. . . we were visiting relatives in North Carolina at the request of our son Gideon, experiencing wonderful hospitality from my husband Jim’s aunt, uncle, and cousins. See the post I wrote on
Thanksgiving Day, showing Gideon still almost bald from chemo, still wearing his back braces. It’s always good to reflect back about the past year on big holidays, I think, because we usually have clear memories of that day. So-called ordinary days tend to blur together, but holidays stand out. What was going on in your life last Thanksgiving? I think we will take some time tomorrow to share memories of how our lives have changed and progressed this year. Emphasizing the year as a whole may keep us from falling into cliches. How far have we come? Where do we hope to be at this time next year?
So, as I head off to the grocery store (since I’ve really procrastinated about shopping for tomorrow’s meal, and no, I’m not serving a great big turkey that won’t have time to defrost), I want to deliberately think about all the ways God has worked in our lives this year. And to appreciate what He’s doing right now. Tomorrow as we gather I want to be truly present, not stressed and harried about the meal or the cleanup afterwards. What about you? How will you deliberately cultivate thankfulness about the past year?
So yesterday I was finishing up decorating the Christmas tree, and all there was on PBS was either a fundraiser or a scrapbooking marathon (a perfectly okay hobby, I’m sure–but hours and hours of it?) and so I turned on the Seahawks/Steelers game to keep me company. (We don’t have cable, you see, so I’m limited to network TV and Netflix.) And then of course I had to watch the Broncos play New England, even though I expected it to be a total blowout. Which it wasn’t. But we won’t get into that here. Suffice it to say that my poor son’s ears are still ringing.
I would highly recommend these muffins, and you could leave off the topping if you want them to have less sugar. The amount in the muffins themselves isn’t too bad. You do have to measure a fair number of spices and grate apples. I kept trying to talk myself out of putting in the apples when I made this recipe for the first time, as I didn’t want to bother, but I decided I’d better go ahead and include them and I was glad I did. The combination of the pumpkin and the apple is really good, and the apples are probably counted as part of the liquid in the recipe. So it’s kind of a pain, but worth it. These probably aren’t muffins that you’d whip up for a regular weekday breakfast, but they’re very nice for a special occasion.
I have been hugely privileged to hear Mimi Wilson, a Christian writer and speaker, at various events, the most recent being a retreat I attended several weeks ago. She has traveled all over the world ministering with her physician husband Cal and is still doing so as much as she can in spite of her Parkinson’s disease. I can’t find a website featuring her on her own, but you can see some of her ideas about 
Here’s the list of (some of) my types:
Remember the post on “
To make Routine a Stimulus