The Christmas Note By Trenton Hughes

Christmas is about the sacrifice Christ made for us.  It is about the birth of Jesus.  It is about giving.  It is about hope and joy.  Life is about living and doing.  Life is about loving what you have and not what you could have.  Life is about giving and caring.  Life is about love.  Both of these are things I never would have realized without you.

Remember Me By Brian L. MacLearn

Living is all about today and being thankful for what is right and good in your life.  It's learning to deal with and overcoming the bad things that occur along the way.

Happy is still a long way from contented --  being at peace with one's own place in the world.  Contented people knew where they belonged and not only accepted it, they embraced it.

You are either with "Him" or you aren't.  You might turn away...believe you are doing it all on your own, but you always take comfort knowing God is there waiting for when you need him, just like a loving parent stays in the background and allows their children to face their own way in the world.

God makes all things possible, and when you accept Him, you accept all the unknowns as part of the reality.

We have all kinds of love and relationships within our lives, but the one connection that binds two hearts is the most cherished of them all.

Between a Rock and a Hot Place By Tracey Jackson

Fifty is not the new thirty....It's a period so full of changes, adjustments, and loss that the reconfiguration of your life and psyche almost becomes a full-time job.  One of the most confusing things about being fifty is that there is really no game plan in place.  No matter what trail you end up taking, there is a very clear life map from twenty to fifty....much of a female's childhood is spent fantasizing about and play-acting all the fabulous things that will happen between twenty and fifty.  Someday my prince will come...playing house...You grow up, you get out of school, you fall in love and out of it several times, you get your heart broken and mended and broken and mended until it resembles a crazy quilt.  During this period you get a job, then you get better at your job, and eventually you get a better job.  One day you finally find a guy who calls back, says what he means, and loves the fact all your soup cans have to be aligned, so you get married.

With luck you stay married.  But if you fall into the half of people whose marriages collapse, chances are you can find someone else by forty-five.  Buth then---dum de dum dum dum--fifty...things will start falling apart; some marriages end...some jobs are terminated, most faces fall, and all boobs do.  But no one bothered to fill us in on this.

No one gives women a game plan for a hearty last thirty years....Fifty....arrives with baggage.

You find yourself crying.....Losing the remote--or, worse, pushing the wrong button so the screen ends up all fuzzy and no matter what you do, you can't get the picture back--can send you into a total mental meltdown.  This is what actually happens.  No one prepares you for it, and so you think you are losing your mind along with every other part of yourself you have known for the last forty years.  When your mind seems like it's going in mid-conversation and you can't remember Nixon's first name, it feels like the next stop is the assisted-living home....I ask you: is there anything less appealing that a wrinkled, dry, emotionally out of whack woman who can't remember Nixon's name, spontaneously bursts into tears at the thought of her childhood dog, and is perpetually overheated?...Suddenly you can't sleep, or you can get to sleep but you wake up every hour on the hour.

Men may not go through the syptoms, but they are the recipients of much of the fallout.

Come fifty, we are supposed to get tested on a regular basis for a multitude of possible health disasters.  This indicates we have arrived at the place where---well, shit happens....The age range between fifty and sixty-five is sometimes referred to as the Bermuda Triangle of health.

Most women will end up much worse off financially than when they started or were in their middle years....By the time they hit fifty many women end up divorced, some widowed....Once you hit fifty, your big moneymaking years may be either behind you or winding down....Spend less than you make.....If you start now, you have a couple of decades to build up something, even if you are not making what you once were...The truth is, we really do have to start getting more serious about money in our fifties, no matter what our situation may be.

If you are divorced and working and you don't have to support kids, living below your means is a great way to go.....You may be living below your means already and still be unable to save....You still have time.  You have time to save.  Time to learn to live with less.  Time to reevaluate your needs.  Time to stash away that extra money...The day will come for most people when we'll be living off what we have saved; we will have what we have at that point, and no more will be coming in.

Many women end up alone at fifty anyway, sometimes of their choosing, many times not.  Numerous changes happen in relationships at this time of life.  Some women get left.  It sucks, it's unfair, but it happens every day....Life is a process of finding out that you're not that special, that whatever can happen to anybody else can happen to you....Doing you is all you can do.  And more likely than not you will be exactly what someone is looking for.  But to make it happen takes time, effort, and sometimes patience.

I believe it is better to be peaceful alone than miserable with someone.  I have been there, and being unhappy when you are actually in a relationship is lonelier and more depressing than simply being on your own and actively doing things to make yourself a new future.  Sadly, many women don't understand this and stay in bad relationships because they figure it's better to be with someone than with no one....You can choose to be happy, and happy does not always mean a man and a relationship....In your fifties there is still time to start over....You're not going to see your golden anniversary, but if you start from scratch in your fifties and if you both live out your life expectancy, you can be married for thirty years.

Great relationships involve a certain magic that is hard to find.  Good ones sometimes are the result of patience and a dose of settling for perhaps a little less than you were hoping for.

Half of fifty-year-olds have lost at least one parent.  If they haven't lost one, they are taking care of one, worrying about one, or very likely dealing with the health issues of one or both.

....even if you believe in the afterlife...it still doesn't make living on planet Earth easier without those you loved.

Wildflower Bride in Dry Creek By Janet Tronstad

"You can trust me," she whispered.  "I know what my feelings are.  They're not going to go away tomorrow because some new and exciting thing happens...."

"It's our father," Wade answered, his words slow and deliberate...."don't you see--you did everything you could think of to make him respect you.  Thinking then that he'd love you and accept you."
"You're still doing it," Wade said.  "Taking on the hardest, most dangerous jobs and not giving up when any rational person would."
"It's not trusting other people that's troubling you," Wade said.  "It's letting them love you without you earning it that's the problem."

The Siren's Call By Matthew S. Urdan

When tragedy strikes, there's not much left to do except to turn to friends and family for support, if they're the type who will give it.  Or you can turn to God...A dog will always understand and be there to support you no matter what the crisis.

If someone dies in the family -- whether it be an adult or a newborn baby, or even the despised cat, the dog will mope around all dejected and forlorn for days or even weeks.

Ultimately, however, you have to rely on yourself and find some way to deal with life's worst moments.

I'm not trivializing human friendships.  But they're rarely based on unconditional love, admiration, and respect.  When you find a friendship like that, you find proof of God's existence.  And when you're in a friendship like that, and one of you is hurting, it's possible to imagine the depths of God's sorrow as man breaks His heart over and over again.

"I need you.  A lot.  But you need me too.  So don't push me away because you think I have too many problems to deal with that I can't handle yours....If we can't count on each other, if we can't heal our souls here, together, then...where does that leave us?"

We are always changing.  And while at some times life doesn't seem bearable, that feeling will change.

When you meet someone and you fall in love, and you are closer to each other than cells inside your own body, there should be no fear at all.  Just a oneness.

"When I'm with you, I feel greater than myself.  I have no fear, no doubts, no indecision.  When I'm with you, I feel like I can...almost reach out and touch God's hand....it doesn't get any better than this.  We're a match.  We are meant to be together."

Now that some time has passed, there's no regret.  Our lives had been charmed.  Even though the time we had together was short, it was full with a lifetime of experiences and fun, with some great hurt, but most of all, love.

Let the Dead Lie By Malla Nunn

Leading a company of soldiers through war confirmed that nothing was sacred or precious.

The need to chase life in order to outrun death was a soldier's response to fear.

A Happy Marriage By Rafael Yglesias

...to encourage and console her, to cheer and to love her although he was scared to the bone, sick to the sould with fear.

He had waited a year for his father to succumb to a terminal cancer, and he had learned from the surprise he felt at the event that no warning of the incredible fact of mortality could adequately prepare the primitive brain nature had given him to comprehend its finality.

"You have to help me!" she gasped for air as if her feelings were strangling her.  "I can't do this without you!  I can't do this alone!  I don't have the strength to argue!  I need you to fight them for me!"

"...The Women want men to make the move...you have to show her, you're not just another friend."

"He introduced us....He brought me to you."
There were times, this was one of them, when Enrique would not breathe or speak for a moment, afraid that he would shake with the sobs he sometimes indulged when he was alone.  Overpowering sadness rose and crashed within him, a wave that thundered and drowned him, and soon disappeared without a trace on the flattened sand.

Enrique was losing the partner of his past and his present and his future just when he most desired her choreography.

..he resented them all for asking him to make them feel better that a part of their world was ending, when the very center of his was melting in his palms, slipping through his fingers, spilling onto the floor.  Soon, very soon, only a puddle of his heart would remain.

They were trying hard not to weep, presumably in the belief their tears would make Margaret feel worse, although they would, in fact, have made her feel loved.

What she longed to receive from them was acceptance and admiration.

...for a long time she had come first with him, that for many years she had been his heart's home and his mind's anchor and that fighting to keep her alive was essential to preserving his own soul.

Their times alone together gave him the most pleasure.

They had different tastes, and sometimes wanted different things from each other, and yet they had lived a happy life together.

"...I don't have any self-esteem, but I'm in love with you and I want you, I want all of you....I want you to marry me and worship me..."

...he hoped to avoid exposing her to the dread he felt at living without her.  He certainly hoped to say nothing that would hurt her...

...he wanted to tell her what she had meant to him, and to hear what he had meant to her, because soon there would be only the loneliness of monologue.

...it rang false to stay angry about anything, including death, since death was, after all, the most even-handed consequence of being alive.

...I love you, I will miss you more than anything in life, and thank you for managing to love me, the difficult, childish, malformed me, thank you, thank you, thank you...

"Thank you, Enrique.  Thank you for making my life fun.  I would have lived such a stupid life...Some dumb life, just a stupid, boring life without you."

...he wanted her because, while in her arms, he felt safe.

...what he had extracted of true value out of life was the life she had given him.

...he had come not only to need her but to love her more profoundly than ever; not as a trophy to be won...but as a full partner, skin of his skin, head of his heart, and heart of his soul.

...he felt that he was without someone who knew his real self, that he was without a place to rest, without, in a word, a home.  He had been unaware that he felt unknown and lost in the world until he met Margaret....but he did know that while gazing into Margaret's eyes he felt safe.

He grabbed her, and it came right out, although he'd never formed the thought before.  "I'm scared you'll stop loving me.  I'm so scared you won't love me anymore."
"I'm never going to stop loving you," she said as easily as if she were ordering a meal.  "You're my life," she said simply....He felt relief, a long sigh of gratitude that the race had been run, that for all his mistakes, for all his failures, for all the wear and tear he had doled out, for all that he had smashed and given away of love and good intentions and grand ambitions, for all his errors there had been an unexpected mercy, and he had not been punished.  Life had given him Margaret to make him whole.

The true nature of this separation was revealed to him as they neared the final departure.  Part of his self belonged to her and so would travel with her.  Abandoned.

...he could tell her, not these fears about his future without her, but how great the gift of her time and her affection had been, and how grateful he was to have had her, not only for all of his adult life but even for a single day.

"....You're what made my life work."

"....You'll never get away.  You'll move in with me, we'll get married...You'll be here forever," she whispered, and in the ocean of her being, he let go of the frightened air trapped in his heart, he exhaled the despair of his soul and he thought with glee: "I'm home!  I'm home!  Thank God, I'm home!"