Opinions

My sister took me to task. “You know I was not being mean about your dress, don’t you?” She meant the dress that she had said made me look like a car wash -- the part of the car wash where the flappy things slap the car dry. My dress looked a lot like that, especially if I spun around. I thought this was hilarious and mentioned it in a column.

This year had a lot of ups and downs for me. This past spring, I felt about as low as I have felt about my writing since I started. My book was going nowhere. There seemed to be nothing I could do to better its chances of being sold. I was unsure if anything I was writing was any good.

A brand-new year is here and I’m excited to see what the Lord has for us! Keeping Christ at the center of our thoughts takes a great deal of discipline and determination, but so does everything else we really care about. It comes down to how serious we are about knowing God and how willing we are to give him total control of our lives. Whatever we become involved with, He simply wants us to listen and obey His instructions, which is why we are here. If we abide under the shadow of his wings, we will walk in the peace and joy of his Spirit but if we choose to live our own way, we will remain frustrated, miserable, and disappointed.

Without much effort, I think I could become a hermit. It's January...and there are days when I would like to vanish from the landscape, lay on the couch until dark envelopes the house, and gain 45 pounds eating chocolate.

“It’s not what you eat between Christmas and New Year’s that counts, it’s what you eat between New Year’s and Christmas.” I’ve had this mantra in my head because my husband, Peter, and I have been trying to keep our weight in check. Peter is doing it for sensible reasons. His cholesterol and blood pressure have been high. He worries he might be at risk for a stroke. Peter was a skinny kid, a skinny teenager and a skinny adult. Discovering in his 60s that he was, in fact, capable of gaining weight came as a great surprise -- and disappointment.

The author of this story is unknown and it has been told by many people throughout the years. The gentleman to whom I’m going to introduce was not a Scrooge, but a kind, generous man who loved his family and was upright in his dealings with other people. He could not understand how or why Jesus came to earth to save us from our sins. It did not make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. “I’m truly sorry to distress you,” he told his wife, “but I’m not going with you and the kids to church this Christmas Eve.” He went on to say, he would feel like a hypocrite and this year he would much rather stay home. He would just wait up and read until they returned. And so, he stayed behind as the family went to the candlelight service.

After the boxes and wrapping paper from Christmas Past had been discarded or recycled, I assumed a horizontal position on my favorite sofa, pulled the blanket up to my chin and grabbed the clicker, listening to all the television banter about the year coming to a close.

I once would ride just about anything. It probably started when I put that first quarter in a kiddie ride. It bucked and I held on. The phrase, “tall enough to ride rides,” was my license to carnivals and amusement parks, which meant Ferris wheels, rollercoasters and then, loop-the-loops.

As the full moon rose in the east, black-eyed peas soaked in a bowl on the kitchen countertop and turnips, picked at their peak, thawed in the sink. The sky was filled with stars; the temperature was cool; the night was bright.