a year of big anniversaries

40 YEARS AGO  we graduated from college, got married and moved across country so I could go to grad school at Virginia Tech.  (The order of the previously listed events is based on chronology, not importance.)

30 YEARS AGO after completing a Fulbright Lectureship at a Nigerian university,  we moved to a little college town in Northern New York.  The Sunday before Labor Day I attended Christian Fellowship Center for the first time.  Despite never having been in a church quite like it, I immediately knew it was home.  It has been ever since.  The next day (yes, on Labor Day) I taught my first class at St. Lawrence University.

20 YEARS AGO I visited a church, Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, and experienced the so-called laughing rival (a.k.a., the Toronto Blessing, the Father’s Blessing).  It had a huge impact on me.  I have never, ever since questioned God’s love for me, no matter what has happened in my life. God's love was never an issue, not even during a period of severe depression.

10 YEARS AGO I experienced probably the worst day of my life.  This caused me to seek professional counseling for depression.  After counseling, after living most of my life with the illness, I have been depression free.

ZERO YEARS AGO I now know a great God and I am knowing Him better each day.  I have a great wife as companion and friend and I find her more attractive in more ways each day.  I attend a great church with over-the-top wonderful pastors for whom I am thankful to God each day.  I have a great job (with tenure!) teaching great students at a great small college for which I am more grateful each day.  I live in a great little village in the great undiscovered paradise of New York's North Country and I appreciate living here more each day.

As you can see from the previous great-full paragraph that I am grateful.  I'm not bragging since I cannot really take any credit.  At a minimum, that would assume I thought I knew what I was doing! I have been greatly blessed in a great many ways.  The past decade has literally been the best years of my life and the last two years by far the happiest of those.

I know I deserve none of this and that realization makes me very grateful indeed.

Be blessed!
RB