Grateful Heart

I am thankful for my Mom. Yesterday for Thanksgiving she showed up at my house with two pumpkin pies and a carrot cake. She helped set out all the food on the island. She made the gravy.

When the meal was finished, she washed the dishes and Kathy dried (thanks, Kathy!) 

She talked with her grandkids and soon-to-be granddaughter June, plus my in-laws and June's parents too.

This was my mom's first Thanksgiving without my dad. He passed away April 6, 2018. They had been married 56 years.

During my birthday Mother-daughter getaway trip this past September we made signs. Mom's has become her motto for this new season of widowhood: "Begin each day with a grateful heart." She hung it in her living room where she is sure to see it every morning.

She is choosing to be grateful for the life they had, and be gratetful for all she still has.

Dad used to always drive, because he liked to and she didn't, but she drove by herself from Hillsboro to the big city of Wichita. She has decided she likes coming straight down Broadway from Newton instead of getting on the speeding interstate, and that's fine.

I am so proud of how well she is navigating this unfamiliar road. This year I lost my dad, but I am so grateful I still have her.

They can't both be right!

While working in our lawn care business, I wear a radio headset, mainly to block out the noise of the mowers and blowers, but also to listen to music and news to help pass the time.
Not all stations come in clearly, so I am somewhat limited. I also never figured out how to pre-set stations, so I spend a lot of my day switching between 90.7 WAY-FM, a Christian station, and close on the dial 89.1, KMUW, the National Public Radio affiliate.
What I like the most on NPR are the in-depth interviews with authors. I also appreciate how they attempt to look at issues from many sides and include a number of different voices.
After a lawn is finished I will get in the truck cab with the stereo on KNSS Newstalk 1240 (my husband sets the station) and catch what Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity is saying that day.
Sometimes my head is spinning from left to right.
I just unlearned what I thought I learned. Or, I am trying to debunk what those guys are saying by remembering the facts.
"They can't both be right!" I think in frustration as they proclaim polar opposite positions.
Then one day the thought hit me:  They could both be wrong.
Just because they have differing views on issues doesn't mean that either one is right. Truth might be somewhere in the middle. Or somewhere over the rainbow.
Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Never has that little word in the middle meant more to me than now.
Jesus is truth. We will all do better if we pay more attention to his teachings and try to follow them than the shifting sands of today's media.
I voted today, which I feel is an important civic duty, but I don't have a lot of faith in the party I chose. Because it could be wrong, just like the other.
I am putting my faith in things above.