Blessed

My day has been blessed. It wasn’t a special day by any means…just a regular day where Rich heads off to work on a shorted work day, and I start out my day with devotionals and then continue on to my own work day doing the paper work for our business. But there were blessings sprinkled throughout my day. I was feeling queasy again. However, it held itself at bay for the most part. If it got too bad, I just had a small nibble of food and my stomach would calm down. This was a blessing. A bigger blessing was getting a solid 9 hours of sleep last night. Between the cancer treatments, the worrying, and the menopause, I haven’t been getting great sleep. The last three nights have been great….last night especially. I enjoyed my two Lenten devotional books I have been working through and read through the daily readings with the Blessed Is She website and the University of Notre Dame. Thanks to some quality time dedicated to paperwork Friday and Saturday, I was able to really whiz through my online work today. I had quick text check-ins from two of my regular gal pals, Erika Campbell and Fiona Macklon. These two ladies check up on me every 24-48 hours and I love them for it! Two big blessings!

I received an unexpected call from the Bible Study Fellowship group I had started in during the fall of 2019 and had to drop out of due to my health. This woman was recruiting me to sign up for the coming fall to study the book of Genesis. I could not commit and told her why. She immediately stopped the conversation and asked to pray with me – a complete stranger. It was beautiful and another blessing in my day. I had communication in other ways from special people as well that were blessings. I was able to talk to my parents, Walt and Karen Neitzke, who live in Cypress, TX (a suburb of Houston). I am happy to report they are staying put for the most part and have my brother calling them every couple of days to make sure all is well with them. It sets my heart at ease to know they are doing well when all this craziness is going on and I live so far away. I received cards in the mail from friends from my parish, St. Gerald. A nice card from Deb & Todd Banchor, who have become like siblings to me, and a thoughtful card from Mary Bystrom, whom I don’t know as well as I wish, because she seems like a really cool person. I was shuffling through the rest of the mail and there was a beautiful postcard of Tallinn! (my dog, not the city) My dear friend, Mei-Ling Marshall from California, loved the picture and made it into a postcard. I love it! The stamp was a picture of a sign in Columbia Falls, MT, where we just bought 10 acres of land this past summer that simply said “PRAY BIG”. It was another blessing.

Lily is on spring break this week. HUGE blessing! It was nice to not have to be plodding through emails and assignments for the last three days. It was nice to be the fun mom and not the teacher mom who is trying to keep her on track for success. She decided on a wild hair to clean her room today. After almost fainting, I left her to it and she has made quite a bit of progress throughout the day. Big Blessing. We even took Tallinn for a walk today and had a nice natter.

I have joined a random Facebook group called “What do you see from your window? #StayAtHome”. It is phenomenal! I have been connecting with people from all over the world who are sharing their view of their world during this quarantine process. I have looked out the windows of people from Israel, South Africa, Canada, Australia, Germany, Ireland, UK, Norway, Singapore, Crete, Egypt….just all over the place. We each give each other good wishes and prayers for well-being. It is a small blessing that pops up on my Facebook feed when it starts getting overwhelmed with COVID-19 scariness and cancer talk.

And last, but certainly not least, I received a wonderful call from one of our parish priests. He and a parishioner, Becky Tometich, gave me a call out of the blue to check on me. It gave me the opportunity to thank the parish for having live-streaming broadcasts of the Mass each day. It has been so wonderful for me. I was able to watch today. Another blessing! Fr. Michael Voithofer then prayed with me over the phone and gave me a blessing, which really meant so very much to end my day with such a gift. I hope you all are able to find your blessings throughout your day as well….even if you are stuck at home doing what you might think is mundane…the blessings are there. Just look for them!