Pennies From Heaven

   I think I am finally old enough--or maybe I have just finally listened long enough--to get the meaning of that song. Pennies From Heaven: Even though it's raining, the rain is a blessing; in an April-showers-bring-May-flowers kind of way, but also in a how-can-we-know-happiness-if-we-never-know-sadness kind of a way.

 
Be sure that your umbrella is upside-down...

   Recently, I feel like my little family has been stuffing our piggy bank with the currency of blessings from Heaven. Like we are participants in an economy of kindness and service, and hopefully we are giving as much as we are being blessed (so blessed!) to receive.

   A few days ago, for example, the electric range in our house (which had, for some time, been not so much 'standing on its last legs' as sort of propped up with sticks because it had no legs left to stand on) gave up the ghost. Rain. Yet, not two days earlier, I'd been talking with my visiting teaching companion, a sweet lady who lives just down the street from us, about her kitchen remodel and her new double-oven range she was so excited about and she just hoped she could find someone who could use her old one, because it still had some years left and she'd hate to see it go to waste. Pennies from Heaven.

   Around about the same time, I was secretly, silently lamenting that fact that my vintage fabric stash was getting woefully low (rain), when my amazing and generous friend Stella texted to say she was cleaning out her late mother's sewing room and would I like some fabric? (Pennies from Heaven).
   And then Laurelei and Riley and I were out and about and ran into the owner of the gym where the kids used to take gymnastics lessons... just chatting it up in the parking lot of Lowe's when she offers the kids a three-month gymnastics scholarship in repayment (she says) for some way-back long-ago photo job she feels they never finished paying Brian for (I thought we were all even-stevens.Rain I hadn't even noticed!). So, hooray for gymnastics and the plink-plink-plunk of more Pennies from Heaven in the piggy bank.
  There are so many more stories I could tell; so many blessings I could count. But do you know what the best thing is about receiving blessings from God at the hands of others? The way it compels us to want to give something in return. Our time, our talents, our resources...a smile, a kind word, or a helping hand...the way those blessings take us from feeling like we have nothing to give (or what can I do?), to feeling like we have so much to share and give.
   
   Don't ya know each cloud contains Pennies from Heaven? I know it. How could I not?    

   (I'm kind of in love with this Pennies From Heaven cover I found on YouTube--doesn't she have a cool voice?)

Count your blessings, blogland beauties. I count you among mine.

xo