Added Flavor

To live a most rewarding life hate less and try as many new things as humanly possible.

A few years ago I got hooked on a new flavor of coffee called pumpkin spice.  As fate would have it there was free coffee at work and I tried it because no one else was.  Over a short period of time pumpkin spice became like a new found friend, something I looked forward to having every time I got near it.  It became like an added flavor in my life.

It was surprising that this new found flavor was so enticing because I was never really fond of pumpkin anything.  A few years previous I had started eating pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving time because it was there.  Pumpkin pie smell reminds me to be thankful. Not to mention a nice slice of pie with whipped cream on it really hits the spot during the holidays.  Now just the smell of pumpkin spice coffee reminds me of Thanksgiving and reminds me that so I’m glad I took a chance and tried something new.

For example, trying new things and adding new flavor to our life often requires us to step outside our comfort zone.  Just the other week I received a text from my twenty year old niece, Erica asking if I could help her with a special request.  Her request was for me to join her in the father/daughter dance at her wedding a year from now.  

The reason Erica asked me was her father, Ed, passed away four years ago from brain cancer.  Subsequently, her cousin and my daughter, Alisha, changed her address to Heaven thirteen years ago as well.  So, even though I am a horrible dancer with no rhythm, and dance sort of like Elaine from Seinfeld, I said yes.  I know that I cannot replace her dad, yet what an honor and privilege to stand in for a man such as her dad that she/we loved so much.

Dancing with my niece got me to thinking about dancing with Alisha in heaven, an added flavor that for so long I couldn’t wait to add.   Soon after Alisha, who I had nicknamed Pumpkin Face, went to be Jesus in heaven I obsessed over dancing with her. It was if I was placing dancing with Alisha over seeing Jesus and soon thereafter changed my thinking. It is a strong belief of mine I will see her again, so, I will wait with great expectation knowing our time will come, dance or no dance.  Hope is the flavor I live with these days.   Just to be with Jesus and my Pumpkin Face and so many others, like Ed, Erica’s dad, will be enough.  

Just recently, I heard a song that added another new flavor in my life.  It’s amazing how music has a way of soothing, yet pointing us ahead at the same time.. Steven Curtis Chapman, who has lost his own daughter, Maria, in an accident at the age of five, wrote a song about looking forward to be reunited with loved ones.  It is actually a song dedicated to his grandmother who just recently passed.  This song, “See You in a Little While” has become a source of encouragement for me and my wife.

Music just has its own way of adding a flavor you didn’t know you were missing in your life till you hear it and then you become attached to how it enhances your life. Listen in and you will hear why “See You in a Little While” has my wife and I  looking forward to being with our daughter  someday soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsA-h_vIU_Y

Lastly, when it comes to adding new flavors I would be remise not to mention how important it is to gather new found friends.   Even, if it requires acquiring a taste for them in the process, if they are not normally are not your cup of tea, or coffee in my case. To have friends one must show himself friendly. 

Good things are all around us beckoning us with effervescent tones to drink them in, whether they be people or coffee flavors. The world is a richer place when we are actively searching it out.

If being thankful were a spice, it would be pumpkin.

 

.Swavel