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Gratitude Part II

Our first Easter with a yard - and what a yard. Glory hallelujah, but I love my lawn, and my apple tree, and my callas and my maples. My roses and my pots and primroses and every last little green and growing thing. We've come a long way, baby.

Eight years - but it was worth every blade of grass. I crawled around on my hands and knees, seven months pregnant with Scooby, putting each of those 14 roses in the ground. And some of them, two or three times (couldn't make up my mind. So accomodating, roses!) There were many seasons when I couldn't bear to even go out there - the weeds, up to my eyeballs, chased me away.

But little by little, shovel by shovel, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, we conquered the wilderness. Would I do anything differently? I don't know. I just don't know. There is something about the labor required that makes enjoyment of the result all the sweeter.

Gratitude Monday: Life

It was a great day. So thankful that the sun decided to come out after all, and that we shared it with close friends. It's been a busy busy spring for us - lots of party planning and hosting. As such, we chose to celebrate Easter with a BBQ instead of a fancy dinner. I must say, Gabe's chipotle adobo cheddar burgers were just about the best thing I've ever tasted. And homemade fries - both sweet and regular potato. Amen and hallelujah.

But, most of all, I'm ecstatic and thrilled beyond words and with lots of tears that Sophia Hope chose Easter to bless us with her little, yet extraordinary, presence. What a way to celebrate the risen Christ than with a birth. Welcome to the world, baby girl. May your days upon this earth be richly blessed, as ours shall surely be by sharing them with you.

Five MInute Friday: The Hard Love

It is Holy Week, and vainly have I been trying to instill a bit of this holiness, this knowledge, into my little charges. Something meaningful that they can grasp and hold on to. To get that seed planted upon their heart where it will grow and develop and one day, carry them when life bites back.

The most recent question at hand was “Why do they call it Good Friday?”

Ah yes, that one. Strange, that. What’s good about it? It was a terrible day. He suffered, He was brutalized, He was shamed. The world went dark that day – how can this be called “Good?”

My sweet children – it’s true. Terrible things happened this day. Terrible, but still wonderful. Because on this day, on Good Friday, the curtain was torn in two. No longer do we need to stay back and let someone else advocate on our behalf. The Holy of Holies is yours. It is mine. We can be in the presence of God whenever we want, wherever we want. That, my little sons, is why today, amidst all the horror and suffering - today is Good. It’s the first chapter in a very, happy ending.

I was crying as I said this. You can’t feel so strongly about something without it bubbling over into your voice. They were silent a moment, my captured audience, wearing sneakers and eating French fries in the back seat.

I waited for their reaction. To hear how my words touched their heart.

And then it came:

“Can I watch Dinosaur Train when we get home?”

And that is Hard Love…passionately loving and believing and seed-planting and oh, so rarely ever getting to enjoy the harvest in the now. Someday yes, but rarely in the now.

Preoccupied, Part II

Perhaps it's because this all is happening simultaneously with my 20 year high school reunion.

Faces from the past are popping up everywhere. I'm having trouble thinking of people as who they are now, not who they were then.

I certainly hope they do the same for me.

For Pepperdine, I'm going back to a place that no longer exists. What once was, isn't anymore. Neither am I. Neither are they.

Same goes for my reunion. I'm reading their stories and browsing Facebook pages and trying to process that he's a dentist. She's a motivational speaker. He's a happily married father of four. She lost her first child.

But I look at them and all I remember is who they were then.

I am not who I was, I'm being remade, I am new...

Thank God for that. If only we could just get together in a room and get to know one another as we are now. If only there were no past to filter through, no history, no memories - good or bad - to get in the way of the current person.

I want to hear their stories and create a new picture - and then, then tell me who you were. Then we'll overlay the picture of the past with the picture of the present and we'll laugh at how the lines no longer match up.

Please don't judge me by the silly, foolish things I once said and believed. Please don't remember me for being boy-crazy and loud, for my crush on David Hasslehoff, or Tom Cruise. Don't hold it against me that I read Sweet Valley High and cried over Richard Marx and had big, mall-hair and idolized Duran Duran.

I'm not who I was. Really.

Preoccupied.

I know I haven't been around much. Preoccupied. You see, in just two weeks from today I'll be driving back to the place I spent four of the best years of my life. Oddly enough, I haven't been back since.

I'll be reconnecting with old friends.

I'll be reacquainting myself with a dramatically changed campus.

I'll be getting up in front of a room full of people and pretending that I am a grown-up who knows stuff.

And I'm going All. By. My. Self.

Which is weird. Very weird. I never go anywhere alone. Most certainly not without my better half (also known as my 6' tall security blanket).

I'm a little freaked out to be doing this without him. Driving down is no big deal - I did that plenty 'o times back in the day. But doing this very big thing...by myself. I'm not that person anymore.

I'm not a "self."

I'm a "we."

I wish it were different but sheesh - this event is right in the middle of the school year and we've got Fun Runs to run and homework to correct and baseball to play. Somebody has to hold down the fort.

Graciously, he's willing to do that while off I go to the big blue ocean, to reconnect with a life I hardly remember.

I know it will be lovely - to be responsible for only my own self for four whole days. No one's butt to wipe on the potty, no one's dishes to load. No one's face to swipe clean and no one to shuttle back and forth. That I won't miss.

And there's the ocean - I'll be staring at it, walking in it, breathing it in for four whole days.

I just wish I were going as a "we" instead of "me."

Gratitude Monday

Dinner al fresco.
Family movie night on the couch.
Water falling on the patio.
30 more bulbs in the ground and one more planter filled.
All 576 (or so) rose buds and the anticipation of what’s soon to come.
Champagne and friendship.
Beaming brides, scrumptious savories, and a cake that turned out perfect.