Words to live by.
Judging from the cards and letters I’ve received this holiday season, 2016 was a uniformly bad year. My friend Carolyn said it best: “Goodbye 2016 – You sucked!” Her father died and her husband was diagnosed with leukemia. Another friend lost her husband. One of my longest-term friends was in a bad auto accident and is now walking with a brace on one foot. I think it’s part of aging. The cloak of invincibility becomes frayed and is easy to breach.
My wishes for 2017 are summarized on these two little stones I keep next to my computer. These are legacies of my days doing triathlons with a group of women from my church, the mighty Team UUC. The perseverance stone (someone else did the spelling) was from my first year as a “triathlete”, when I was on a relay team with two other women. I wrote resilience on the left stone after a kidney cancer scare the following year. Many of the women in my group got through even worse events. The support we gave each other through group training sessions, monthly potlucks, and coffee hours after services were essential to endure the rough spots and finish the race. May we all develop the perseverance and resilience needed to face the challenges ahead of us. Happy new year.
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