50 Times......Every Minute.......

Its one of those given acts that we fully expect our body to do for us.....We rarely think about it......We take that simple life sustaining act for granted........50 times every minute.....Every minute we live...

Today my Mom leaves the hospital again.  Doctors feel she has recovered from the Pneumonia and she will be released today.  But her breathing is something she is conscious of, every second, every minute, every day.......Its unimaginable what that effort and strength must be like to sustain......The delicate balance between the body's need for oxygen.....Too much and too little........

I cant imagine how the brain and the heart deal with the terms of our human life living its final act.......How do we prepare ourselves for our last days as well as move forward, fearlessly, waiting for the voice of God to meet us at our final destination?

Today is full of life giving seconds......moments that slip through our fingers unnoticed and unrecognized.....periods of fullness of breath and heart....

Today I will try and be present in as many of those moments as I can....being aware of the life-force around me....in my lungs, in my blue sky, in my daughters smile, my sons peaceful slumber and my husbands kiss....

I will be try and be thankful for whatever today brings......stress, joy, fear, pain, love.....because they are all gifts......

50 times......every minute........gifts

Breathing.........

I am so thankful........

The Luxury, to Dream.......

When I was a little girl, I didn't ever cut out magazine pictures of my future wedding dress.  I didn't draw yellow houses with picket fences picturing my adult self living in them.  I didn't have a clue what kind of man I wanted to share my life with or if I'd have one.  To me those were luxuries. Luxuries not affordable to me. Most of the time I felt like I didn't belong....... anywhere.  I didn't fit the picture of a typical family.  I didn't have a relationship with my biological father most of my childhood.  I don't have one now.

But one thing I did know was that I wanted my own family.  I wanted to be married in a church.  I wanted a husband who was devoted to me and his children.  I wanted a family centered in a Christ.  I wanted to celebrate my 50th Anniversary someday.  I wanted lots of children!!!

I did have a wedding...... a lovely wedding! 

 It was difficult to navigate but I have the pictures to prove it!!  It happened in a church by my own faith that I have embraced for the past 21 years.  The man waiting for me at the alter had his eyes and his heart completely focused on me.  My eyes were locked on his from the moment I stepped in the aisle.  

Having all the children we wanted didn't come as easily as I thought they would,  but they came in unimaginable ways, wrapped up in miracles.  Our family is centered on our beloved Lord.  I have a home that is more beautiful than any torn out pages of a magazine (at least to me).  It's not yellow.  It doesn't have a white picket fence.  It's not perfect.  But it's more than a house.  It's our home.  I would be blessed if I lived here until my last breath.

But I know that the beauty of this family, that I now belong to, is that where ever we are or wherever we go.....

I am home.

An Ending and a Befriending.......

Sometime during Holy Week, my most trusted confident, my blackberry, finally read its last words.......I have now joined the ranks of the modern world and am in a committed relationship with.......

 an iPhone.....

Its too early to tell...........I am very old school and I do not like change.  I LOVED my blackberry!! It was almost the first thing I touched in the morning and the last thing I touched before I went to sleep.  It was trust worthy, it knew exactly how to access all my information at any given time.  It was reliable and fit perfectly in my hand.  Yes, indeed, the addiction was noteworthy.  I have no idea what I would do without my phone.  It could rule the world!! It could tell you more about me than anyone.  It knew all my secrets.

Sooooooo........I am still getting to know this new confidant and am hopeful and slightly skeptical that we will enjoy a long, healthy, mutually exclusive relationship.

Here is my first iPhone photo:

This is Sadie...........

OK, I am still learning!!

Hoping that this new apendage will befriend me with the same loyalty as my beloved Blackberry, 

R.I.P...................

Enjoying Spring........

I hope your Easter was filled with celebration and all the people you love.  

Our church had a lovely service with beautiful, jubilant music for the celebration!

From there, we took a drive up to Solvang, a quaint Danish town, with lots of yummy baked goods and Scandinavian flair.  Always nice to walk along the streets on a beautiful sunny day with my family in tow (minus my firstborn who we were in continual text throughout the day).

It was fun to learn a little about the history of Solvang and view some of the original buildings from 1911 still in use today.

Its always nice to come home, too!  We miss Sadie (our dog) and just the familiar surrounding that always feel like an inviting, warm hug when we walk through the door.

My freshman is on Spring Break this week and my husband has taken him and a friend to the beach.  Our gracious Papa and Grandma have allowed them to crash their beautiful home for a few days.

My final child and I are enjoying "girl" time, getting back into the school of things.  

Its hard to believe the end of the school year is only several weeks away!!  It really did fly by this year and I am so grateful for that because I miss my firstborn!! He will be home for, hopefully, a very long summer, a lot of which I'm sure will be spent with friends catching up on all the varieties of first year college experiences!!

Today even smells like spring!! I can feel it arriving and see it in the special way the sunlight hits my house as it only does in the springtime.  

Enjoy the your Spring day today........wishing you special sunlight in all the beautiful parts of your world!

"Good", indeed......

I have always felt the irony of this day's title....."Good" Friday.  Although it is, indeed, the best day for the children of God, the actual historic visualization is so hard to feel good about.  Jesus suffered profoundly on this day, crying out for His father, feeling alone and in excruciating anguish.  His mother desperately watching, her heart must have bleed with her son as he hung on that wooden cross by a few nails.

It is so painful to think about and yet so important to let into our hearts so we can truly try and understand how much our God loves us, beyond our understanding......

My heart is heavy today but I am so thankful for the love and grace of God today.  For the true gift of His grace.  For His son, Jesus.

May you feel the "Goodness" of forgiveness in your life today...

Remember who you are and Whose you are....

When you leave through the front doors of my home you see this:

It says "Remember who you are and Whose you are..." I hope it is a reminder to my family and friends to remember they are a child of God, wherever they go....

Today we celebrate Maundy Thursday, the Last Supper Jesus would have with his disciples.  This is heavy on my heart today.  I have always found this church service extremely moving...I can feel the symbolism deep in my heart, visualizing Jesus washing the feet of his disciples that day before he would begin to explain to them what was about to transpire, in Him, through Him and to them......

What is most heavy on my heart today is trying to imagine what the weight of the world's sins must have felt like to Jesus....How could he possibly carry the weight of these sins on His shoulders....I know he trusted the Lord completely and had time to pray and reflect on what was to come...but did His humanness allow him to feel fear?  Was he scared?  Did ever feel like he could not accomplish was what set before Him??

This makes me think about my Mom, too....Not in the sense of bearing the sins of the world but in the reality of knowing the end was/is near.  It is terribly painful to watch someone wrestle with those realities.  Its very scary, even when we can trust that Jesus is there, in heaven, waiting, with out-stretched arms to embrace us.  Our humanness makes us have moments of fear, doubt and even disbelief that we will make it to our eternal home, walking with Jesus at our side....with no pain, with all our questions answered and our hearts desiring only to be with Him....

Sometimes the burdens of life seem just too difficult to carry... the days impossible to endure....the struggles and the unknown making the air too thin to breathe....

But today I can fill my heart with this Man who came for each one of us, who wants nothing more for His trials then for us to follow Him....and He doesn't ever stop whispering in our ears, " I am here to take carry these burdens for you" because .....

YOU are "SO LOVED"......

May you remember today, to give your burdens to Him... and most of all that you are perfect and you are loved.......

Loving and Leaving, too........

My firstborn crossed the threshold of my front door this morning.......but he was going back to school, not coming home.  The emotion of his arrival always makes my heart feel like a helium balloon, so full and so ready to burst with joy the second I lay my eyes on him!  When he leaves, my heart is in my throat, not wanting my eyes to meet his for fear they will spill over and flood my shoes.....I miss him so much my body literally feels achy, like I am coming down with something or I had a good work out (the later is so desperately needed but did not happen).  We all feel his absence while he is at school.  I have made many tuney suggestions (completely in jest) like "lets call the whole thing off".  Didn't help.  I have to let him grow up and learn how to journey out in the world without us.  Not without our love, but without our physical selves.  He just still feels like so much apart of me...........

My final child made a beautiful cake for her Aunt's Birthday today.  It looks like this:

We will deliver it to her Aunt tomorrow.  I am so proud of my final child's sweet heart and the great strides she making lately.  My husband and I see so much progress and so much hard work in the last few months.  She has been recently diagnosed having ever so slight signs of mild autism.  She is extremely high functioning.  She also works hard to overcome other battles as well.  We could not be more proud of her!

Last week was Spring Break for my firstborn.  This week is Spring Break for my final child and next week is Spring Break for my Freshman!  Can you believe it?  That's what happens when you have three children in three different schools........We cant really do anything together but I also get some one-on-one time with each so I am thankful for that.

My little Mom is back in the hospital again.  They think she has pneumonia this time.  That bacterial infection does not happen to go well with Emphysema.  She was home for about two weeks and now back to her home away from home.  She seems to be doing better than expected.  They are pumping her with plenty of antibiotics and steroids.  We are praying for her comfort, peace of mind, and of course a speedy recovery from the pneumonia.

I hope your Monday finds you enjoying Spring and the beautiful colors it brings.  

I hope all your loved ones are all crossing the threshold of your front door, in-coming and not out-going!!

Blessings!!