Category: Practical Wisdom

The Christmas Pizza

/ colleen arnold / 11 Comments

An updated 2020 version………

Between over-decorating, over-eating and over-spending, the Christmas season can be overwhelming. Add the stress of Covid 19 and its easy to feel cheerless and exhausted. It doesn’t have to be that way, as I learned the Christmas Neil was in the hospital.

It was only three months after his diagnosis, but deep down we all knew it was his last Christmas. Things weren’t going well with his chemo, his appetite and energy were fading, and the team of doctors on his case bounced him back and forth because no one wanted to face the Christmas elephant in the room.

In typical Neil fashion, he was excited about the holiday even from his hospital bed, and I had no intention of leaving him alone. That meant there were no decorations at home other than the few I set up before he went into the hospital. There were no gifts except for the ones I purchased earlier that year. Wrapping and Christmas cards? Nope. Not even Christmas dinner.

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God Goes to Great Lengths To Get Our Attention!

/ colleen arnold / 4 Comments

It was a gorgeous day. No humidity, faint breeze, wisps of white clouds – the kind of day that hints autumn is around the corner even as summer lingers. I was walking along the old rails-to-trails path behind my house.

Several miles from home, far from any roads or accesses points, something unusual happened. You’d think I’d feel the vibration underneath my feet. Or hear the motor as it approached. Nope. You’d think I’d notice the odd way my dog was acting as he kept looking over his shoulder.

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God is Always With Us

/ colleen arnold / 2 Comments

I was eating lunch outside on an early autumn day last week. The breeze was gentle, but the air tingled with a hint of cooler days to come. From the side of my patio, I felt a flicker of movement and sensed something coming toward me. In the split second I turned my head to look, the sensation was gone and the tree beside me stood still.

Just the breeze, I thought, as I went back to work on my salad. Then I saw another flash of motion in that same tree. I decided it must be one of the hummingbirds that have been zipping around my house all summer.

I made a big dent in the salad before I saw the movement again. This time I had the sense of something floating from a high branch to a lower one, far too slow to be a hummingbird. A leaf on the gentle breeze? A falling limb? My curiosity got the best of me.

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