Happy New Year!!  I really like New Year’s Day, complete with the grogginess that follows a night of staying up too late, noshing on rich tidbits and sipping champagne.  I especially like watching the Rose Bowl Parade (all those flowers!), cheering through an afternoon of college football and eating black-eyed peas.

I really, REALLY like naming the New Year, a reflection I began a few years ago.

There is a common practice of “Naming the New Year”. This name serves as a focal point to direct our days, weave our weeks together and attach month to blessed month. Just as a North Star, or the straight arrow of a compass will redirect the lost, weary and confused, so our word for the year can gently lead us back on the path we have set out for ourselves. All steps are directed by God the Father, but the way in which we choose to walk is up to us. (From Jenny at Plain Grace.)

The coming year is going to be challenging for my family and me – I’ll be starting a full course of adjuvant chemotherapy to [hopefully] prevent a recurrence of the leiomyosarcoma.  Despite the enormous task of “getting Mom well” ahead of us, our year is brimming over with the promise of good things!  Cherry Ames graduates from college and will start working as a registered nurse; The Architect will embark upon his senior year in high school; Princess Pea will move forward in her studies as well, and DirtBike will learn how to drive the family car.  Mr. Pea and I are going to take a post-chemo trip to Europe, something we have wanted to do for more than twenty years.

So many blessings, such an abundance of Grace. Every occasion is a call to rejoice in the beautiful-ness that is our life together.  And with that, I choose to name my year…

For despite my fear that cancer will kick my butt no matter how hard I fight, despite my concerns for my husband and my kids as they step up to take care of me, despite all the other stuff scrambling for attention in my brain, life is good. And it’s not just the special occasions like graduating from college, or taking on a mountain bike race, or going on a long awaited very special trip.  It’s the plain vanilla regular every day routine of work, school, play and church that is so wonderfully sweet, so amazingly precious. We have friends who love us and we eat and live indoors. We have health insurance!

This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it! ~Psalms 118:24

I’m going to be bald, exhausted and most likely crabby for many months…but I will Rejoice every day, and be glad.

Rejoice, my friends, Rejoice.  Keep the Faith

Linking up with my friends at Suscipio – It’s Show and Tell time!  Like Tiffany, I have a hoard…every time I see interesting beads or stones, I immediately think of how they will look as a rosary!  I give lots of them away, especially the bracelet rosaries, and have the ones I keep scattered all through my life.  You know, one in the purse, several in the cars, one on the bed table, tucked in drawers.

This one is a favorite.  Several years ago I scored a tremendous deal on rose quartz at a trunk show, and there were enough beads to make three pink rosaries.  The other two reside with Princess Pea and her best friend, aka my Other Daughter.  I think about the girls every time I pick it up.
One of my rosary bracelets…wore it to work today!  The beads are amethyst, and the cross on it was a necklace that belonged to Cherry Ames when she was a little girl.  She outgrew the tiny chain years ago, and it hung in my jewelry box for years until I repurposed it.

My RCIA sponsor gave this blue one to me when I came into full communion with the Church.  It’s the one that I carry in my purse.

This is one I started for The Architect, but he requested a single decade that would fit in his pocket, so I reclaimed it.  The beads are hematite, so even though they are small, this rosary has a nice weight and it feels nice and cool in my hands.  (Note:  I just realized…if you click the picture to open it and zoom in close, you can see the outline of me and the camera reflected in each bead! Hematite is such a fun gemstone!)

Pray the Rosary. Keep the Faith.