Life is life

The morning was beautiful, like something from a poem on the loveliness of late spring.

The mist curled up from the ditches that criss-cross our neighborhood in Lacombe, playfully dancing toward a light-blue sky.

It was 6:15 a.m. and we were walking, part of the Turner plan for living, going out for two miles every day, throwing in a three-mile walk a couple times a week. Low carbs, high miles...the recipe for diabetic living.

The temps were still playing hookie, but as the workers in the neighborhood found their cars and headed off to their jobs on this bright and shining morning, everyone with half a brain knew that the heat would join us soon. The quiet and stillness of the morning was broken only by the occasional car cranking or a dog taking umbrage at us walking Logan, our terrier mix, through the neighborhood, their neighborhood. At one place, three horses who say hello to us every day, turned and smiled as we walked past. They were waiting to be fed, which happens around 7 each morning. Their focus was on breaking their fast, not on coming to be petted by Mary the horse lover.

We slipped into our walk casually and gratefully, knowing that both our bodies could have begun a protest three months ago when all this began, but our bodies -- knees, hips, backs -- have so far not prevented us from heading out each morn.

This morning Gabe, our six-year-old grandson, remained sleeping in the only bed still standing from my moving and packing. He had a baseball game last night (a triple in the second inning on a well-hit ball that belied the fact he was among the smallest on the team) and he was beat. We explained we would be walking, and he asked what happens if he wakes up and we're not there. We told him to tell Sammie, the broad youngster in our family of dogs, a story. He thought that was neat and agreed.

The point of all this is that life is what you make of it. They told us we had a problem with weight and with our food intake, and after praying for help, lo and behold, we've done something about it. We've lost, Mary and I, close to 90 pounds between us. Our blood sugar is down. Our blood pressure is down. Our stamina is up.

God said to the prophet Amos a couple of years ago, "The days are coming," declares the LORD,when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman
and the planter by the one treading grapes.
New wine will drip from the mountains
and flow from all the hills.

14 I will bring back my exiled people Israel;
they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them.
They will plant vineyards and drink their wine;
they will make gardens and eat their fruit.

15 I will plant Israel in their own land,
never again to be uprooted
from the land I have given them,"
says the LORD your God."

Oh, doesn't that sound wonderful. A time when a people who had been beaten and brought low by circumstance and a conquering nation would be restored. Things would be swell again.

God didn't mention in that wonderful description, however, that things like the Holocaust would occur as well. God didn't bring up that for every moment Israel spent in rebuilding the temple, some other conquerer would be plotting to overthrow this little nation.

The point is this: At this moment Mary and I have tons of energy, lots of motivation, gallons of hope. God's blessings are evident. Money came in the mail, so to speak, that we weren't expecting and on and on.

But if we simply rely on what we see, we will never understand God's true blessings, which are often completely unseen.

We know a woman who was told that when she received a kidney transplant, she would be in the hospital for three to five days. It turned into a 50-day stay, and the wound is still partially open and still incredibly painful. The question is, knowing now what she must go through, would she do it again? I pray she would, for that is life.

The mist joins the clouds in our neighborhood and the white pesters the blue of the sky. The sun bakes the dew off the grass and spring joins summer in a playfully exhuberant cycle, dealing cards from the top of the deck. Just yesterday a storm popped up and sprayed the area with heavy wind and a bit of hail. But the promise of this day is it will be clear and hot and the sun has heard and reacted.

Life is life, and God blesses it daily, though the humidity, through clear sky and even through the storms. Maybe especially through the storms. When things blow up, He brings restoration for those who request and accept. Life is life, God's best gift to us all.