A happy heart

In place of resolutions, a few grateful thoughts for a happy heart in 2010:

• When we went sledding at Sheepshead last week, the sun came out just for me, and the colors I saw were Christmas colors - the bare, red branches of the willows in the creek bed; the rusty green of the pines and the muted green of sagebrush; the golden tall grasses; the luminous snow! What a world!
• My husband is watching The Sound of Music with my three-year-old daughter. During "Sixteen Going on Seventeen," she proclaims, "I'm that girl!"
• I live in an immeasurably better time than any other time. (Thinking about this because I finished reading The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, by M.T. Anderson, in 2 volumes.) The fact that my family can exist as it does is miraculous when you consider the overwhelming weight of history.
• Our collection of Christmas books has received considerable use this year. Z loves to snuggle up for Christmas stories. Try out my two current favorites, Welcome Comfort by Patricia Polacco, and Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck with illustrations by Mark Buehner.
• In my new location I can get Great Harvest bread and Stephen's hot cocoa.
• People are kind and good. We have been here four weeks. We've been to four different families' houses for dinner - two of them twice each. Time for us to start reciprocating some invitations! Dr. G's extended family members here, whom we've never really known well, have put their arms right around us, and we feel so loved. Our ward (church congregation) is, as I've mentioned before, fabulous. Even now that I've washed my car and they've seen my Obama sticker.
• I am learning, in my heart, how God wants me to do some reaching out and healing. I am going to be humble enough and brave enough to do it. Knowing that I am going to do this brings me a lot of peace that has been missing for a couple of years. I don't know what the outcome will be. But I know what I need to do.

Happy New Year to you!