Happy 70th (breaking the silence)

I remember the day so well, it was january 2004, and i was one month away from delivering my first daughter. Mom had been taken to the hospital with severe pain and our minds were full of questions! It was my sister, rachel, who showed up and my door and broke the news, "the dr thinks her cancer is back and her body is full of it! He doesn't give her much time to livet" i still remember that feeling. The punch in the stomach, disbelief! The slow sinking in and the mind racing, racing to absorb all of the implications! I remember sitting w/ chris in mcdonalds and weeping at the thought of this child i was carrying never knowing her grandmother. I can hear chris comforting and reminding me that we don't know yet, to calm down. And then! O how i remember the phone call from my brother, mark, saying "it's not cancer!!!" and here she is today turning 70! Who am i to be so blessed?! I love
you mom!! (the pic is mom a "few" yrs ago :) )

Until Next Year!

My writing/blogging has taken a serious downward spiral lately! I'm not sure what my ailment is nor how to fix it. I miss that urge to write and I'm not sure why it's not there! I know blogging is not a requirement, but I like blogs that are updated w/ some measure of regularity. Therefore, I am announcing a break! Remember when you were young how the big thing was to tease your little sister (that would have been me!) "I'm not going to take a bath until next year!!" or "I'm not going to school again until next year!" or still better "I won't see you until next year!"? Well, I'm taking up the old refrain: No more blogging until next year! :) Hopefully by then my writing urge will return and maybe I'll even have a few creative ideas to liven up this space...don't get too excited, I said "Maybe"! :) So, Merry Christmas to whoever might happen along and read this little old "pretend" blog. May your vacation be refreshing, and may you celebrate Jesus just as much come the New Year as you do this season!

On the Reality and the Fear part 2

We had been living in OH almost a year when the news came. It was so abrupt, so shocking, so totally unexpected. Chris' cousin's husband, gone! Died instantly in a mowing accident. The news brought me face to face w/ the Reality and the Fear like never before. It had been a year of loss -I'd "lost" my house, church, home state, family... basically everything that had made me feel secure! Losing one more thing felt entirely more possible than it ever had before. It almost felt Likely! The fear threatened to clutch and strangle, the questions, the imagining... I knew I had to say "God, he's yours-they're yours. Thank you for giving them to me, I place them back in your hand." But oh! It was one of the hardest things I'd ever done! I'm still trying to learn how to face the Reality without succumbing to the Fear. The Reality is there, ignoring it is not going to make it disappear. But so is a Big God. A God who gives Grace, not for Fears and "what ifs", but for the moment! And so I choose the Big God, daily.

On the Reality and the Fear

You hear about it all the time. The threat is there constantly, one tiny heart beat away. Lives are snatched every day - here one minute, gone the next! A young husband, drowned. A young lady, in an accident. Another young husband, shot. And yet another, succumbed to cancer. What do you do w/ it- the threat? The reality? The nearness? Sometimes it's easy to push aside. Ignore it and it won't be possible. But it's there! The fact is it IS possible. Horribly, completely possible! These are real people, real lives, just like mine. It happens! Children, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, are snatched - gone in an instant. I don't consider myself to be a worrier, generally I just don't go to those places. What's the point? Worrying will change nothing, help nothing, fix nothing. Living in fear is a joyless, crippling state and I want no part of it! Still, the fact remains, the threat is ever present and ignoring it is no more the answer than living in fear. I remember the day when the fear struck.....hard.....