The Experiment: Day 93 ~ I Am Grateful, Aware, Present & Alive, This Is My Most Splendid Christmas Gift…

My dear, dear friends, it is two days before Christmas and this is exactly how I feel. How could there be more joy than this? After a year when things were darker than they have been in some time to be ending the year, in fact coming to Christmas, feeling full of life and more alive than I remember being, well, there’s nothing Santa could leave me on my hearth on Christmas Eve more glorious than this. And I’m no Pollyanna and my life is not perfect, there is sadness around me this Christmas, and there will be hard moments, but most of all I feel blessed and that in itself is the blessing. To accept all that is, to live with a heart wide open, to allow what will be to be and stand steady and calm in the face of it all in thanksgiving. That is where I am in this moment, amidst hours that feel suspended in time. I am reaching out to you, dear one, if you are reading this, and I am hugging you tenderly, and kissing you softly on the cheek, and I am thanking you, sincerely, for being here with me on this journey. The first 93 days of this experiment have brought me to such wondrous times, I can’t wait to see what will happen in the 272 days that are left. These posts are like pearls I am stringing on a necklace, cool and glowing in my hand. It is with a kind of calm excitement that I face the days ahead.

What do I wish for in the coming year? Well, like everyone I wish for many things, but most of all doing this 365 day experiment is reminding me to live each day, each moment, as if it were the only one that exists, to treasure it all, to feel the grace and the blessings. The wild birds at the feeder, my little pugs sleeping and snoring around me, my children and grandchildren with whom I will be celebrating Christmas in two days, sweet Eleanor coming to help me here at the house today, wrapping each gift, one at a time, holding the recipient of that particular gift close in my heart as I wrap and sending so much love with the gift, that we may be connected in love always, a sip of this coffee, the leaves still falling gently in the breeze outside my windows. All of this, in this very moment, are what matters, only this moment in which I intend to fully live, and in each moment that follows for all the rest of my time on earth, that I may live the time that I have, however much it is, mindfully, no matter the circumstances. I can take anything one moment at a time. This is the lesson I carry with me into the new year. There are moments of blessing in every single day, no matter how small, no matter what is going on. It is this I want to remember.

I just got up and plugged in the little Dollar Store Christmas tree in the front windows — I love it so much — because Eleanor will be here soon and I want to greet her with brightly colored lights and Christmas joy. I threw laundry in the washing machine and carried the broom and dust pan out into the Cozy Room to sweep. The wind is picking up and the trees are swaying quite hard. Here in Wilmington it is 69 degrees, no chance of a white Christmas here, but alas there never really is, and yet now, in this moment, rather than bemoaning the fact that we have no snow, I am thinking how lucky I am to come to Christmas with such beautiful weather. It will be quite nice for my eldest daughter and her family coming in from Chicago where it is 32 degrees and heading down into the 20’s. We can provide warmth for them, a respite from the cold. But I can still imagine a snowy Christmas in my mind. I rather imagine, in my dreams, that it looks just like this here…

Eleanor has arrived. We have hugged and laughed and talked and now she is doing her work and I am finishing this blog post. I hope wherever you are you are happy and well, but I hope if these are hard days for you you can find a way to bring peace and ease into your day. A Christmas alone can be a very hard thing, but I hope you can put on music, make yourself a nice meal, maybe watch a favorite movie that always makes you happy, and know that I am thinking about you and holding you close in my heart and prayers. Ah, and there are my squirrels now. They eat so much I have to go out twice a day now to spread birdseed all along the window ledge, and I see their busy tails waving with excitement through the windows as they eat. We look after each other, the animals and I, inside and out, and I am at peace.

You are so loved…

The Experiment ~A 365 Day Search For Truth, Beauty &
Happiness: Day 1 ~ Introduction To The Project
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda