When your up your up....

When my children were little and in preschool they used to stand in a circle and sing a song with animation. It went: "Oh when your up, your up, and when your down, your down, and when your only half way up, your neither, up or down." It was a great song for the children to sing on a winter day when they could not go out into the play yard to play. Their lithe young bodies would stretch up to the ceiling and then stoop clear to the floor and then come only part way up before making a quick stretch to the top and quick drop almost to the floor. Each time the song was sang the music tempo was increased until the children ultimately could not keep up the motion and would fall to the ground in a giggling heap.

Life gets like that sometimes. We rise one day to sunshine and good work and good friends and then almost instantly something happens that brings us crashing down to almost the bottom. Then our lives take another turn and we seem to be teetering somewhere between being up and down.

The problem is, as we get older and the tempo of ups and downs come faster and faster, it gets harder for us to find the "halfway up" and when we come tumbling down into a heap we find we have forgotten how to giggle, knowing it is all a part of life.

As I have grown older the "downs" of life have been the loss of friends and loved ones to death. We all know we are not going to get out of this world alive, yet when death comes to those we love it seems so wrong. Not now! my heart cries, Not yet! But I know it is now for that loved one and that I will feel pressed low for a while. In time I find myself rising out of the sadness and I see there are others who are celebrating yet another year of life and I find myself being lifted out of my sadness to celebrate their lives and I feel half way up. And then a baby is born and I feel the newness of life and I find myself stretching to the fullness of "Up", knowing that life does go on and there is newness to rejoice in.

January brought me more "down" moments and fewer "up" moments as there were no new births in my small circle. So I find I am living in a "halfway up" condition, struggling just a bit to find newness of life in other ways.

My card making list has 3 birthdays and 7 sympathy cards and 3 thinking of you cards. If I take the right attitude that seems to balance things out pretty well. I chose to begin with the birthday cards and have two to share with you this week. One should always rejoice in celebration to have another year with a friend. I hope you enjoy this weeks work and wish you the ability to fall into a heap of giggles when life comes at you faster than you can make the transition. S