I’ve written about my passion for drafting lists, about completing items not on my list and adding them for the simple pleasure of checking them off, about the time I drafted a list of dating qualities as a widow and then filed it away at the advice of a friend only to discover later that Dan met every. single. requirement.
This blog isn’t about any of that.
During the time it set under our Christmas tree, an Amaryllis stalk sprouted in the small box. No water, no light, no nutrition. A squashed, bent-over stalk.
“I bet our neighbors are jealous of our sidewalk,” my husband commented.
Dan and I added on and refurbished our home last year. Before they would approve our permit, the brilliant city planners required we put in a sidewalk. At our expense.
I was on a roll. The words were hurtling off my fingertips onto my laptop screen like so many tennis balls sputtering out of a launching machine gone haywire.
I think we do a fairly good job of hiding ourselves from ourselves. Recently I took up a challenge issued by A.W. Tozer designed to help people discover what they might not otherwise know about themselves.
In her book Be the Gift, Ann Voskamp wrote about a close friend who was losing her battle with cancer:
My friend Elizabeth was dying, and she still hadn’t any idea how much time she actually had to live. Maybe knowing you’re dying changes everything—while actually changing nothing. Because we all know it every single day, whether we have a diagnosis or not: We all get one container of time—but no one gets to know what size that container is.
Last Christmas season, Dan and I established our first holiday tradition as newlyweds. We performed a random act of kindness, a service, or presented a gift on each of the first 25 days of December.
Dan and I had a recent conversation with one of our granddaughters who’s having a hard time at school. She moved to a new town after the school year started and a couple of the boys paid some attention to the ‘new girl’ … and now the popular girls don’t like her.
I opened the shades to discover a young buck lying under our mountain ash tree. He shouldn’t be so comfortable living in town where there are people and traffic.
But there he sits during this crazy busy holiday season—in no hurry to decorate anything, purchase anything, wrap anything, or be anywhere.
Copyright © 2025 Marlys Johnson
