It'll bloom any day now...

She's ahead of me on the path. All legs and ponytail swishing. She's lanky and adjusting to a body that's changing everyday. She yells, "I'm taking that path and I'll meet you on the other side". She's yearning for a little independence. She doesn't even look back to see if I'm following. Her gaze is focused on her destination. She skips, hopscotches and takes the long way around. Then one foot flies one way and the other lands crooked and she goes down on the path. She stands up quickly, shakes it off, looks to see if I'm close by and continues skipping.
I pause to look at the Azalea's...they didn't bloom in time for Easter this year, but they should be in glorious full bloom in a week or so, just in time for her 9th birthday. Nine years...If I close my eyes...and shut out the world... I can still smell her newborn fuzzy head, hear her first cry, see her first smile, and know one of the sweetest things in life is having a daughter.

Picture was taken in 2006...when she was 4, it was her birthday & Easter weekend

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Lesson 599

Nothing really prepares you for this level of change. There are days it feels as if a part of my heart has been ripped from my chest. I am walking around wounded, unwhole, and incomplete. There are moments that my breath is taken and the sobbing begins before the second hand has time to move. In the post office mailing care packages, standing in the checkout line buying Halloween candy, when a song comes on Pandora that she would have belted out singing, when I spot the dusty piano, when I realize this is the first sports season, ever, that she wasn’t there to see her brother score a goal, when I walk by her bedroom and see all the bits and pieces of the life she left behind, as I plan our first ever big family trip without her, as I think about navigating the holidays and know they will be different from now on. There are days I just want to go back to the moment she was born and do every single second over again, but I’m quickly reminded that’s not the way this works. There ...

A Lesson in Lunch Meat

Today, I stood at the deli counter at our local Walmart. When the lady finally came over, I was sure I’d misheard the lady behind the counter. It was mid-afternoon and she told me she was closed, couldn’t cut me any meat because she was cleaning up before she left and they are short staffed. I was too tired to be at The Walmart. I felt like someone had just stole my balloon. I stood there in literal shock, I just wanted Nate’s 2 pounds of deli meat. My mind started spinning and I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I just needed for Nate to be able to make 59 Dagwood sandwiches next week. He doesn’t eat at school. He runs and has soccer practice. He needs to be able to think and do pages of Pre-calculus homework and study for Chemistry . I just wanted meat and to go home. Where is this all going to end? The whole world is short staffed. I thought of my coworkers and I, we worked short staffed and overbooked this week as did many. I was tired. It was a...

My Ebenezers

I love the hymn "Come thou Fount", it's one of my very favorites. Every time we sing this song as a church family or our own family worship, I am overcome with emotion as I ponder the words of the hymn. I often have to stop singing. However, I'm disappointed when some editors of hymnals have changed the words: "Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I'm come and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home". Ebenezer is a big word and can leave some puzzled in it's meaning, we don't often use it in conversation. It's worth recovering. The line from the third verse "Let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee" is often changed as well. Fetter is a “chain/shackle usually around the ankle to hold a prisoner”. To be shackled to Him by His grace, what a beautiful picture... Ebenezer is a Hebrew word for "stone of help". In 1 Samuel 7:12, after being saved from an attack by the LORD...

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