Tag: all is well

Christmas Eve Friday

Good morning. Merry Christmas Eve!! Welcome to Favorite Things Friday. I have shared my favorite rendition of one of my favorite Christmas songs above. I have shared this song before on the blog, but I haven’t found anyone who can trump Martina McBride’s version of it. (kind of like how nobody can top Whitney Houston’s version of our national anthem) Listen to it all of the way to the end when she holds the notes into eternity. Goosebumps. Magnificent!

If you want other fun takes on the Christmas classics, I recommend looking up the band, Boney M. They do a great job with “Little Drummer Boy” but this song below “Mary’s Boy Child”, has always been one of my all-time favorites. It’s one of the happiest, upbeat Christmas songs ever sung. “There’s hope for all to find peace!” It’ll get your juices flowing:

Today, I have just one other kind of random favorite to share. Here it is:

Clare V “Ciao” earrings and pendant – I was wearing this pendant the other day and my husband asked me, “What does that mean?” He knows that “Ciao” usually means “good-bye” in Italian. I think that he was concerned that I was sending hidden, subliminal messages in the form of jewelry. Ha! The reason I bought these items is because I have always wanted to be Italian, or to have some other more fanciful and exotic background, other than my mostly staid English DNA. I would say, “Ciao!” or “Grazia!” to my kids all of the time and they would say, “Mom, we’re not Italian.” I bought this nice quality, fun, faux jewelry because it reminds me of these silly, fun times in my life and that fun, silly, off-the-cuff version of myself. “Ciao” can actually mean “hello” or “good-bye” in Italian. I think that I will use this jewelry as a reminder that I am in control of the “hellos” and the “good-byes” in my life. I can say “hello” to love and joy and peace and fun and creativity and I can say “good-bye” to bad habits, toxic people and difficult situations. Ciao!

How are you doing today, my friends? My hope, for all of us, is that during the last minute whirl of activity, hoopla, tumult, excess, distraction and chaos that can come with the holidays, we can find the peace. We can find the calm. We can find the love. We can find the uninterrupted, eternal stillness. We can find the quiet, deep, unquestioned knowing that despite what we fear, the truth is “All is well.” That’s the real point of the day, isn’t it? All is well. “All is well.” A precious little baby came to Earth to remind us of that fact. And it changed the world.

I’ll finish with this wonderful compilation that my husband and I will be listening to as we do some last minute wrapping. It’s a good one:

Merry Christmas Eve! I love and I appreciate all of you! You are gifts to me with your precious time and your attention.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

All is Well

As I turned on my computer, a Quora pop-up appeared with “a question for the day.”  Someone had written, “I’m 25-years-old.  What should I do with my life?”  I chuckled to myself.  I was tempted to write back, “I’m 47-years-old.  What should I do with mine?”

I remember how stressful it was to be young and have that whole huge blank slate of life stretching out in front of you.  Your life is so structured as a child and a student and then all of the sudden it isn’t.  I think that we go through periods of life where we pick a certain path and we feel that comfort and confinement of structure.  We get married, start families, start career paths that feel comfortable and we take that direction for a while until something, either inside of us or outside of us, or sometimes both, disrupts our current path and brings us back to that question, “What should I do with my life?”

I commiserate with the author of that question.  He or she is wanting definiteness.  He or she is wanting “the rule book of life”, with guaranteed results.  We all think that we want that, especially in scary times of unrest, with all of the negative news swarming around us, creating fear and uncertainty at every turn.   Reality is though, a great, big fun part of life is the unknown, the possibilities and the surprises.  Alice Sebold wrote, “Sometimes the dreams that come true, are the ones you never even knew you had.”

There are no “shoulds” in life.  Other people may try to “should” on you.  You may “should” on yourself, but reality is, there are no “shoulds.”  There are consequences to every action.  Good consequences and less than good consequences come from every choice that we make, but in reality there are no “shoulds.”  Depending on how you look at that statement, that can be freeing or scary as hell.

As a mother of young twenty-somethings, I wish I could wrap them and the Quora question-asker, and all of us, in my arms and say, “Just live.  Just be.  Follow your inclinations, passions, and interests and see where they take you.  Be kind and loving to all people, and all things and remember that includes yourself.  Trust in the forces bigger than you, remembering that you have limited vision of the bigger, unfolding picture.  All is well, even when it doesn’t feel that way.”

I think that there are giant, strong arms and wings wrapped around all of us, whispering these very words in our ears.  We just forget to listen to the whispers sometimes when the world is so loud and busy and full of unrest.  All is well, though.  All is well.