Christmas on the Road

La Quinta view, but not in California

Here I sit looking out a south window at a motel pool  as snowy ice pellets hit the water's surface creating dazzling modern art forms. Today, December 25, this is my Norman Rockwell Christmas painting, and, like so many of my 64 Christmases, we are on the road.  Christmas on the road has taken me to New Orleans, Chicago, Pasadena, Miami, Florida (and my Miami, OK), Dallas, Wichita and many other tiny towns and truck stops of the old two lane highways and Route 66.  Very few Christmas's were ever spent in our home, as a child or now as an adult, but I'm oh so blessed to have celebrated uniquely.

There were years when Christmas was a struggle; when I forgot the true meaning of Christmas; when I worried that it wouldn't be perfect; when I compared our children's Christmas, divided with divorced parents and brought together in a combined family, to those of one happy home.  I'd gotten lost in maize of looking for the perfect painting.    One day in a silent prayer for guidance a gentle voice reminded me that Christmas lives in our hearts, and to open my heart to his love to his words.  Watching now as the ice pellets turn to snowflakes, the birds flutter in the trees, a cardinal perches on a bush in front of me, I am refreshed in the beauty of the moment, my heart is open and it is Christmas.  Merry Christmas World.