Balloons and blessings

Is there a more magnificent sight than seeing a hundred colorful hot air balloons floating lazily over the North Valley? Today’s Balloon Fiesta launch took several balloons directly over Taylor and several floated within a finger’s reach of our parking lot. Three landed across the field and one landed in our soccer field. It was quite exciting watching these beautiful balloons unexpectedly drop into our backyard.

But life is like that. Sometimes when you least expect it, some thing or someone drops into your lap at just the right time. I recall a line from a Zorro movie where Anthony Hopkins tells Antonio Banderas “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” The point seems to be true, at least in my experience. When you are least expecting it, good things happen. That has happened more than once this school year in our hiring of teachers and staff. On at least two occasions I received letters of resignations from experienced teachers only to get applications from equally outstanding teachers the very next day. It was unexpected but not surprising.

Lately I have come to believe more and more that life is full of blessings waiting to be received and recognized. Some might call it karma, or luck, or chance, or even fate. My beliefs persuade me that divine providence has a hand in it. So often I hear people say “things happen for a purpose” and I believe that.

My wife Lynn first experienced unexplainable neurological symptoms in May 2007 – slurring of speech, tongue tremors, and difficulty swallowing. In June 2008 she was diagnosed with Progressive Bulbar Palsy (a form of Lou Gehrig’s disease). She told me at the time that her disease was going to be a blessing for our family. Yeah right, I thought, what a blessing to lose your ability to speak, swallow, and eventually breathe. After 41 months of watching her deal with this illness, I have come to see that she was prescient.

Because she cannot speak, those who don’t know her often think she is mentally retarded. This challenged her pride because she is exceptionally intelligent. But I see how this has helped transformed her into a truly saintly woman. She always smiles and never complains. As her body weakens, her spirit grows stronger. She teaches me every day that life is a gift from God and is to be treasured.

So as I delighted in the hot air balloons that dropped into neighboring fields this morning, I couldn’t help but think about all the unrecognized blessings that drop into our laps each day. Balloons are big and colorful and are hard to miss. Other blessings, like Lynn’s disease, are a little harder to recognize. But they have one thing in common; they come from above and have the potential of lifting us up if we allow them to.