Revelations and Blessings Had a fun weekend - on Saturday, we turned in our form for the HP Scavenger Hunt and picked up our copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at the local bookstore. By Sunday morning at 6am, I'd finished it - I was really going to try to stretch this one out and make it last... and somehow, I couldn't do it! On Sunday Snowflake and Lucky came over for lunch, pretty much the first time we've entertained since the twins were born. Petey showed off his newfound abilities by saying Snowflake's name - a truly wonderful thing as mostly his sounds have been limited to "AAAAGH!" and "uh-oh!" And yes, it was absolutely wonderful as well to see them and spend time talking about things that had nothing to do with the kids. In doing The Artist's Way again (on my Big 33 List), I've been surprised this time by having a revelation almost every week, something that never happened to me before. It's dawned on me recently just how truly and deeply blessed I am. Years ago, I gave a talk called "So Blessed" as its theme, but it seems in recent years - with the babies all so little at the same time, the twins' prematurity, the doctors, the recovery, the day to day struggle; the crushing post-partum depression - I didn't feel very blessed at all. I felt burdened. People would pass me struggling to push this mammoth triple stroller on our walks and call out, "God bless you!" and I would shout back, "Thank you! I need it!" But in the past couple of days, I have truly felt again how deeply and strongly God has blessed my life. And then I've also just realized that when people say, "I have no idea how you get so much done, you must be on special vitamins, etc." that God's blessed me in that way too by giving me extra energy and an ability to work hard and get things done quickly. I never gave it much thought before, I just always thought that was just me. But maybe I've been blessed with extra energy because God knew I'd need it to keep up with the kids and be able to do the work that makes me happy and keep everything in balance. In my studio used to be a framed note from a high-school religious education class. It said, "What you are is God's gift to you. What you become is your gift to God." Maybe it's time for me to really start thinking what to do with my gifts.