{"id":533,"date":"2008-06-16T05:38:46","date_gmt":"2008-06-16T09:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/?p=533"},"modified":"2008-06-16T06:01:32","modified_gmt":"2008-06-16T10:01:32","slug":"533","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/?p=533","title":{"rendered":"The Lucky One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Faith Hill sings a country song called The Lucky One<\/em><\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 In it she talks about the things in life that are rough – no air conditioning, not being as far along as she would like to be at age 27, not enough money for a even a bus ticket, no cable tv, but she is still \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the lucky one\u00e2\u20ac\u009d cause she has that special someone in her life.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n

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I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve thought about those lyrics the last few months. \u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lots of reasons we should consider ourselves the lucky ones.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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My sister\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house was struck by lightening last week.\u00c2\u00a0 At the time, she and her husband were sitting upstairs in their frog room watching television.\u00c2\u00a0 Dave, her son, was in their room on the other end of the house talking to his girlfriend on the cellphone when lightening hit near a tree at the deck off that bedroom, slashed through the irrigation system, blew part of that deck off, and explosively attacked the electrical outlets in the house…frying three phones, a computer, the air conditioning system and blowing the irrigation control panel off the wall in the garage.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Fortunately, all those things could be fixed.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone was ok. \u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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They were the lucky ones. In a town nearby, a house was burned to the ground after being hit by lightening.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Floods are consuming much of the midwest. Earthquakes are destroying thousands of miles of land in China. Homes are being swept away or buried in the ground.\u00c2\u00a0 People are being displaced. Wars are raging in the Middle East.\u00c2\u00a0 People are shot in our own country on a daily basis. Others are ill and fighting for their lives through chemo and other treatments. Lives are changing forever. \u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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So where are you right now?\u00c2\u00a0 But for the grace of God we all could be in those situations.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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My friend, Chris, is struggling with cancer.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fighter and his doctors are doing all they can to give him all the life he has left to live.\u00c2\u00a0 His family is right there with him.\u00c2\u00a0 His wife is a trooper and his children and grandchildren rally around as often as possible.\u00c2\u00a0 As I look at them struggle with this, I am reminded that they are the lucky ones to have each other for as long as they can.\u00c2\u00a0 He was in this same place struggling with cancer some 19 years ago and beat it to live cancer free for another 17 years.\u00c2\u00a0 They consider themselves the lucky one to have survived cancer for this long.\u00c2\u00a0 Who among us would understand that if you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lived through it.\u00c2\u00a0 Lucky ones?\u00c2\u00a0 You bet. \u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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I was at a wedding in Ohio recently.\u00c2\u00a0 Friends of my late husbands and now mine even after all these years after his death, these folks have continued to embrace our friendship.\u00c2\u00a0 They graciously included me in their daughter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wedding plans.\u00c2\u00a0 They even invited me to sit with the family on that day of joyous celebration. I was honored.\u00c2\u00a0 I was touched when hearing and seeing the positive environment there.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought to myself several times, this is what a family should be like and how proud my husband would have been to see that family grow into who they have become.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00c2\u00a0Life, I can attest to from personal experience, will not always be pain free.\u00c2\u00a0 But for right now, it looks pretty good to me where I sit. In fact, even in the darkest times, I have been very fortunate to be surrounded by those that love and care for me. \u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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So think about it.\u00c2\u00a0 Aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we the lucky ones?\u00c2\u00a0 Aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you?<\/span><\/p>\n

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My wish for you today<\/strong> is that you embrace your good fortune in all that surrounds you and reach out to share your kindnesses and compassion with others.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all in this together.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

~ Joellen<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Faith Hill sings a country song called The Lucky One.\u00c2\u00a0 In it she talks about the things in life that are rough – no air conditioning, not being as far along as she would like to be at age 27, not enough money for a even a bus ticket, no cable tv, but she is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,19,22,41,37,27,31,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-death","category-religion","category-friendship","category-health","category-illness","category-living-life-to-the-fullest","category-releationships-general","category-serving-others"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}