Christmas is a time to remember our blessings

My cousin Anna is a retired nun with the Sister of Charity who founded Mount St. Vincent. She sent me a video that asks us to count our blessings which I’ve posted below. I try to follow Sister Anna’s advice since she is my guardian angel on this earth.

She is a little older than me. I remember her vaguely from visits to my Uncle Max at Christmas. I met her again at our family reunion in the mid-90s. We were at Mass in Holy Guardian Angels’ Parish Church in L’Ardoise, Richmond County, Nova Scotia.

She leaned over to speak confidentially, since we were in church. She had prayed for my health ever since I was struck by polio in 1951. It was the sweetest and most loving thing I can think that someone would do for a person that you don’t know that well. It was a secret she kept for forty years.

Sister Anna is very religious and her prayers must have worked because I didn’t die then and made it through life with only a few health problems. I am touched every time I think of her for her kindness and faith.

Christmas is a time when there is lots of happiness and sadness. We want it to be perfect like in a movie but life is not really perfect. Life is a series of episodes, short and long bitter and sweet. The best advice I got was to stop looking at what I didn’t have and start appreciating what I did.

I hope you enjoy the short video. Have a Merry Christmas and count your blessings.