For the next few days I am going to try and reflect on some of the mistakes I have made in the past year and resolve to work on preventing these sorts of mistakes in 2006. I am not going to divulge the actual mistakes I made, but I will provide illustrations to make my point.

LESSON #1:

As a child, every night before I went to sleep I would say my prayers. They went like this:

Hi,
Please forgive me for anything I’ve done wrong.
And please, please, please send me a Snoopy Snow Cone Machine.
Sincerely,
Nadine

And then I would fall asleep and I would dream of being one of those pink-faced kids on the Snoopy Snow Cone Machine box. I was the one squeezing the cherry-flavoured syrup from the head of the snowman onto the crushed ice sitting in the Dixie cup. The ice had been sent down the Snoopy House chimney and then shaved into snow by Randi, my best friend at the time.

But the gracious heavenly father never saw fit to send me my gift.

At some point in adulthood, I recounted this story to ex who then, months later, surprised with a brand new Snoopy Snow Cone Machine that he had purchased on ebay.

I hugged the box. I was very, very touched. We immediately made snow cones.

They tasted like crap. The box now sits gathering dust in my mother’s garage.

The disappointment of the cough-syrupy snow cone far outweighed the pain of childhood-long longing.

MY TASK: Work on figuring out which “things” should be pursued in the flesh, and which should not. This involves recognizing that some things intrinsically bring more pleasure as abstract ideas than they do as physical realities.