Are you having any fun?

Safeway did an ad campaign with Tony Bennett’s rendition of “Are You Having Any Fun?” a few years ago and that is when I knew I loved his version best, though it is one of those old songs that have been recorded by lots of singers.  And besides it being a happy-day-making song, it asks a good question- better, I think, than questions about where you think you’ll be in 5 years and whether or not you feel on target to own everything you ever wanted to own or have accomplished everything on your bucket list.  It is simple: are you having any fun?

If you read me at all you know I am waaaaaaaaaay too serious and prone to melancholy and consider my glass-is-half-empty tendancies to simply be realistic expectations.  But as God has been revealing to me from His own Word how much he intended J O Y to play a part in our lives, well, I am on a quest for it.  It is treasure.  When I find it (which He lovingly allows over and again), I am renewed and restored and healed and strengthened, just like Father knew I would be.  Wow, He is good.  Yes, He is!

Mi Familia

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them. ~Desmond Tutu

Our late March -to- mid June months are a crazy-filled 90 days of family birthdays and celebrations.  I mean, we see each other a-lot!  We have 3 kid birthdays and 6 adult birthdays, Mother’s Day, Easter, Father’s Day, school programs, craft days, Heaven Fest intensifying: all good stuff.  But it works because my kids are all so creative and thoughtful.  They choose to change up locales, houses or parks.  They theme things with kick-ball games or a New York-style food night.  The grandbebes might order a 3-tier cake for  one week and a stacked-donut volcano the next.  It keeps it interesting and creates an ebb and flow of good times and laughter and getting to watch my granbebes running madly through life, short legs carrying giant personalities.

I’m rich!

Is family life an efforrt?  You betcha.  You didn’t get to choose the family you’d get.  But you choose to stay a family.  You choose to do what it takes to love and build and be with the people God ordained to be in your life.  Love.  Family. Use it or lose it.  It is something I go after with intentionality.  It is what I have covenanted my life to. 

I don’t care how poor a man is; if he has family, he’s rich. ~Dan Wilcox and Thad Mumford, “Identity Crisis,” M*A*S*H   TV show

I assembled brief moments of my May days into a video as a reminder of where the joy came from.  It was a busy month.  It was a beautiful month.  The calendar was full, and my heart was enlarged with love and gratefulness.  You won’t see the times I cried or failed or maybe made some one feel bad or was tempted to take offense.  You won’t see my way- unrighteous moments or  hear my constant self-doubt or times of anxiousness.  Those things happened too.  It’s called life. 

So don’t mistake the fact that I am sharing the j-o-y for thinking I am just lucky and sailing through life unscathed.  Oh, I get scathed, baby! ;)  This also is not an attempt at painting pretty, but false pictures, either.  But it is a sliver of my chosen treasure, the blessed moments, the transcendant times in the Presence, May days and nights when joy was mine, a gift of favor from a loving, faithful God.  I can’t remember everything, so I have decided what I will remember – and these are some of those times of rejoicing and they are God and they are good.  And they are mine.

I guess it’s a “vlog”? 

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. ~Erma Bombeck

What June will bring?

There will be birthday gatherings and putting up the pool (pool parties to come), lots of grass mowing (the mower is humming along as we speak!) and gardening and cooking for crowds (for 100 tomorrow night!).  Dappled sunlight and music by moonlight, summer and crickets’ song, kids squealing and sidewalk chalk and pots of pretty flowers.  A recital to benefit the exploited, fast-paced festival-planning days vs. lemonade as I swing on the patio times.  Father’s Day and Heaven Fest Sundays.  June will bring even extended family times as we jet to Chicago for Moslander-Family-Reunion (Ross-the-Boss, Mrs-Moss, and all-the-little-Landers…I am a “little Lander”).  June is shaping up to be lovely.  I will watch for the joy…and I’ll let you know where I find it!

Family is just accident…. They don’t mean to get on your nerves. They don’t even mean to be your family, they just are. ~Marsha Norman

Thank-You, LORD, for mine.