December 31--Another Year in the Books

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice.  --Ernest Hemingway

    This sounds like Jesus to me, but then I think he qualifies for "best people" status. He was able to live these qualities all the time, something the rest of us are only aspiring to at best. 

    It's the last day of the year and time for my annual review. I do this for me, to have a recap of the year. This all comes from my Win List, my daily noting of good things that happen in my life. In general, I stuck with my intentions (stay healthy and active, encourage and allow myself to be a happy human) reasonably well, and I had a much better year than 2023. 

    

WORK

• Taught MELT one night a week at the Clearwater Wellness Center. Completed my teaching time there mid-December after 13 years.
• Thoroughly enjoyed being a simulated patient at the Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine.

FAMILY

• The BEST event of the year was welcoming new grandson Remy to the family on Sept 11, born on his great-grandmother's birthday.
• Was blessed to spend two weeks with my brother Arlie in March before he passed on April 10. I miss him tremendously. That leaves me the only living member of my family of origin.
• Had the great joy of watching grandsons Luca and Remy grow.
• Reconnected with my cousin Marlene in Ohio, whom I hadn't seen in decades. 
• Had several visits with my in-laws as they are a convenient stopping point on my drives to/from Ohio.
• Dennis and I celebrated anniversary #38.

TRAVEL

• Lanie and I spent a glorious girlfriend-fun week with Paige and Laura at the Hill "resort" in Panama City Beach. 
• Went to a Thunder NBA game in March.
• Made several trips to Colorado to see the grandsons and their parents and uncle.
• Spent the 4th of July holiday weekend with my niece Debi in Chicago, of course the highlight being a Cubs game at Wrigley Field.
• Enjoyed another week at Ocean City, MD, with Debi, Bryan and Erin. Traveling back to Ohio included a fabulous tour of Longwood Gardens and my favorite hike at Alan Seeger Natural Area in central PA. That trip also included a Cubs-Guardians game.
• Spent the last two weeks of November in Ohio with my niece; enjoyed Thanksgiving with most of my brother's family, though my brother was sorely missed.
• Lanie and I made all the reservations and payments for the BIG TRIP of a lifetime, a six-weeks' journey beginning in Feb 2025 to Australia, New Zealand and Bali.

HEALTH

• Swam over 100 miles for the 27th year in a row. Set a new personal annual record of 138.0 miles.
• Played pickleball over a hundred times. As pickleball play increased, golf time decreased. Between the heat and my poor play, golfing wasn't much fun. Also, for the first time in decades, I did not get to play golf with my sons. 
• Enjoyed another year of gardening. 

DOG

• Barney, our love... when all else fails, pet the dog. Dog walks get us outside and moving every day.

MISCELLANEOUS

• I have given up watching the news due to the results of the presidential election. 
• The year included a lot of game-playing, especially Rummikub. Got a regular monthly game night going at a local bar.
• Facing another Christmas without my kids, I planned projects to help keep my attitude up. I filled hand-sewn gift bags with treats for the neighbors. My husband and I had a nice Christmas at home. 

CREATIVITY

• Completed several more paintings, playing with paints being a huge sanity-saver for me. 
• Wrote a daily blog post--yep, 366 of them. 

    I'm looking forward to another trip around the sun. I can't wait for Opening Day of baseball season!!!

        Leta

December 30--Spiritual Practice--It Works If You Work It

This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something. 
  --Elizabeth Gilbert

    At the end of each year, I do a "year in review" post to remind myself that despite challenges, my life is generally quite good. That post is coming tomorrow. 

    Today I devote some thoughts to my most important daily activity--my spiritual practice and its hopeful result, spiritual growth. I offer this quote from Ernest Holmes: 

Failure does not mean the loss of something. Failure occurs only if the loss of that thing takes our enthusiasm, our courage, our zest for life, our faith, our conviction and our happiness from us. That is failure indeed.

    The downhill slide for me started in August 2022, when a couple of big losses occurred for me in fairly short order. This led to the failure Holmes described. I don't know for sure if it was depression or grief or both, but it stole all the good things in life that Holmes mentions. I went through the motions of daily life, but I think of 2023 mentally/emotionally/spiritually as a slog-through-it-fog. 

    Toward the end of 2023, I was coming to consciously realize that the trajectory I was on was not a good one and change was required. There was definitely my broken heart that needed relief. I did an intention-setting workshop on January 1, 2024, and selected two things to focus on: 1) staying healthy and active, and 2) encouraging and allowing myself to be a happy human. I was extremely consistent with my daily spiritual practice which supported the intentions. I still had the occasional meltdown and bad-attitude day. And there was the other major setback of my brother passing in April 2024, but at least for him, it was a huge blessing. Knowing that has given me some relief from the grief. 

    I am grateful for three other things that have helped "pull me back from the edge." One is decades of practicing the 12-Step program. Another is the monthly sessions with my spiritual coach/mentor. Lastly, much healing resulted from heavy-duty journaling through the book "The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist" by Debbie Mirza. (See Oct 24 post for more on that.) 

    Overall, I feel I did a good job on the intentions for 2024, and I am sticking with those for 2025. I can't stress enough the value of a daily spiritual practice. One of the things that started my downhill slide in 2022 is an ongoing issue completely out of my control, so I have to stay vigilant to keep my thoughts in a positive direction. My personal prayers have been pretty much reduced to "help!" and "thank you!" It seems to me that Spirit knows what to do from there. 

    Ready for 2025,

        Leta

December 29--In Limbo

One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it, and the journey is always toward the other soul.  --D. H. Lawrence

    I think the time between Christmas and New Year's Day is kind of weird. I'm ready for the year to be over, but it is clinging to a few more days. It's a bit early to put away decorations. College basketball is on a break before full-blown conference play starts. The relief of Christmas being over leaves me with a "what now?" sort of feeling. I have much to look forward to, but there is also the long, cold darkness of January and February. And taxes! (But hopefully, not death!!!) Note that this decade is just about to pass half-over. How amazing is that!?!?

    I use this "down time" to consider the year ending and its many blessings. That is the subject of the next two days' posts. 

    Stay tuned. 

        Leta

The beginnings of another painting...

December 28--Another Look at Gratitude

It's no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst. 
--Tom Stoppard

    Amen! Anyone who has raised one or more children has had a hearty dose of that. I am so thankful for those who have loved me at my worst!

    Speaking of gratitude, let's amp it up as we head into the new year. It helps to keep my thoughts headed in a positive direction. Rev. Kris Alexander offers this perspective on gratitude:

Gratitude is more than a nightly ritual. It is a guide for purposeful action.
I’ve revamped my gratitude practice. Instead of merely listing things I’m grateful for, I now ask myself four questions:
1. Who or what inspired me today?
2. Who or what brought me comfort today?
3. Who or what brought me joy today?
4. What action does my gratitude inspire?

    I would tend to use these questions during my morning spiritual practice to consider the previous day. As I write this, I'm thinking of the day after Christmas. 

1. Inspiration--We had friends over, several of whom are artists, and they asked about my paintings and they were so encouraging. 
2. Comfort--Happy hour time on the deck with my husband and dog.
3. Joy--Playing pickleball with the church gang. 
4. Action--I did a bunch of house-cleaning in preparation for our gathering. 

    That's a very useful set of questions! 

        Leta 

It was a fun supper & jam
by this artist!!

December 27--Christmas Was OK!

The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.  --Sue Monk Kidd

    Christmas is over, and there may be no one happier about that than me. We are still hoping to deliver gifts to our offspring and families in early January, but the music and the forced cheerfulness and anxiety I've felt will go away. Life moves on, back to "normal." 

    My husband and I had a lovely Christmas Day together. We slept in then had a relaxed morning with him reading the news and me doing my usual morning spiritual practice. We walked our dog Barney together. I took a long, hot bath. We watched the Chiefs win another game. I took a nap (why should Christmas be any different?!?!). We tried out the new table-top propane heater for our deck happy hours. We had a video chat with son, d-i-l and grandsons. I talked with our other son (who spent the day snowboarding) and my niece in Ohio. My husband and I played several rounds of Rummikub, then I finished off the day watching a couple NBA games and drifting off to a good night's sleep. 

    I'm grateful for a good, peaceful day, family and friend connections and getting on with life.

        Leta

Happy hour selfie with the new heater

December 26--I Don't Have To Like It

Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.  --Mitch Albom

    This is a "knife to the heart" for me at Christmastime. I feel that I have experienced a lot of sacrifice over the past two years, much has gone to someone else, and I do not like it one bit. Alas, I simply have to accept it. Some days I am better at that than others. On Christmas Eve there was no acceptance, and I spent much of the day crying, letting myself grieve so that I could move forward again for a while. Just because I recognize the need for acceptance, I do not have to like the circumstances. 

    What a good time this is to re-offer the acceptance passage from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous:

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation -- some fact of my life -- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.

For me, serenity began when I learned to distinguish between those things that I could change and those I could not. When I admitted that there were people, places, things, and situations over which I was totally powerless, those things began to lose their power over me. I learned that everyone has the right to make their own mistakes, and learn from them, without my interference, judgment, or assistance!

    One day at a time, sticking with the next right thing,

        Leta

December 25--🎄🎄🎄

I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.  --Jonathan Safran Foer

May today bring us simple things in simple packages. May the holiday you celebrate bring meaning and peace within. May the love of Christmas expand in your heart today, tomorrow and each day of the year. May there be peace on earth, goodwill toward all.  --Mary Davis

    Spread the love!

        Leta