During gift-giving times in our home, we often refer to "the box ripper." This is not a person.

A box ripper is when you start to casually open a gift and suddenly realize that beyond your wildest expectations someone bought you that special thing you really wanted. All you have to do is just get the box open, and it's yours. (A famous one in our house is a Christmas gift I once received of a full-length coat with lamb's wool collar and cuffs.) The subsequent excitement may lead to rapidly torn paper, shrieking, fast-talking, many big grins—and hugs. Lots and lots of hugs.

Of course, our family has acknowledged that finding, affording, and buying said box ripper—every time someone gives a gift—is not always possible or feasible, which may be why those types of gifts are so very exciting.

Sadly, many of our family gifts these days come in the form of 2x3 plastic cards with a store logo on them. Not my idea of a box ripper, though sometimes more appreciated than a size-too-small sweater or a tchotchke designed to sit on a shelf. I still always try to give at least one non-gift card item for each family member to open. It just doesn't seem right to only exchange pieces of plastic, no matter what their monetary value.

In 1965 the Byrds popularized the Pete Seeger song, "Turn, Turn, Turn." I can't quote the song but I can quote the bible verse it's taken from (Ecclesiastes 3:1-22) which says:

"To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to work, a time to rest, a time for frustration, a time when nothing seems to be working out, a time when you feel like you have one hand tied behind your back. . . "

Okay, I may have changed the words of that a bit.

But I do know many of us find ourselves in a place where life feels like that. Author, Carol Adrienne called it a void. She wrote:

“The void gives us an opportunity to end some part of our development and to prepare the ground for new growth.”

Ah! So that's what it is. . . 

Over the years, I’ve had my share of ailment adventures, including cancer—not once, but twice—a hysterectomy that left me in a coma on life-support, a premature baby where we both nearly died (but thankfully didn't), and more. Yet, from these earlier experiences, grew an understanding of the goodness in ailments and the creation of my Marvelous Messages™ method.

Recently, I had a new adventure, and I’d like to show you just how this goodness works, along with a quick method you can use on yourself.

Early in August, my husband decided on a moment's notice to hand deliver some auction items to Florida. I had three days to pack for the seven-day, 2600-mile round trip. (Yikes!) 

However, one thing I refused to reschedule was my annual eye exam. I knew I had been experiencing some changes in my sight, and my previous optometrist had not been stellar. I found a new one close by, but had waited six weeks for my appointment. There was no way I was going to miss out on it. Call it intuition, call it an internal nudging, I just felt it was important—and it was.

In a recent newsletter I wrote about crickets. This, in part, occurred because as the last days of summer wained and our schedule gave us just a little bit of peace, Tim, Iggy (our cat), and I have been able to spend an hour or so relaxing outdoors. I've enjoyed having even twenty minutes to sit back, close my eyes, feel the warmth of the sun, and, yes, listen to the crickets singing their ode to summer.

On one of those afternoons, I had only just closed my eyes, tuned in to the cricket's song, when I heard a different sound. "That's not crickets," I thought. Tim and Iggy had wandered up the driveway on their daily walk. "What's that buzzing?" I wondered.

We were both surprised by the sudden appearance of the largest swarm of bees we had ever seen. I'm not sure why I didn't run. We didn't seem to be in any imminent danger. The swarm formed a mini cyclone above some of our bushes and slowly settled into the woven branches.

About that moment, our neighbor, Mike, stepped out of his back door, which happens to be just a matter of feet from that row of shrubs. He had taken the afternoon off from work and was just stepping out for a bit. We alerted him to the bees, which were now silent, other than their activity within the shrub.

I often stand at the foot of my bed in prayerful meditation from where I can view the heart bush. I fondly referred to it as the heart bush because, from the vantage point of my north-facing, second-story bedroom window, the bush formed two distinct sides of a heart's shape with a bit of an opening in the middle. After some years, a bit of a bit of fringe began to appear out of the center of the bush. Still, it made me smile to think of it as a heart. "Probably just some weeds," I thought. They liked to wave in the wind at me.

A couple of years ago, while on a walk, my husband and I examined the bush and discovered that some saplings were attempting to grow up amid the tangled and entwined branches of the bush. We brought out some clippers and removed what we could to help protect the heart bush, but one near the center could not be removed. I now knew that "fringe" wasn't weeds at all.

With three days' notice, we packed our suitcases, hopped into the car, and headed off from northern Pennsylvania to Tampa/St. Pete. Being the kind of person who normally takes three weeks to gather everything for an extensive trip, packing in a hurried fit felt a bit unnerving. The clock and calendar did not give way, so I got through it.

My life since hubby's unexpected retirement (due to the sale of his employer’s company) has been a series of such events—most unplanned and few for fun. (As I’ve mentioned before, we decided to deaccession our extensive, 44-year collection of 20th-century antiques and fine arts.) This has been a massive, heavy-lifting, time-consuming job.

Did I mention, I've also taken on several clients, am helping my son manage his spinal surgery recovery, am the treasurer of our cottage organization, and offered to help with the rewriting of their bylaws? Oh, and I maintain the event website for a local writer's conference. (Does this sound busy? Yes, I am!)