Anticipation

We have a three-year-old grandchild with us today and the plan is to go to the Shenandoah County Fair. She is so excited she can hardly eat her breakfast. What a great gift anticipation is. It extends the joy of an event and sometimes is more exciting than the event anticipated. One of our children and her family are going to Disney World in the fall. Her four children are already talking about it and excited even though it's two months away. They visited for four days last week and what fun it was to see their excited anticipation.

And we can share in it. We are taking a cross country camping trip soon visiting 17 or 18 states most of which we've never set a toe in before. What anticipation! We'll be visiting the Shrine of Our Lady of Help in Wisconsin, the only approved apparition site in the United States.

Since we like to go to daily Mass we'll be meeting Jesus in many places we've never been, celebrating the unity of our Catholic faith with people all over the country, strangers in a worldly sense but, nevertheless, brothers and sisters in the faith. My heart is as full of anticipation as my little grandchildren. How I love this great country of ours from the blue ridge in the east which we greet every morning from our deck to the purple mountain majesties of the west with their snowcapped peaks -- mountains I've mostly just seen in photos.

I'll be blogging about the trip at my Gramma blog, The View from Camp Kreitzer, starting next week.

Despite so much bad news in our culture, there are still enough blessings to fill an ocean. God is so good and He loves us so much; He pours blessings into our laps like water over a falls during flood season. Do you look forward to them? It's easy to keep our faces turned to the bad news and despair. Don't do it! Despite everything, God wants us to to rejoice in all things and to be ready, as St. Peter says, to give "a reason for this hope of yours." (1 Peter 3:15)

What sends a thrill of anticipation up your spine?