Yesterday I told you I’d share my word for the new year with you today. Are you ready? My word is:
READY!
Ready for whatever unexpected blessings God sends my way.
Open. Receptive. Perceptive. Accepting. Ready!
How about you? Have you decided on your 2023 word? My friend, Terry, chose “Connections.” Your word is??
Love and God’s blessings to you from JanBeek ❤️
At the base of each drying leaf Is a bud full of life and potential Waiting patiently for summer’s heat Or winter’s cold to pass Knowing Spring will …
A Bud of Hope for the New Year
I hope you can open the link to read the blog I am posting. It is such a beautiful poem by Dwight at Roth Poetry. .
[Sedoka is a Japanese poetic form comprising 38 syllables in a sequence of 5, 7, 7, 5, 7, 7.]
It is the invitation from d’Verse Poetry today…
Last Day Sedoka
When my last day comes
Won’t be a celebration
Not one that I can attend
So I’ll celebrate
Last day of twenty-twenty
With a Hip-hip and Hooray!!
Jan Beekman
Check out my inspiration for this Sedoka at
https://poetscornerblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/31/last-day-sedoka/
I can embrace the future.
I can be ready for a fresh start.
I can take time to review
This past year and take heart.
Take heart that new beginnings
Offer us blessings to uncover.
Take heart that compassion’s awakened;
We’ve new opportunities to discover.
I can embrace the promises
That change and growth bestow.
I can be energized by
Welcoming strangers I’ve yet to know.
I can embrace the reality
Of dreams yet to fulfill,
Knowing God is ever faithful
When I’m living in His will.
I can embrace the coming year
With prayers for those in need –
And reach out to serve the hurting
With generosity – release the greed!
I embrace the coming decade
And hope to live rightly through it.
I embrace the coming vaccine –
It’ll be effective – we always knew it.
We knew that this pandemic
Could not stay with us forever.
There are too many blessed people
Out there who are creative and so clever.
But I am not waiting for the shot
To stop the misery and relieve the pain.
I embrace the fact that LOVE
Is what will make us whole again!
So, PEACE, my dear WP friends,
I send you the best medicine of all
For the end of this misery-filled year:
A smile, a virtual hug, a word of grace, an answer to your call.
Just like Bob Goff, Love Does,
He puts his cell phone number on his book covers.
Call on me … and I will answer every time:
(406) 599-9678
Happy New Year!
Big Embraces to you,
With Love, JanBeek
No, I don’t want to go back!
I don’t want to revisit the old normal.
Surely as we move from 2020
to a new year, we’ll create a better normal.
This is my prayer this Christmas:
Lord, help us learn what You
have in mind for us to learn
from this rare year we’ve just survived.
With his permission, I am sharing with you the first part of a Christmas letter I received this week from my former pastor, Rev. Brent Mitchell. He is a master wordsmith! He said what’s in my heart so much better than I could have said it.
“Mark it how you will,
2020 was a year not lost,
but forever to be remembered
for both its absences
and its unexpected gifts.
By the middle of March,
it became apparent that
what we thought as normalcy
had left its predictable confines
for parts unknown,
leaving no forwarding address.
Masked and gloved,
we were left to fend for ourselves
absent even the comfort
of shaking hands
or intimate conversations,
the communion around tables,
camaraderie of birthdays celebrated,
the sacred closeness of hospital visits.
Absent of the humanizing connectivity,
of those familiar and holy intersections,
we were left to laugh alone,
to cry alone,
and hope in seclusion.
It cost us treasures we never knew
were so valuable
and time that cannot be recalled.
“But admit it:
There were unexpected gifts.
There were letters we finally wrote,
the books we never touched until now,
the prolonged stillness that allowed us to think again,
and listen to what our hearts were saying.
We talked to God
because the hours got quiet enough
to hear His still small voice.
It happened because we watched enough TV
to realize we had watched TV enough,
and golden silence gave us gifts
that weren’t insipid.
“I think, in short, that if we were paying attention,
not only did we get older,
but almost certainly wiser
because even a painful awareness
of what lurks in our hearts and minds
is worth more than gold.
The gift was rediscovering
at a visceral level
that we really are never alone;
nor in the absence of everyone,
are we left unloved.
“My prayer is that when this is over,
The Mitchell Musings
and it will one day be over,
we won’t forget the things we learned
the hard way this year:
that God willing,
we’ll never go back
to the tired normalcy of endless distractions,
of busyness as usual,
and the noise that never ends.”
December 2020
Thanks for visiting JanBeek.
I leave with you my hopes and wishes
for a most Blessed Christmas.
22 at Bob’s 80th
Holidays are family time.
We enjoy them through and through.
We gathered here to laugh and celebrate.
We hope your family blesses you, too.
From nearly two to eighty years,
We spanned the decades here,
And each of us added a spark
To greet this coming year.
A brother from central California,
A sister and her husband from Oregon came –
Friends from north and two daughters from east
All traveled with their purpose the same:
Happy Birthday, Dad, Brother, Grampy & Friend!
Thank you for enriching our days.
May the year ahead bring you health and cheer,
And the Good Lord bless you in countless ways!
As we move into the new and remember the past,
May old friends remain near in our souls.
May our love of Life and the Lord permeate our acts
And reflect in our daily walk and our goals.
Happy New Year!
Happy Birthday!
and
God Bless You!
What did you do to ring in the new year??
Have a Very Happy New Year!
I hope it starts off and ends on the right foot!!
❤ God Bless You ❤
“The new year lies before you like a spotless tract of snow; Be careful how you tread on it, for every mark will show.” This quote is part of the inspiration of the Auld Lang Syne YouTube video at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxSqMbsHeJ8. I am grateful to my friend who sent this to me. I am thankful to each of you on WordPress who shared your inspirational stories, quotes, poems, pictures, and links with us in 2012. I hope you will be encouraged to continue to share your wisdom in 2013. God Bless You with a happy, healthy, meaningful, blessed new year. Tread carefully. Leave your footprints on my heart. Let me tiptoe occasionally on yours, too, OK?
Hugs to You !!
Inspire to Love
Let the SonShine!
You inspire me to respond
Learning to Live; Living to Learn; Learning to Love; Living in Love
JanBeek 
Written
on January 6, 2013