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“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I
do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward
to those things which are before, I press toward the mark
for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

Phil. 3:13,14

I firmly believe that every person born on this planet is here by divine design and they have a specific reason (or reasons) for being here.  That includes you. There are no mistakes.  You may not have grown up in the best surroundings, or with the best parents, or with the best that money can buy, but that says nothing about who you are or who you are meant to be.  It says where you came from. It does not dictate where you are going.  Unless, of course, you choose to carry the hurt, pain, disappointment and difficulty of the past into the present and future.

Forgetting those things which are behind. Staying stuck in a hurtful past does not serve us well. It breeds bitterness, resentment, anxiety, anger, hostility, fear, and a host of other unpleasant emotions that will only cripple us and weigh us down. We are wise to leave all the junk in our past behind us. If we live long enough we are going to experience the full spectrum of life. Who hasn’t had their heart broken?  Who hasn’t experienced the death of someone much loved?  Who hasn’t known difficult financial times? Who hasn’t known betrayal at the hands of someone trusted? Who hasn’t been disappointed, or worried, or afraid? In this life we will experience both the sunshine and rain. Learn from it. Teach others what you have gleaned from it. Hopefully, they will listen and avoid the same hard lessons. (We are here to help others also.) Grow because of it. Be wiser, more compassionate, more tolerant and patient because of what you have experienced, and then move forward!

Be the victor over your past and not the victim. It is our choice.  I did not say it would be easy. We are encouraged to “reach forward” and to “press toward the mark for the prize of our high calling.”  Reaching and pressing takes real effort on our part. In other words, no one can do it for you. Better yet, no one will do it for you. We each get the grand and glorious task of designing our own future, and that’s inspite of what the past may have been like.  Many of us don’t take the time to think about what we want our future to look like, but if we want real change, we must first decide what it is that we really want. Do you know? Do you want more peace in your life? Then take a look at what is robbing you of it and decide what changes are needed to make to create more peace. Do  you want your life to be surrounded by those who truly love, appreciate, and respect you? You may need to go through a weeding process to eliminate those who do not. You already know who they are. Do you need to increase your income to become more comfortable and to have the things you need? Determine the things that have kept you from that, and take the steps necessary to create more abundance in  your life. 

Spend some time daydreaming about the life you wish to have.  Meditate on it. See yourself already enjoying the life you want. Start taking steps in that direction.  The seeds of those thoughts that you plant today, and continue to think on and cultivate, will take root and grow tomorrow. We do not have to remain victims because of a painful or difficult past. We can choose to be victorious and rise above it. It is your life to live.  Re-claim it and design the life you want. Reach forward and press toward the mark for the prize of your high calling. You are worth it.

This is not exactly a recipe; it’s more like an idea for what to do when desserts don’t turn out the way you want them to.  My husband and I have been baking and baking the past couple of days.  We both enjoy cooking, and we enjoy doing it together.  One of our baking tasks was to make two cakes to take with us when we go visit his brother and sister.  We’ve been looking at recipes for cakes for days.  Finally, I decided I’d bake a lemon/pineapple inside out cake.  I left the choice of the other cake to Jim.  He finally decided on a chocolate praline cake.  It sounded delicious as we read the recipe, and it smelled really good as it was baking.  Everything went very well until he placed the second layer on top of the first after he had iced it.  We really don’t know what went wrong, but the cake started to split and ended up in two irregular halves.  Jim made more icing, thinking that the extra icing could hold the cake together like glue.  Wrong. What we ended up with was an exploded cake with tons of icing on it.  We considered trying the recipe again and making it a sheet cake instead of a layer cake, but finally, we just decided to take the cake as it was, explain what happened, and offer it as something that didn’t look too good but was sure to taste good.  We dubbed the cake “Avalanche Cake.” 

One of the ideas that we had when trying to figure out what to do with the messy cake was to make a trifle.  I made a beautiful black forest trifle last Christmas, which was not only magazine pretty, but was delicious as well.  I had never had a trifle that did not have some kind of fruit in it, but I kept thinking of how to turn that cake into an edible trifle dessert.  Then I had an inspired idea.  Jim didn’t mind me tinkering with Avalanche Cake, so I ended up doing this:

I peeled off a good deal of the icing and put it aside to ice some cookies with later.  A little chocolate was mixed into the buttercream frosting, but I was going to ice chocolate cookies, so no big deal.  Then I crumbled up some of the rich devil’s food cake with the luscious praline topping into a clear glass bowl.  I made some more caramel sauce by boiling butter and brown sugar and a little half and half, and I drizzled some of that over the cake.  I toasted some pecans and sprinkled some of those over the caramel sauce.  Then I repeated with more cake, more caramel sauce, and more toasted pecans.  I covered the second layer with some Cool Whip I had in the refrigerator and made a final drizzle of caramel sauce, finishing with a few more toasted pecans.  It fit perfectly into the cake taker, so that’s our second dessert for the family dinner on Friday.  I had enough cake to make a smaller trifle that we can sample tomorrow after our Christmas dinner.  I know it will be very rich.  But I bet it will be very good, too.  And it really does look elegant sitting in the refrigerator tonight. 

They say that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but you can make a trifle out of any wrecked cake.  You just have to figure out what you want to layer the wrecked cake with.  And trifles are always elegant looking.  I wanted to call my new dessert The Accidental Trifle, but Jim insisted that Incidental was a better choice because we didn’t create the dessert by accident; instead, it was the accidental avalanche of the cake that ended in an incident upon which we decided to create the trifle.  Believe it or not, these are the things that two English teachers talk about in earnest!

“Being rich isn’t about money. Being rich is a state of mind. Some
of us, no matter how much money we have, will never be free enough to take
time to stop and eat the heart of the watermelon. And some of us will be
rich without ever being more than a paycheck ahead of the game.”

Harvey Mackay
(American Businessman, Speaker, Author)

It’s time to pay the bills again.  I must admit that I don’t like paying the bills.  I wish foolishly that I could have all the comforts of life for free.  But that’s not how things work here.  There always has to come a time to pay for what I use.  There have been times in my life when I would absolutely get sick and feel panicky when it was time to pay the bills.  I knew there would not be enough money to go around.  I would feel the weight of the world on me, crushing me down.  I try very hard to never go there again.  It’s not healthy to feel that way. 

But just last month, I was beginning to feel the pressure of two unpaid property taxes looming over me and Christmas on the horizon.  I voiced the fear:  how can we pay the taxes when we will have extra expenses because it is Christmas?  I felt angry.  I felt it wasn’t fair.  And for a few minutes, I let that anxious, crushing feeling come over me.  But then I stopped and chose a different path.  I said to myself: ”You will pay the county taxes as soon Jim gets paid again, around the 8th of the month.  That will be half of the battle right there.  You won’t have much to last until the next pay check, but you will just be frugal, and you will make it okay.  Then, when the next paycheck arrives, two weeks early since it’s Christmas vacation, you will pay the city taxes.  And you will be fine.  You will manage on what’s left.”  So, that’s what I did. 

And today, it’s time to pay the rest of the bills.  I have to do this so I can see how much money we have to operate on until Jim gets paid during the first week of January.  If we have only a little, then we’ll just be careful what we spend.  If we have a little more, then we can be more generous to ourselves, especially with our daughter visiting from South Carolina for the next week.  Whatever we do, we will have enough.

That is a wonderfully powerful knowledge:  that there is always enough.  It’s just that sometimes we have to get real about what is enough.  The more we use, the more we have to pay.  The more we intend to conserve, the less we have to pay.  But there is always enough. 

One of my favorite Christmas stories is the Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”  Most of us know the story:  Old skinflint Scrooge has so much money and is so stingy with it.  His life is cold and bitter when it could be rich and warm.  It isn’t until the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Future come to visit him and show him what has been and what could be, that he decides to make a different choice.  He pledges, “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”  The Christmas that he speaks of is just a philosophy, an openess of spirit, an attitude of generosity, a feeling of gratitude.  It doesn’t matter whether there is a lot of money or a little.  Richness doesn’t come from a paycheck.  Poverty of spirit is the worst kind of poverty. 

So, on to paying the bills.  I don’t have to like it, but I don’t have to fear it either, and I don’t have to let it ruin Christmas for me.  There is enough.  Enough for us.  Enough to share.  And in the words of Tiny Tim, “God bless us everyone.”

It’s been a VERY busy season for me with trying to move and get settled into my new home. Still, I have managed to get everything packed, moved, unpacked and everything in it’s new place.  I wondered if I would even put up a Christmas tree this year with all the work I already had to do.  Yet, there is something about a grandchild, who lives far away, getting on the phone and saying (with such excitement in her voice) that she would be here in just two weeks, that really lit a fire under me.  The tree is now up and the wreath is on the door.

I am glad that I found the motivation to put the Christmas tree up. There are 35 years worth of ornaments on that tree.  Every ornament that I place on it reminds me of someone special in my life. Some of those people have passed on, and a few have just moved on, but when I hang the ornament that they gave to me on my tree I am reminded of them and what they meant to me, and what I must have meant to them also.  I even have ornaments that were passed down to us by my husband’s great grandmother.  I never knew her, but my husband treasures those ornaments and looks every year to see if they are present on the tree.  I even have a few handmade ornaments that were crafted by my children when they were very young.

I guess if my tree were to have a theme it would be a Christmas Memory theme. You can’t just look at it and say it’s an angel tree, or a nutcracker tree, etc.  You really have to study my tree.  There’s just so many unique ornaments on it and they are all different. They all take me back to a special place in time. Do I remember who gave me what?  Surprisingly, yes I do! 

My children are all grown now, but at Christmas when I am in the process of baking, I can still see them in my mind’s eye gathered around the kitchen table with their freshly scrubbed hands rolling peanut butter balls for me to dip in chocolate. The recipe yielded a lot and I needed many helpers. Needless to say, since my helpers are grown and gone, I no longer make peanut butter balls to give away as gifts.  *laughs* I pass that torch on to those with lots of extra hands.

Christmas isn’t just about getting gifts or giving them either. It’s also about making memories that last and last forever.

Which Christmas memories do you cherish most as you celebrate the season?

“How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply
important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves
each day to be and to do what really matters most.”

Stephen Covey
(American Speaker, Trainer, Author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”)

I love Christmas!  I love the decorations and the songs and the baking and even the Christmas present wrapping.  I love that Pillsbury sells its gingerbread cookie dough at Christmas.  And the only time you can find egg nog in cartons beside the milk is at Christmas.  My sons are both with me on Christmas Day, which is a rare treat.  My husband and I go to visit his brother and sister and their families.  I get to see how much prettier and how much more grown up my little niece, who was adopted from a Chinese orphanage, has become.   We get to have Jim’s daughter with us for a whole week after Christmas.  And I get to spend a lot of time with JIm and my pugs just hanging out and relaxing.  And Jim loves Christmas as much as I do, so we really get into all the Christmas festivities with joy.  And the best part of all:  I get two whole weeks off from school!  What’s not to love about Christmas? 

Some people hate Christmas.  They see it as a time when they have to spend more money than they have and have to go to parties that they don’t want to attend and have to get all caught up in the hustle and bustle of too much traffic, too many grumpy shoppers, and too much junk food.  Bah! Humbug! 

The way I see it is this:  Christmas is what you make it.  I choose to make it as little of a hassel as I can, so I can enjoy the things I love most about Christmas.  And this Christmas, I’ve downsized a lot, and I think I’m enjoying the season even more.  We usually put up three Christmas trees, but this year we just put up the two main ones, our 9 foot Santa tree for the den and our angel tree for the living room.  I bought a whole lot fewer Christmas presents this year.  I usually overdo it anyway, and so I decided to it wasn’t worth it.  Also, I paid cash for all my Christmas presents this year instead of charging anything.  That made me feel so much “lighter” in spirit.  And most of my shopping was done on the Internet way in advance.  I’ve wrapped presents as they’ve arrived on my doorstep.  I’ve been collecting stocking stuffers for a few months.  I’ll stuff the stockings on Christmas Eve before we go to church.  And this year, I’m going to church with my husband, who is the music director of his church, and he has one of his hardest work days on Christmas Eve.  The last two years I stayed home alone to wrap presents and cook.  It’s going to be so great to go to church and hear the beautiful Christmas music and light the candles and welcome the birth of Christ, the essence of the Christmas spirit.  We’ve planned a simple, but elegant Christmas dinner for Christmas Day, without a lot of time in the kitchen, we’ll be enjoying a prime rib roast, hashbrown casserole, hot fruit casserole, broccoli casserole, 7 layer salad, and dinner rolls.  Everything can be made in advance and cooked in the oven on Christmas morning while I enjoy my family.  The roast is going into my Ron Popeil “Set it and Forget It” rotisserie oven.  I’ll have plenty of Christmas cookies and fudge and pies and cakes to share with everyone who eats dinner with us and everyone who just stops by.  We’ll leave the next morning for our trip to pick up our daughter and make an overnight visit to Jim’s family, and then we’ll be home with the pugs to relax and enjoy the seasonal music and movies and fun.  I won’t even think about going back to work.  But when I do have to start thinking about it, I will be joyous because I love my job, and I look forward to beginning a new semester.

I really feel bad for people who hate Christmas.  But as Stephen Covey says, when we truly know what matters most to us, and we manage ourselves so we can be and do what really matters most, we can end up with a joyful Christmas spent doing and being what matters most to us.  We can create the Christmas we want to have.  It’s in our hands.  And mine is delightful!

Merry Christmas and may you have the most prosperous and blessed New Year!

Deb