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Is This Your Year?

Is this your year to do something great?

Hope so.

It sure has been a great year of blogging. The blogging has been inspired by the realization that the clock is ticking.

If this hasn’t been “your year”, why not? What needs to change? What is the missing link?

If we knew this, maybe we’d be acting on it already. Not necessarily. For example, I know what I need to do. But doing it is the hard part.

New Year’s resolutions. They hardly ever work. So start making plans to do it differently. Start now. Today. Seriously.

Faith, Hope and Love

Faith, Hope and Love.

Doesn’t get much simpler than that.

And yet there are so many temptations that take us away from simple.

Simple doesn’t mean easy. Take diet and exercise. Two simple concepts to lower cholesterol and maintain a healthy body weight.

Yet, if it were easy, very few of us would have to worry about cholesterol and weight. Ya with me?

So, what does this have to do with Faith, Hope and Love?

Everything! Carpe diem.

The Joy of Living

The Joy of Living is one of the most elusive of all endowments.

Why? Just watch a child and you’ll find your answer. Having a child (9-year old boy) in our home is a daily reminder.

We all, at least I do, need daily reminders of this simple fact, don’t we? Why? Because life is hard, especially in today’s challenging and uncertain world.

Every day is an opportunity to count our blessings. Anyone need a calculator?

The Joy of Dying

Is there Joy in dying? Is there Joy in death?

There certainly is Joy in birth and obviously Joy in being born. Right?

In the past 30 days, I’ve been exposed to nearly one dozen deaths. And these deaths have involved people close to me, or people close to people I’m close to. Ya with me?

Just yesterday, a good friend told me how peaceful the death of her family member was.

It started with tragic news, and there was little time to accept and deal with the impending reality.

And yet in the end, she spoke of it being Peaceful. Joyful.

Perhaps, with a little (or a lot) planning, death will be something we don’t fear, but something we view as simply part of life. Not to be feared, but to be embraced.

Maybe then we can look forward to it. Joyfully.

Holy Spirit

It felt good to be back in the classroom last night. You could sense, and feel, and see God’s Holy Spirit in the classroom.

This is our son’s third year in Catechism. This is my second year having the privilege to be a classroom helper. However, I missed all four September classes due to my business travel schedule.

A colleague commented at the end of the business day, “I don’t know how you do it”.

I asked her, “You know I write five blogs, everyday, then run five miles, and volunteer for things our son is involved in”?

And she already knows how hard I work as a professional speaker – she is, after all, a colleague, and a parent, and Catholic, etc.

What I have learned is that being incredibly busy is part of life. Or not. Figure out what you want to contribute and then go from there. Carpe diem.