This has been a roller-coaster of a week with many reasons to be grateful.

My son is a terrific stay-at-home dad who manages the day-to-day lives of three little ones, all under the age of eight. He has just started selling real estate but it will be a while before that translates to an income. His wife has a degree in Energy Management from the University of Oklahoma and is in the oil and gas industry in Houston. As you can imagine, this has been an uncertain time for her industry and the expected lay-offs were due to happen this week.

Grace, true to her name, handled it all with a calmness that escaped her mother-in-law.  She was confident that she had been doing the best job she could possibly do in her field and should the lay-offs include her, she knew God simply had another plan for her.

I, on the other hand, with an unusually large inherited capacity for worry, prayed and bargained and lost sleep.

Then I got this text…..”My job is safe.”

I cried, raised my eyes, and said a prayer of thankfulness. And then I had to apologize for not having enough trust.

My state of mind completely changed with those four words.

The calm that ensued immediately brought back to mind these photos, taken in 2008, on the top of a Swiss alp.

They were taken on a vacation I was on with my siblings.  We were celebrating my 50th birthday by visiting our oldest sister, who had been living in Switzerland for over a decade without a visit from any of us.  Our parents had passed away within two years of each other and this trip was made in their honor, just the four of us, spending an entire week together, for the first time in our adult lives.

I believe we were all in a state of mind that we’ll never forget.  I’m thankful for the pictures that immediately bring it back, and I’m thankful for good news, simple little words in and of themselves, that came in the form of a text on my phone screen.

In the words of the priests at my church, just after delivering their sermons…”May God be praised.”