And They Lived.....

The Happily Ever After isn’t all done yet, but for the moment we are exercising our “attitude of gratitude” muscle. The “attitude of gratitude” muscle gets stronger with each passing year and with each obstacle overcome.

Many years ago a friend challenged us to write down our dreams, to not just talk about them ambiguously but to put them down on paper. She generously took our kids overnight so we could focus on just us. It was the inspiration birthed on that occasion which eventually gave us the courage to move away from everything we’ve ever known and move to Colorado. It was a dream come true in many respects and an incredible opportunity to grow as individuals. We are here now, however, and we can only look back and reflect with an “attitude of gratitude” at all that God did in us during our Colorado Season and in all the seasons before that one. Others may look at the outside and not see much difference, but we can see that each season has refined our hearts and fortified the backbone of our marriage.

One night at dinner Joe said, “What would you list as our greatest accomplishments?” Wow! What a question! We had fun evaluating our history and coming to the conclusion that at every turn, God has done immeasurably more than we could have asked or imagined. Joe then told me to pull out the handy dandy notebook so we could, once again, write down our hopes and dreams..... We titled it, The Next Twenty Years.

Rest assured California friends, “moving to Colorado” isn’t on the list as it once was. However, this list, like the last one, was filled with the hopes and dreams of who we might become and how we might live for others. This new list has words on it like “good health” and “grandkids,” things we didn’t think much about before. This new list will hopefully set the stage for another similar list 20 years from now.

Our job for the time being is to simply Live Happily as long as God sees fit to give us each other and days on this earth. I pray that we are faithful to each and every day and that our children and grandchildren will someday say that we did, indeed, “Live Happily Ever After.”