Celebrating a "One-sided" Anniversary

Two days ago, I celebrated my 44th wedding anniversary. I celebrated it just as I have, since Steve passed on 10 years ago, by going out to dinner with my two sons. They are the two closest things I have to Steve, and I see so much of him in Chris and Ryan.

I also have a standing order for flowers on the altar of my church around the 26th of January to commemorate the anniversary. It helps me to reminisce about the day that so profoundly changed my life in many ways, and I believe, made me a better person. Without that day, I also would not have the faith that has become so important to me.

I've begun to see marriage differently over the years. Having been blessed to wed my soulmate, I wonder how our relationship will be in the afterlife. When asked who will be the husband of the woman who had had many husbands, Jesus said that there is no marriage in Heaven. Bummer! Of course, he did indicate that relationships will continue and on a more deeper level, but I admit I'm still a little confused about how that will be.

I know that marriage was an institution created to bring about family. Procreation was a focus and there no longer is that need in the afterlife, hence, no marriage. The problem is I want to be Steve's wife, and I want him to be my husband. But I think the issue really lies in verbiage. Words only  define what a relationship is - they are not the description.

So, what do I say to those lucky enough to still have their soulmates in physical form? I say Happy Anniversary! Enjoy this earthly relationship, but I truly hope the best is yet to come.

A Recommendation

As mentioned previously, during the last year and a half plus, I've been editing a memoir for a friend and fellow M.S. advocate. What might not have been mentioned is that we both believe that this joint venture to bring his book to fruition was not a coincidence.

I am going to recommend it to anyone who wants a good read, and especially if they want to see how God works in the lives of others. Although I had known Mark since 2000, there were so many things I didn't know, among them being that he worked on several European crusades for Billy Graham, smuggled Bibles behind the Iron Curtain, worked as a field director for Habitat for Humanity, and the list goes on.

With his permission, I am including one short snippet about Bible smuggling from his book, A Journey Worth Taking: God, M.S. and Me:

     “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” is something that you say which means you should behave and dress like the people in the country you are visiting. In my case, I shouldn’t look like an American. So I didn’t. I wore clothes from another country in Europe. To cross borders, my staff believed I could pass as a Moroccan so I had to temporarily convert to being a Muslim, including dress and learning a few Arabic phrases like “peace be unto you” or the equivalent of “hi” in English.

     Looking like a Muslim needed a complete make-over. I kept my hair very short, grew my goatee long to about two inches, and grew out my eye brows. Oh, the real make-over was my skin color which was already natural brown. God knew what He was doing by sending me to the country of former Yugoslavia which has a high population of Muslims.

     I really never had any language problems, because whenever I had to speak English, I did so with a strong accent of some type. 

Mark also has some very entertaining stories about his youth, but my favorite is when, at age 10, he made astronauts out of his pet hamsters. A close second is when he decided to test the theory that cats always land on their feet, but not to worry. Fortunately, there isn't a bad ending.

Enjoy, and please do share this with others who might want to read about faith at work. We can all use a little inspiration.

You can find Mark's book on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Worth-Taking-God-M-S/dp/1537422006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484775379&sr=8-1&keywords=mark+abraham

 

Making This World a Little Better Goal

Anyone who read my New Year's resolution last year knows that I vowed to keep a daily log of at least one thing I did to make this world a little better place. I'm happy to say that I fulfilled my goal. That is, I kept track. I can't say that I always made the world a better place, but at least I tried!

It was a very good lesson for me to realize that it takes a concerted effort to make a positive difference. It's not that it's difficult to do, but that one must really focus on it. There are so many ways to achieve what I set out to do: financial donations, volunteering of time, random acts of kindness (Look for one of my stories about how I was actually a recipient of such in the February 2017 release of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Random Acts of Kindness edition), etc.

Some days, I just made an effort to smile and maybe converse with someone I didn't know. Other days, I made financial, charitable contributions. And then on occasion, I really went out of my way to do something kind or served others in a special way.

Now, I must confess, there were 12 days where I didn't write anything in my log. One of those days, I was too sick to do anything but make it briefly out of bed. As for the other 11 days, it wasn't that I didn't do anything; I just forgot to make an entry.

The interesting thing about our positive actions is that we never know how positive they are. I'd like to think that I maybe made someone's day a little better and they were glad that I was in this world. I'd like to think that maybe my actions influenced them to do the same thing for someone else. I'd like to think that my one positive action kept multiplying with each person doing something good, and truly, together, we all made this world a little better place, if only for a couple of hours or even a day.

So my resolution for 2017? More of the same. I already have my three entries for this year. And I would like to encourage anyone reading this blog to just try doing what I'm doing. Let's take the negatives out of life and start concentrating on the good we can do, and the difference we can make.

Can you make the world a better place if you try? I'm sure of it!