I know two sets of friends who are going through bloody hell in their marriages right now.  Their deepest fears, secrets and dripping dark worries have wormed the way through their lives and turned them into total upheaval.   I have another good friend who is going into her 7th week of intense chemotherapy and is losing her hair but is grateful to have her art studio all unpacked and ready for her to begin creating again.  I’m grateful that I am able to enjoy and appreciate many qualities and wonders in life that money can’t buy.  It’s easy for us to forget that there are actually many things that we can enjoy that money cannot buy.

I try to remember what is good in my life especially during those times when I can be easily seduced into believing that I have nothing.  This evening for some reason that is unexplainable, within an hour of each other, the back half of the sole/heel of my clogs broke apart and I ended up walking on my toes in my shoes to stand in line for Harry Potter.  There would have been a time when I would have let that ruin my whole evening, but instead I ignored it and enjoyed seeing the movie with my husband and friends. Besides, now I have a real reason to visit the Zappos website tomorrow and order a pair of shoes! A few years back I started noticing that the great divine order that I believe runs our lives makes things happen so elegantly that many wonderful things often times go unnoticed.  Sometimes that can look like having really good health and the energy to appreciate the nip in the air and the sunshine on your face.  Other times it can be sharing really funny times with someone like I did with my husband last night. We are such dorks together sometimes and last night was no exception when we got into the hot tub and in spontaneous unison began saying, “heeeeee, hooooo, haaaaaa” and mixing it up perfectly landing on the same version each time (like a verbal rock, paper, scissors) and then cracking ourselves up by introducing into the mix “huuuuuuu”.   Okay, we’ve been together 20 years and to still laugh our heads off with each other is such a nice gift.  I don’t want to ever take that for granted.

There are also the postcards of life that God sends us all the time and if we’re paying attention, we capture them and keep them for safe keeping to enjoy now and again.  Like this morning, the Paul-dog ran to the window in the kitchen and hopped up on his hind legs doing the bark that means that there are KIDS outside of our house (God forbid!).  Well, one of our neighbor’s sons who is about 9 years old with white blonde hair was taking out the trash can to the curb (the trash can is about as tall as he is) and he had stopped and put his hand on his hip to look down our driveway at Paul ferociously barking at him in the window.  The whole scene was pretty cute and probably wouldn’t mean much to anyone else but I kept it as one of God’s postcards.

So, yes, there is some really dark stuff that goes on in our world but there is much more good also going on if we will take the time to notice and appreciate it.  Those are the kind of things that money can’t buy which is why they can be even that more enjoyable to us if we’ll just take the time to see them.