Thanksgiving Everyday

Even though I clutch my blanket and growl when the alarm rings, thank you, Lord, that I can hear.

There are many who are deaf.

Even though I keep my eyes closed against the morning light as long as possible, thank you, Lord, that I can see. Many are blind.

Even though I huddle in my bed and put off rising, thank you Lord, that I have the strength to rise. There are many who are bedridden.

Even though the first hour of my day is hectic, when socks are lost, toast is burned, and tempers are short, my children are so loud, thank you, Lord, for my family. There are many who are alone.

Even though our breakfast table never looks like the pictures in magazines and the menu is at times unbalanced, thank you, Lord, for the food we have. There are so many who are hungry.

Even though the routine of my job is often monotonous, thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to work. There are many who have no job.

Even though I grumble and bemoan my fate from day to day and wish my circumstances were not so modest, thank you, Lord, for life.

Author: Unknown

The Taxi Ride

I arrived at the address and honked the horn.
after waiting a few minutes I walked to the
door and knocked.. 'Just a minute', answered a
frail, elderly voice.. I could hear something
being dragged across the floor.

After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in
her 90's stood before me. She was wearing a print
dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it,
like somebody out of a 1940's movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment
looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the
furniture was covered with sheets.

There were no clocks on the walls, no knick-knacks or
utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard
box filled with photos and glassware..

'Would you carry my bag out to the car?' she said.
I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to
assist the woman.

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.

She kept thanking me for my kindness. 'It's nothing', I
told her.. 'I just try to treat my passengers the way I
would want my mother to be treated.'

'Oh, you're such a good boy, she said.
When we got in the cab, she gave me an address
and then asked, 'Could you drive through downtown?'

'It's not the shortest way,' I answered quickly..

'Oh, I don't mind,' she said. 'I'm in no hurry.
I'm on my way to a hospice.

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening.
'I don't have any family left,' she continued in a soft voice..
'The doctor says I don't have very long.' I quietly reached
over and shut off the meter.

'What route would you like me to take?' I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city.
She showed me the building where she had once worked as an
elevator operator.

We drove through the neighbourhood where she and
her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She
had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had
once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular
building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness,
saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly
said, 'I'm tired. Let's go now'.

We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was
a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway
that passed under a portico.

Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up.
They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move.
They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door.
The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

'How much do I owe you?' She asked, reaching into her
purse.

'Nothing,' I said

'You have to make a living,' she answered.

'There are other passengers,' I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug.
She held onto me tightly.

'You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,' she
said 'Thank you.'

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning
light.. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life..

I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove
aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk.
What if that woman had got an angry driver, or one who was impatient
to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked
once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything
more important in my life.

We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve
around great moments.

But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully
wrapped in what others may consider a small
one.


PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID,
OR WHAT YOU SAID ~BUT~THEY WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER
HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL

Author: Unknown

The Praying Hands

Many of you would have seen the picture of “The Praying Hands”, which is present in many Christian homes, but would almost certainly not have heard the moving story behind this popular picture. Here is the story....

The Story Behind The Picture Of The Praying Hands

Back in the fifteenth century, in a tiny village near Nuremberg, lived a family with eighteen children. Eighteen! In order merely to keep food on the table for this mob, the father and head of the household, a goldsmith by profession, worked almost eighteen hours a day at his trade and any other paying chore he could find in the neighborhood.

Despite their seemingly hopeless condition, two of the elder children, Albrecht and Albert, had a dream.

They both wanted to pursue their talent for art, but they knew full well that their father would never be financially able to send either of them to Nuremberg to study at the academy.

After many long discussions at night in their crowded bed, the two boys finally worked out a pact.

They would toss a coin. The loser would go down into the nearby mines and, with his earnings, support his brother while he attended the academy.

Then, when that brother who won the toss completed his studies, in four years, he would support the other brother at the academy, either with sales of his artwork or, if necessary, also by laboring in the mines.

They tossed a coin on a Sunday morning after church. Albrecht Durer won the toss and went off to Nuremberg.

Albert went down into the dangerous mines and, for the next four years, financed his brother, whose work at the academy was almost an immediate sensation.

Albrecht's etchings, his woodcuts, and his oils were far better than those of most of his professors, and by the time he graduated, he was beginning to earn considerable fees for his commissioned works.

When the young artist returned to his village, the Durer family held a festive dinner on their lawn to celebrate Albrecht's triumphant homecoming.

After a long and memorable meal, punctuated with music and laughter, Albrecht rose from his honored position at the head of the table to drink a toast to his beloved brother for the years of sacrifice that had enabled Albrecht to fulfill his ambition.

His closing words were, "And now, Albert, blessed brother of mine, now it is your turn. Now you can go to Nuremberg to pursue your dream, and I will take care of you."

All heads turned in eager expectation to the far end of the table where Albert sat, tears streaming down his pale face, shaking his lowered head from side to side while he sobbed and repeated, over and over, "No ..no ...no ..no."

Finally, Albert rose and wiped the tears from his cheeks. He glanced down the long table at the faces he loved, and then, holding his hands close to his right cheek, he said softly, "No, brother. I cannot go to Nuremberg.

It is too late for me. Look ... look what four years in the mines have done to my hands!

The bones in every finger have been smashed at least once, and lately I have been suffering from arthritis so badly in my right hand that I cannot even hold a glass to return your toast, much less make delicate lines on parchment or canvas with a pen or a brush.

No, brother ...for me it is too late."

More than 450 years have passed. By now, Albrecht Durer's hundreds of masterful portraits, pen and silver-point sketches, watercolors, charcoals, woodcuts, and copper engravings hang in every great museum in the world, but the odds are great that you, like most people, are familiar with only one of Albrecht Durer's works.

More than merely being familiar with it, you very well may have a reproduction hanging in your home or office.

One day, to pay homage to Albert for all that he had sacrificed, Albrecht Durer painstakingly drew his brother's abused hands with palms together and thin fingers stretched skyward.

He called his powerful drawing simply "Hands," but the entire world almost immediately opened their hearts to his great masterpiece and renamed his tribute of love "The Praying Hands."

The next time you see a copy of that touching creation, take a second look.

Let it be your reminder, if you still need one, that no one - no one - - ever makes it alone!

Author: Unknown

A Thousand Marbles

Contributed by: Jason Lee
Author: unknown

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the basement shack with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning, turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it.

I turned the dial to the phone-frequency portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning conversation. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind, he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whoever he was talking with something about "a thousand marbles."

I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say. "Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure they pay you well, but it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter's dance recital."

He continued, "Let me tell you something, Tom, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities." And that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."

"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.

"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now stick with me Tom, I'm getting to the important part. It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy.

"So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round-up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away.

"I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.

"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time."

"It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. 73 Old Man, this is K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!"

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast."

"What brought this on?" she asked with a smile.

"Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. Hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles."

My Best Friend

By Andrew Galanopulos
Contributor: Jason Lee

The language of friendship is not words but meanings. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The agony of the final round set in off the first tee. It wasn't Sunday. There was no tournament. It was just me and Matt, my golf partner of three years, not to mention my best friend since the third grade.

We had entered the world of golf as two youngsters with cheap clubs, inspired by our fathers' stories of birdies, three-hundred-yard drives, and near-holes-in-one. For some reason these tales failed to hold true when we played with them.

Expecting to go out and conquer the game, Matt and I were quite surprised (not to mention angry) when we found ourselves humbled by a little white ball. Over time though, our swings became more controlled, good shots became more frequent, scores lower and our friendship stronger.

That summer, we entered a junior golf tour. We soon realized how much we had to learn, and how much we wanted to win. We had been in the game for two years already, and we figured all we needed was some fine-tuning to give our game the extra edge.

We played almost every day after school that year with the hope that the hard work would pay off with victory on the tour next summer. Then we got the news.

"Andrew, my dad's being transferred to Charlotte right after school," Matt said when he broke the news to me. He was moving away following our freshman year and right before the golf season would start. We had only a month left together, so we decided to make the most of it. Golf was the only way we knew how to enjoy ourselves without facing the sorrow of separation. No matter what is going on, golf helps you forget by making you concentrate on the task at hand―beating the guy you're playing with―and that was good enough for us.

We played and the time flew, and soon we found ourselves in what we realized was our final round together. We had tried to ignore it for so long, but now it hung over us. The only way to shake it was to continue the eighteen.

When all was said and done, we finished the game. Our scores were average. He beat me by three strokes.

Matt had to be home so he could wake up early in the morning and head out. We stood at the practice green waiting for his mother to come get him. Finally, she arrived.

"It was a pleasure playing with you." I held out my hand. He shook, and then I half-hugged him, like boys do when they want to be men. I saw him off the next morning.

He played on a tour at his new home, and I competed also. One day, I received a letter in the mail. It was a scorecard and a picture of the leader board. Matt was atop it. He finally won.

Over the years, I received many scorecards from Matt (unfortunately more than I sent him). I keep them in my golf bag for good luck.

I guess the magic of golf isn't the course, or the swing, or the sound you hear when you hit a solid 3-iron. It's the feeling you get when you beat your best friend, or lose to him, for that matter.

And sooner or later you realize that you didn't play every week because you were golfers; you played because you were friends.

The Moment My Life Began

By Michelle McCormick
Contributor: Jason Lee

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.~ Maori Proverb

Monday morning, 8:15 A.M. is when it happened. I lost my job. Not just any job, my first real job. This was my first professional experience outside of graduate school. I worked almost two years before my vice president called me into her office to relay the life-altering news.

It didn't take long. In fact, I kind of knew it was coming. I just sat there listening to the sad tone of my boss' voice and the other vice president who accompanied her as they talked about how much they'd miss me, how sad they were, what my severance options were and how they knew whatever I did, I would succeed. The more they spoke, the more I started to drift into a moment of complete surrender to my faith.

Just a week prior to the news, I was in Hawaii enjoying a vacation with my close girlfriends. During our weeklong getaway, we decided to skydive. I had always been a planner―a control freak―and yearned to let go of that characteristic. As I fell from the plane, I let go of all my worries and just lived in the moment. I didn't worry about deadlines, relationships, the things of this world. Instead, I took in the beauty of the sea, the mountainside and the unexplainable peace that comes from just floating and having no clue what the next moment will hold or feel like.

It was in my boss' office that morning that I reverted to the feeling I had as I took a step of faith and fell. Fell and let go of all things in my control, and trusted that life isn't about me and my plans. Instead it's about following what I believe to be true and trusting the one I believe created me.

That day was the first day of the rest of my life. I often tell my old co-workers that the day I lost my job was the best day of my life. It's the day I stopped living in a nine-to-five box and started living life as it was meant to be lived: adventurously.

The next couple of weeks were trying. But I couldn't let circumstances get me down. I was a woman who yearned to enjoy life, and no matter what my income now was, I was determined to make that dream a reality.

Two weeks after I was let go, I found myself surrounded by middle school students on a bus heading to North Carolina. I had always wanted to volunteer with youth, but never had the time due to my job and prior commitments. But since I was no longer constrained, I went on a weeklong trip as a chaperone. I was blessed to get to know some amazing girls as we shared a hotel room, and even more blessed as I watched these kids perform for various non-profits throughout the city.

Next, I went to camp as a leader. Again, I developed relationships that would benefit the middle and high school students. I was in fellowship with them, along with growing internally myself. But even more exciting things were on the horizon.

I had always wanted to go overseas on a mission trip, and in fact there was one I was very interested in. We would set up a sports camp for orphans in a desert town clear across the world. The kicker? The trip was scheduled for the same week as my biggest event at work. I could never have gone.

I applied for a passport and started to prepare for the trip. My new passport showed up in July, just days before I was asked to accompany a group of teenagers to the Dominican Republic on another mission trip. The trip would be free, since I would go as a leader and there was nothing holding me back.

My life only continued to get better. I travelled across the country. I visited London for the first time. I learned about culture, others, and myself. I had made a commitment to myself in the beginning of 2008 to make it a year of no fear, and for the first time in my life I had a free schedule to play with. I had no classes, no meetings, no work.

I had gone to school to be a writer, I was born to be a writer, and for the first time I could take the time to be a writer. My job interviews focused on writing. Continuing my education was also a big dream of mine, and I enrolled in online courses for another graduate degree. I was chasing my dreams at a time when the world was telling me to be depressed and settle for whatever I could get. The loss of my job opened doors I never would have foreseen or even attempted to venture through.

Worry vs Prayer & Praise

Worry! Why worry? What can worry do?
It never keeps a trouble from overtaking you.
It gives you indigestion & woeful hours at night,
And fills with gloom the passing days, however fair & bright.
It puts a frown upon your face & sharpness in your tone;
You're unfit to live with others & unfit to live alone.
Worry! Why worry? What can worry do?
It never keeps a trouble from overtaking you.

Pray! Why pray? What can praying do?
Praying really changes things, arranges life anew.
It's good for digestion, gives peaceful hours at night,
And fills the grayest, gloomiest days with rays of glowing light.
It puts a smile upon your face, & the love-note in your tone,
Makes you fit to live with others & fit to live alone.
Pray! Why pray? What can praying do?
It brings God's Love & power from Heaven to live & work with you.

Praise! Why praise? What does praising do?
Praise satisfies the heart of God & brings new joy to you,
Provides a tonic for the soul, & keeps you always bright
With memories of blessings sent, & joyful songs at night.
And when there's "Thank you" on your face, & the praise-note's in your tone,
Folks all will want to live with you: you'll never be alone.
Praise! Why praise? What does praising do?
Praise always says that God is good: Experience proves it true.
(Phi.4:6-7)

Author: Unknown

Have A Blessed Day

Have a Blessed Day ! ...
A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet.
He held up a sign which said: "I am blind, please help." There were only a few coins in the hat.



A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat.
He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words.
He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.


Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy.
That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were.
The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, "Were you the one who changed my sign this morning?
What did you write?"



The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way."
What he had written was: "Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it."

Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing?

Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind.
The second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind.
Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?

Moral of the Story:

Be thankful for what you have. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively.

Invite others towards good with wisdom. Live life with no excuse and love with no regrets. When life gives you a 100 reasons to cry, show life that you have 1000 reasons to smile. Face your past without regret. Handle your present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear. Keep the faith and drop the fear.

Great men say, "Life has to be an incessant process of repair and reconstruction, of discarding evil and developing goodness…. In the journey of life, if you want to travel without fear, you must have the ticket of a good conscience."

The most beautiful thing is to see a person smiling…
And even more beautiful is, knowing that you are the reason behind it!!!

Author: Unknown

Appreciation

One young academically excellent person went to apply for a managerial position in a big company.

He passed the first interview; the director did the last interview and made the final decision. The director discovered from the CV, that the youth's academic result is excellent all the way, from the secondary school until the postgraduate research - never was there a year he did not score. The director asked, "Did you obtain any scholarship in school?" and the youth answered "None".

The director asked, "Was it your father who paid for your school fees?"

The youth answered, "My father passed away when I was one-year-old. It was my mother who paid for my school fees."

The director asked, "Where did your mother work?"

The youth answered, "My mother worked as a washer-woman."

The director requested the youth to show him his hands. The youth showed a pair of hands that were smooth and perfect to the director.

The director asked, "Did you ever help your mother wash the clothes before?"

The youth answered, "Never! My mother always wanted me to study and read more books. Furthermore, my mother can wash clothes faster than me."

The director said, "I have a request, when you go back today, go and help to clean your mother's hands, and then see me tomorrow morning."

The youth felt that as the chance of landing the job was high, when he went back, he happily wanted to clean his mother's hands. His mother felt strange. She was happy but with trepidation, she showed her hands to the youth.

The youth cleaned his mother's hands slowly, his tears flowing as he did that. It was the first time he saw his mother's hands so wrinkled, and there are so many scars in her hands. Some wounds were still raw and incurred pain so intense that his mother's body shuddered when cleaned with water.

This is the first time the youth realized and experienced that it was this pair of hands that washed the clothes every day to earn for him the school fees. The scars in the mother's hands were the price that the mother paid for his graduation and academic excellence and probably his future.

After finishing the cleaning of his mother's hands, the youth quietly washed all the remaining clothes for his mother.

Next morning, the youth went to the director's office.

The director noticed the redness in the youth's eye, asked, "Can you tell what have you done and learned yesterday in your house?"

The youth answered, "I cleaned my mother's hand, and also finished cleaning all the remaining clothes"

The director asked, "Please tell me how you felt."

The youth said:

"Number 1, I learnt what is appreciation. Without my mother, there would not be the successful me today.
Number 2, I learnt how to work together with my mother. Only then could I understand how difficult and tough the job was.
Number 3, I learnt the importance and value of family relationship."

The director said, "This is what I am looking for. I want to recruit a person who can appreciate the help of others, a person who understands the suffering of others to get things done, and a person who would not put money as his only goal in life to be my manager. You are hired."

Later on, this young person worked very hard, and received the respect of his subordinates. Every employee worked diligently and as a team, the company's results improved tremendously.

A child who had been protected and habitually given whatever he wanted will develop an "entitlement mentality" and will always put himself first. He will be ignorant of his parents' efforts. When he starts working, he will assume that everybody must listen to him, and when he becomes a manager, he would never know how his employees suffer and will always blame others for anything that goes wrong. For such people, he may achieve good results and may be successful for a while, but will never realise it is team effort that resulted in the achievements. He will be self-centred and always be wanting more for himself. If we are this kind of protective parents, are we loving our children or destroying them?

You can let your children live in a big house, eat good food, learn piano, watch a big-screen TV, etc., but when you are mowing the grass, please let them experience it. After a meal, let them wash their own plates and bowls together with their brothers and sisters. It is not because you do not have money to hire a maid, but it is because you want to love them in the right way. You want them to understand, no matter how rich their parents are, one day it is their own efforts that will matter - especially to their own children.

The most important thing is that your children learn how to appreciate the efforts, experience the difficulty and learn the ability to work with others to get things done.

Contributor: Jason Lee

To Begin Again – By The Amazing Grace of God

The restaurant was crowded, and I waited at the bar until my wife's and my table was called. A fire roared nearby and a real tree stood simply in the corner, covered in small white lights and nothing else. I ordered my wife a glass of wine and sipped at my draft beer while she lingered in the bathroom.

No doubt she was drying her eyes and reapplying a third coat of mascara, I thought bitterly as I remembered the heated words and nasty barbs we had exchanged on the first leg of our trip from North Carolina to Florida.

We were going home to get a divorce. There was nothing pleasant about it. Neither of us was even trying anymore.

We had pulled over at the first nice restaurant we saw. Of course, we had passed a hundred others that either hadn't lived up to her expectations or my price range. We blamed each other the more our hunger grew.

I grunted when the hostess told us that the wait was over an hour. My wife sighed and disappeared into the ladies' room.

As I chewed on stale peanuts and ordered another beer, I watched the happy couples at the bar, basking in the firelight and looking forward to the new year that they had no doubt roared in together romantically.

My wife and I had spent the first day of the new year storming around the house, dividing the CD collection and credit card bills. We had been married for four years, so there was a lot to go over.

I watched a young couple kiss. An older couple held hands. I recalled a happier time, not too long ago, when my wife and I would have been right there with them. Lingering over cocktails at the bar on purpose instead of just rushing in to get a table, eat and get it over with.

I thought of the past year and its few ups and many downs. It had started with a job transfer, and things had gone downhill from there. My wife said goodbye to her fourth-grade students, and we packed up the car and moved ten hours away. We had no friends, no family, and our first month's phone bill was enormous.

She found a job quickly and advanced easily, while I soon realized my new job was a big disappointment. She missed her family and her students, I missed my old job, and nothing worked out right. The move cost more than we expected, we rented an expensive apartment we really didn't need, and there was nothing to do in our new town but eat and watch TV. And fight..

Resentment grew with each passing month. But instead of talking to each other and sharing our problems as we had in the past, we turned to grumbling and grousing, fussing and fighting.

How could I tell her I felt unfulfilled and defeated at my new job? The job that had caused her to uproot her whole life and follow her husband to a small town in the mountains of North Carolina?

How could she tell me she hated going into work every morning and felt unfulfilled without being in a classroom?

In the end, neither of us told the other anything. When we spoke at all, it was to yell or accuse or snipe or bark.

My wife appeared at the bar, looking beautiful despite her puffy, cried-out eyes. I felt guilty at her tears, and each drop was like a knife in my heart. There was a time in our life when the thought of making her cry had brought tears to my own eyes. But now each drop was like some stupid point on an invisible scoreboard.

I watched her cross the room and felt a lurch inside my stomach as I thought of my life without her.

"How do I look?" she asked instinctively, and I had to laugh. It was a question she asked constantly, all through the day and night. An inside joke we'd shared for years, soon to be shared no more.

She thought I was laughing at her makeup, and she quickly downed her wine with a sour expression on her face that had nothing to do with the vintage.

Our last name was finally called, and we rushed through soup and rolls. Silver clinked on fancy plates and we chewed in silence. There was so much I wanted to say to her, but after all that we had decided, what was the point?

Telling her I still loved her would only make our decision that much more difficult.

After ordering dinner I excused myself to go to the men's room, stopping on the way to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Not surprisingly, her body clenched at my touch.

While inside the men's room I heard the door burst open behind me and then the sound of water running, but my flushing couldn't cover the sound of sobbing as I emerged from the stall.

A middle-aged man in a collared shirt and Dockers stood blubbering in front of the sink. He snuffled and snorted when he saw me, and I reached for paper towels and handed them to him in an unceremonious lump. He used them all and still the tears flowed. His face looked ruddy and flushed, and his washed-out eyes beseeched me to understand as he explained himself through his sobs.

"I'm sorry," he choked. "It's just... the tree and the lights. I thought I was ready. I thought I could do all this. But then I heard the Christmas music and I just... it's the new year already. Why do they have to keep playing them? I just couldn't do it. I'm sorry. I tried."

"Tried to do what?" I asked gently, hoping I wasn't prying. His pain seemed so intense, it was all I could do not to join him myself.

"Be... normal," he explained, blowing his nose shortly after. "My wife. You see... she died six weeks ago and I―"

"Six weeks!" I shouted, fear clutching my young heart. "I couldn't get out of bed if my wife had passed away six weeks ago." Despite the current state of affairs of my marriage, I suddenly realized this statement was all too true.

He nodded, as if I had any idea what kind of pain he was experiencing.

"I know," he nodded again. "I know. But... I managed to make it through Thanksgiving by drinking my way through a tropical cruise. I even managed to eat and sleep my way through Christmas. And... I thought I should be well by now.

"But Christmas was always her favorite. I never stopped to listen to all of those silly Christmas songs until this very night. My appetizer came, my drinks, my salad. It all just sat there while I listened to the words. Over and over. Then I just started bawling. I'm sorry, you must think me a fool."

Just then the men's room door burst open again, nearly knocking me to the ground. Two young men of college age rushed to surround the crying man. They wore expensive sweaters and grave expressions and called him "Dad."

They asked if he was all right and turned their backs to me as they cleaned their father up in private.

The small room grew crowded, and I left them to their task. I wanted to ask the man how long he and his wife had been married, but by the age of his grown sons I assumed it was well beyond twenty years.

I watched my wife's young face aglow in the candlelight, her fine hands curved around the stem of her wine glass. My legs felt leaden as I joined her at her seat, taking the chair beside her and pulling her into my arms just as the tears came.

"What's wrong?" she whispered into my hair as I clung to her chest. Her tone held no scorn, only bare and naked concern that her husband should feel pain.

After so many hateful words, so many petty barbs, I was still her husband.

"I'm sorry," I said, looking into her eyes.

Her tears spoke her truest fears, and in seconds we were tripping all over each other's apologies. Relief overflowed our hearts as we spoke.

"I'll find a job back home," I sputtered. "I'll work two jobs, whatever it takes. I miss our family, I―"

"We'll both find jobs," she joined. "You'll see. We'll be fine. We'll start all over. Last year was horrible. This year will be fresh and..."

When our apologies and plans were spent, she held me close and whispered two words in my ear: "What happened?"

But how could I explain that in one quick bathroom visit I had lost her, and then found her, all at the same time?

Author: Rusty Fischer
Contributor: Bro Jason Lee

YEAR 2011- THIS IS WEIRD BUT IT IS TRUE

This year we will experience four unusual dates, 1/1/11, 1/11/11, 11/1/11, and 11/11/11.

NOW...go figure this out:-

Take the last two digits of the year you were born

Plus the age you will be THIS year, and it will equal to 111

Example: Born 1941
Birthday this year: 70
Add: 41 + 70 = 111

Fortunately, it did not turn out to be 666, else we have to bring in 777.....