. I realized that I quite possibly may not have mentioned her above...as I was thinking of the year end..and the dynamics there of. Of course, she is the one in charge of all my planning etc. She, my Robyn, my Dearling will be much in my blog going forward.