New Blog

A brilliant young woman recently told me that it would be so neat to write down memories of my dad to someday share with my children, my neices and nephews, and other family members. This new blog will serve as my personal journal to document all of my favorite memories of my dad before old-age overtakes me and I forget :)! His new blog is http://jamesmillermemories.blogspot.com if you would like to start following along!! I have yet to decide whether I will make this new blog private or not, but for right now it's open to the public! Of course, I will continue to write on this blog too- No worries:)!

I hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend! One of my best friends is getting married this Saturday, so I will ask you to pray for them as they begin their new lives together!!!

~JM~

100th Post & 21st Birthday!!

Yesterday (February 17th) was my 21st birthday!! I can't believe I've lived this beautiful life for 21 years, almost a quarter of a century:)!! I found it so neat that my birthday fell on my 100th post, so I thought I would dedicate this post to my angel in heaven, my daddy, which was the reason that I began this journey on blogger. He is the reason I am the woman I am today and he represents all of the dreams that I hope to accomplish down the road. I will never be able to express the love and respect I have for him and for the life that he lived!! I miss him with every breath that I breathe.... When I close my eyes at night, I can see him smiling down on me, especially on this day, and jumping for joy in celebration at the mark of another year of my life!

His bracelet I wore in memory of him on my birthday! (A special thanks to John Peanut who had it sized to fit my tiny wrist :)

~JM~

There Is a God

Do you ever have moments when you feel that you need a little push? A little inspiration to go about your day? I have these moments sometimes, and one night as I was lying awake, unable to sleep, I turned on the radio and heard this song! It was truly amazing and it felt that God was speaking right into my heart. If you haven't heard the song, "There Is a God" by Leann Womack, I encourage you to watch!! This song is absolutly beautiful!!!



~JM~

Finding the Joy

From this very month to all of the February's that will come to pass, I am going to yearn for joy, happiness, and laughter. Just as it felt last year around my birthday, it feels the same this year. Once again, I'm going to need prayers of strength, hope, and peace. It is so hard for me to master the concept of moving on as I come to the close of another year of my life. I've been 15 months without my biggest fan, and just as I felt I was being lifted from my knees, I get knocked back down again. I know it's going to take time, I know that this grief-filled pit in my heart will never fully heal, and I know that my memories of him will always remind me of happier times... but I want to feel strength, and right now I feel that I have none. So, to my wonderful blogger-friends, I guess I'm asking you to remember me in your prayers in this next week. Pray that I can find happiness, love, and laughter because I know that is what he is experiencing right now, and that's exactly what we would be doing if he would still be here!!

Love,
JM

Symbol of your Life

For one of my education classes, we were to choose one item that we felt represented our lives to this particular day. When given this information, I left school thinking, "ONE item that represents my life- are you kidding? I have at least 20!!" But the more I thought about it, the more I kept coming back to this one particular item. Not because it would be different, but because it sustained and represented both sides of my family for years and years before I was born. I found this topic very interesting because I actually got to dig into my family's history (which I love doing), and learn about very special people that I never had the opportunity to meet. This fact deeply touched my heart because, as I was reading, I realized that I was reading about grandparents I had never met, and that one day my children will be curious about their grandpa they never got to meet. It's hard to think that one day my children will never be thrown in the air and caught in his strong arms, or hear his laughter when they say something silly. It's hard because only I will know what they are missing, they will never know, because they never had it... But anyway, I'll share a little paragraph of what I chose to represent me:

Head coverings are simply a symbol that represents the Mennonite religion and its beliefs and practices. In my family, coverings worn by women have been passed down from generation to generation, developing a history of changes that time has brought to the religion. I feel that a covering represents my life to date because it is a symbol of who I am as an individual, where I come from, and the beliefs that my family stands firm upon. It describes the characteristics of the ancestors who went before me, the lives that they lived, and the faith that they believed in. They passed it down to their children so that one day it could be passed down to me and to my future family. I believe in tradition, I believe in family, and I believe that knowing where one comes from is a sense of self that can never be replaced. My family is Mennonite. Wer bist du?
(Who are you?)

~JM~