It is hard to believe another year is coming rapidly to a close. My head is spinning from all the action of the last ten days! Time with friends and family is precious and we’ve been blessed with so much.

Wind and blowing snow brought us back home Christmas night to the blessing of a warm home. We are fortunate to have found love together. We are blessed to have loving family. We are honored to cherish deep and rich friendships. The sunrise still takes our breath away.

The Christmas lights, the smell of our tree and the ornaments-each one special, and the shiny tinsel bring peace and calm and I think about my two baby boys who both loved to stare up into the lights on the tree when they were tiny and it mesmerized them. What is it about Christmas time that lifts our spirits and reminds us that our differences don’t matter?

As they say: we need to go to the balcony together to be able to look down and see that we really all want the same things, that we all love and hurt, that we are all ‘others’ to someone, and that we can embrace our differences and sit across the table in communion even so. If God is for us, who can be against?