I love this old song and can hear it in my head right now as I write about it.

🎶 “Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer! 🎶 Those days of sodas and pretzels and beer”.🎶. (If only……….)

Oh this sounds so good on paper and sounds even better when the words are sung. However this certainly has NOT been the pace of my summer! Between dealing with 3 months of debilitating allergies, working a LOT for a friend who was getting married, taking a trip to the north country to see our granddaughter in a community play, then taking another trip to the north country within days of that trip for the funeral of a close friend, it has created for us one great big “huff-puff” piece of living!

TODAY, however, is different! This is the first day in ages where there is absolutely nothing on our calendar! Hallelujah to this! I slept in late and when I got up and shuffled down the hallway, I was greeted by the scent of freshly brewed coffee. I sipped my “hearty roast breakfast blend” coffee while scanning emails on my iPad in my favorite and beloved easy chair. I find myself wondering where the name “easy chair” originated from??? I assume it was a long ago marketing ploy to convince some nice hard working folks that they needed to buy special seating for those rare times they wanted to “take it easy.” Well, it works for me!! I LOVE “taking it easy” though it is a rare day that I get to do so!

I listen to my husband busily moving about the kitchen clattering dishes while making our breakfast. Since he has retired, he has enthusiastically taken up the job of cooking and grilling. Who am I to deny him one of life’s simple pleasures? 😍😘 As the scent of cooking sausage patties waft about our gathering room, and as I hear the bacon sizzle in the pan, my mind rewinds back to childhood with memories of other loving family cooks. Somehow, cooking and baking has always had the power to demonstrate the gift of love. One person laboring in the kitchen shows their love for you along with love of self while enjoying the joy of cooking.

Even now, in this day and age where we can go and buy just about anything we can imagine at our enormous and well stocked grocery stores, or where we have a plethora of restaurants to choose from, there still comes a little leap of pleasure when some one takes the time to cook for us. Inevitably, if we invite someone to our home for dinner, the delight is so much more apparent and visible from our chosen guests than when we ask if someone wants to meet at a restaurant. It is so much more personable and we feel so indulged. (I am now smelling the scent of toasted bread and can hear ice being distributed into glasses of water).

I wonder what I will do with my day? There are many choices available to me. A couple of pleasures await me in the form of a good book or watering my thirsty plants out there in the hot Texas landscape. Our yard is shaded so I enjoy going out there and giving water to my parched plants. I can almost hear them saying thank you as they take moisture into their very dehydrated soil and root lines.

Yet, there are also work duties that call to me. I am such a work horse, I tend to find myself feeling the need to “work first and play second” which was my Swedish Grandfathers favorite call out. I can still hear his phrase echoing in my mind as I type this. “Yes, I know Grandpa…I know!”

It has been so long since I have thought only about myself and what I want to do. My nature always seems to go in the direction of “doing” for loved ones, but I do think sometimes we need to remember we are also a human “being”! Hmmmmmm! Decisions, decisions!

Life’s end is reeling me in faster and faster. Recently, I was talking to a very elderly lady and she was pondering what happens to us after we die. We both settled in an agreement on the Christian promises we have been taught about eternal life. Then I winked at her and said, “well, in any case, if that next spiritual existence were not to come true, we would not realize it anyway.” She looked at me and laughed in surprise.

All kidding aside, I DO believe in the next life and the continued life of our spirit, and I also think that we really are given this life in the first place for a reason and a purpose. We have a purpose to fulfill. Not all purposes are equal. There are those who become world famous or extremely wealthy in fulfilling their purpose and then there are those like myself, whose purpose seems to be very simple, yet still very important. What is this purpose? I think my purpose and most peoples purpose is to just go out and offer the purist form of love to all we come into contact with. A love that is minus judgments. A love with no strings attached and with no expectations in return. A love for those who feel forgotten, or alone, or undervalued, or lonely. We all want to “matter” in this world and my small job working 8 hours a week at the front desk of an assisted living facility provides for me a mission field full of God’s children who are living much longer than they ever expected and in some cases longer than they ever wanted, and I love the gift of this purpose.

Well now…..my husband’s mission of handing out love today is now on a plate and he is calling my name! How much I love being loved in this way! Guess I will just let the day unfold as it is meant to do!

God’s blessings to all who read this, and I encourage you to be a gift to someone with your sincerest smile today. I promise you that it will make you feel as good in the giving as they are in the receiving!

Jjb/ 0/1/2018