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Good Students?

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged conforming, educational assistant, Learning, ready, School, smart, Students, tests, Understanding on April 18, 2012| 2 Comments »

W A Y back in the days of the abacus and slate boards, I was a pretty good student.

Maybe it wasn’t back quite that far (my high school grad class is having a twenty-fifth reunion this summer), but I probably work with a few students who would not blink an eye if I told them it was so.

I had marks in the 80-90% area, I did my homework, was polite to my teachers, and was involved with various school groups and activities. Not to be arrogant, but I was an ‘ideal’ student (although my memories of my parents coming home from parent-teacher interviews, always included, “she talks a lot in class” … okay, maybe not ‘ideal’ 😉 ).

I feel bad for the hard working teachers I had, because the pearls (education) that they presented to me, were received by a swine. They gave me what I needed to know, but I had rarely understood that I needed it, beyond test writing. I had learned to put the information in, spit it out for the purpose of assessment (test or exam), then forget I ever knew it. For me the information was only learned for the purpose of regurgitating it back at test time.

As an EA (Educational Assistant), I have learned so much by working in a high school, that I was supposed to have learned when I was a student.

In English I listen to poems that I could never have understood, when I was back in grade nine.

I sit in Math and I can read a word problem, involving algebra that I now understand will be the most practically utilized math skills, after school ends.

In a foods class I learn about different leaveners, and how each works. I cook every day … this is important education!

I watch a PE class and understand that ‘playing games’ is for fitness, and that fitness is something that is of vital importance, as we live and age.

I now understand that knowing about history (including religion) can help to make sense of world events, and can help us to learn from the past and (hopefully) not repeat it.

In science, a student can learn about the physical world we live in, and even if all one ever gets from astronomy is that they can lay on a blanket on the grass, on a summer night, and point out the big dipper to their own kids, it will all be worth it.

When we are school students we learn for no reason other than to just get it done, so that we can move on to the next grade, and so on, and so on. The information has not reached a level of practical importance.

I recently heard an educator say, “if a student can re-teach what they have learned, they understand it.”

Originally, if my child came home with A’s and B’s, I would feel confident that they had done well, and learned what was necessary. As I have worked in schools, and my own kids have gotten older, my perspective on learning has changed. Now if my child is driving home with me, and tells me the interesting facts about life in the Roman Empire , and even includes what we can learn from their lives and the fall of the Empire, but only gets 70% on a unit test, I am far more pleased in the learning.

From my own experience as a ‘good’ student, and now being in classrooms on a daily basis, I see that a number on a report card does not indicate learning. I also know, from my own experience, that A’s and B’s on a report card do not indicate success in life, and C’s and D’s do not suggest a mediocre existence. And, sometimes, qualifications for life (after high school) have nothing to do with education.

I would rather see a child squirming in their seat, but absorbing the information that is taught, than one who is ‘conforming’ in their seat, able to perform a test.

Just sayin’.

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A Picture of Pain

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged broken heart, C. S. Lewis, Heartache, heartbreak, Pain, physical, picture, picture of pain, Sadness, spritiual, The Problem of Pain on April 16, 2012| 2 Comments »

It was a beautiful painting. As I stood before the gorgeous combination of colors. The vision of mountains and sky. The strokes of the painters brush … the strokes of a painter of passion, a painter of purpose.

It is a pictorial representation of that familiar description of the aura one having a migraine is often known to speak of. So, in the midst of her beautiful painting, is something like a hole. This ‘hole’ makes the painting look flawed to the point of being painful to view.

One of her purposes in creating this painting was to create a visual for her doctor, to show him what it is she experiences. It could be said that her painting is the picture of the pain no one sees, except for her.

Another picture of pain could be an x-ray, to confirm a broken bone. Or an ultrasound to confirm an ectopic pregnancy.

Sometimes the picture of pain can also be vicarious. Just the other morning a friend was telling me of a sports injury that her husband had suffered. He had thought he had broken a bone, but now it looks more like the muscle was torn from the bone. Just hearing about it caused a shiver down my spine, as I vicariously imagined the pain that must cause.

These are pictures that are bright with the colors of pain.

There is other pain that is more difficult to see, more difficult to experience. It is the pain of the emotion, of the heart. This kind of pain is not visible, like fall colors, but it is hidden in the shadows of our heart.

For people to know that you are suffering with this kind of pain, the one in pain needs to share their experience. I refer to his as bleeding publicly. This unseen pain can be the most mentally, spiritually and even physically altering pain.

The only visual that one suffering the ravages of hidden pains, is one of a hand gripped around ones heart, squeezing tighter and tighter, just to the point that would end it’s pulsing, and the relief of final death.

A broken heart rarely does stop beating. It keeps going, and the pain continues. Gradually it subsides, and the pain lessens. But the scar tissue is permanent, and the person carries their scars, like an amputee carries their scars. We may go to our grave concealing our greatest pains, our greatest injuries.

These scars recreate us. Others may never see our heartaches, but they will see the picture that the pain has created in our re-created self.

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain,

but it is more common and also more hard to bear.

The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden:

it is easier to say

“My tooth is aching”

than to say

“My heart is broken.””

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

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Unfading – Part 15

Posted in Unfading, WONDER, tagged affair, Aging, Alzheimers, Amara, Being Needed, Childhood, Dymensia, Fear., Fiction, Forgetfulness, Loneliness, Marriage, Memories, Mom, Story, stroke on April 13, 2012| 1 Comment »

This is another post in a series, about a woman named Amara. Every Friday I will post another segment in this story.

As Amara stirred, Joy rushed to her side.

“Joy … ,” Amara was struggling to talk.

“Yes mother?” Joy felt tears coming to her eyes. Was it her mother’s voice, or what she had just read on Joe’s phone?

“Joy … ”

“Mother, I am here”

“Don’t cry Joy, please … don’t cry.”

Joy was startled by her mothers words, because she had not realized that her face was wet with falling tears. Amara’s eyes were not even open, how did she know that Joy was crying?

“Mother, I am here. Oh mom, I need you right now,” Joy sobbed, and lay onto her mother’s bed with her.

Amara reached her hand towards Joy’s head, and held on to the crown of her head, like she used to do when Joy was a young child, and needed comfort.

It was not a familiar thing for Amara to be offering comfort to Joy. Oh, when she was a little girl, and had all the scrapes and bruises of childhood. But as a teen and an adult, Joy did not need comfort from anyone.

Amara could remember vividly the last time that she and Joy were in each others arms. It was a time when Joy needed her mother so very much, and Amara had nothing left to give. Amara had carried the guilt of that failure with her all these years. It made her so aware that one moment of weakness on her part could change the course of her relationship with her daughter.

Jacob had been ill for so long. If Amara wasn’t with Jacob, it was only because the hospital staff had sent her home to sleep in her own bed for a night. It had been a two year existence of doctor appointments, prescriptions, hospitals and tests. It had been almost two years of her husband, John, working two jobs to pay for all of the medical bills. It had been over a year of Joy living more with her grandparents than with her parents.

Amara had missed Joy so much, but there just was no other choice, and she was so thankful for her parents for giving Joy all that she needed, during those years when Amara’s attention was almost exclusively devoted to Jacob.

In the beginning, when Jacob was first undergoing tests, Amara had to deal with so much guilt. She had been so excited when Joy arrived, that she really only had eyes for her. Jacob had gotten pushed to the side, in Amara’s delight over her new baby girl. But Jacob did not seem to mind. He was just starting grade one when Joy was born, and he had new adventures in his days, that did not include his mother anyway.

Jacob had been such a pleasant, easy going little boy, and his pride in his baby sister was almost as intense as his mother’s. He would sit by her bassinet and just watch her sleep, or sing to her as she bounced in her Jolly Jumper. He was as enamored with her as Amara.

Then he got sick, very sick. And the doctor’s didn’t know what was wrong. By the time they diagnosed nine year old Jacob, with Leukemia it had gone too far. Oh, they tried everything they could think of, from treatments, to surgeries, to medications. It was just all too late.

There had been so much loss, in such a short time. Only a month after Jacob’s funeral, Amara’s father, the strongest man she could imagine, had a major heart attack, and died as well. Amara was not sure she could keep going. She felt pulled between the grief of her son’s illness and death, the shocking loss of her father, and the need to help her mother, as she dealt with her own grief.

Amara was barely surviving, and her care of little Joy became mechanical, impersonal. Joy was not quite five, and she too had experienced immense loss. She lost her big brother, her grandfather who had doted on her as though she was royalty, and now her Gamma, who she loved like a mother, was in such a deep place of grieving. In the midst of all of that loss, was the reality that she had also lost her mother in the process.

Then, only a few months later Amara’s mother died too. The doctors had said it was a massive stroke that took her life, immediately, but Amara knew that it was a lonely and broken heart, that simply refused to keep beating with the love of her life gone.

Amara was at her weakest, most vulnerable point in her life. She survived, physically, but life was snuffed out of her soul.

In just a few months Joy went from being in the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’ (Disneyworld), with her dear grandparents, to living in a dark, cave-like place and existence, with a mother who was unable to care for herself, let alone a five year old girl. She became the caregiver of her mother. The roles of mother and daughter flipped, and little Joy lost her understanding of childhood, as she began to mother her mother.

There was little that Amara remembered about that time in her life. One event stood out, as a great regret. Amara was sitting in the front row of the church, as the funeral service for her mother progressed. It had been an open casket funeral, as had been common at that time. When the time came for the casket to be closed, Joy jumped up onto her mother’s lap, threw her arms around her mother’s neck, and sobbed onto her mother’s shoulder. Joy had not sought out affection from her mother for months, while Jacob was ill, and she had the doting affections of her grandparents. But when the cover came down on the body of her grandmother, it was as though Joy was aware that the door on that phase of her young life was also closing.

As Joy sobbed and held on to her mother’s neck, Amara could not muster any affection for her daughter. She found breathing to be a laborious event, in itself. Amara had nothing left to give to her child.

Eventually Joy was pried from her mother, by her father’s eager arms. He held her, and comforted her.

And Joy never sought comfort from her mother again.

Amara always wished she could have found the strength to say, “don’t cry Joy, please … don’t cry.”

Unfading – Part 1

Unfading – Part 16

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The Day I wanted to Run Away

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged flee, John 14, Life, Lincoln Brewster, new, running away, seek, seeking, status quo, Struggles on April 12, 2012| 7 Comments »

I remember the day I wanted to run away. The temptation was so great, I was almost certain that I should just do it. Everything within me wanted to run. It had seemed as though nothing was going right, and I saw no other way out. The horizon looked to be so appealing to me, and I so wanted to turn around and head that way. I had nothing packed, but really didn’t care, I was ready to go.

That was just the other day.

I had just bought groceries, and was heading home. It had been a beautiful warm spring afternoon. The sun was setting, and the air was clean with the fragrance of spring. There was something in the sky, in the air, that just made me want to turn my vehicle around and drive from the direction of my home.

It is not that I was particularly frustrated with my life. I love my family. I enjoy my job. I have good friends, and a good life. It was more a matter of seeking adventure, of seeking something new, of seeking …

I think my inclination to run away is not something that only I have experienced. I have a feeling that we all have days (weeks, months, even years) when we simply feel that our life is missing something, that we are missing something.

Some give in to the temptation to seek. We see that in the person who is regularly changing jobs, changing cars, changing houses, changing spouses. We see their frustration with the status quo, then we see them make a change. They are in a state of delight and excitement. Then, the novelty of the new ‘toy’ starts to wear off, and, gradually, they are back in a new state of status quo … and it usually does not look too different from the original one.

So, if new changes and adventures and people do not end our seeking, then they are not what we are really seeking.

What we seek does not get found in leaving the life we have. What we seek is not available to us here and now. What we seek is beyond, not just the front door of our homes, but beyond our earthly life. We seek and strive for the Eden existence we were created for.

This life we live is not what we were created for. We were created to spend our lives walking in the garden with our Creator.

There will still be days when we just want to run away, because we do live in a flawed world, full of struggles. But we need to keep in mind that there is a place awaiting us, and one day we will be be taken there, by the one who is already preparing a place for us.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You believe in God; believe also in me.
My Father’s house has many rooms;
if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
You know the way to the place where I am going.”
John 14:1-4

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Tebow, Lin and God

Posted in GOD, life, WONDER, tagged Basketball, Christians, Faith, Famous, Football, Jeremy Lin, Job 1, Pedestal, Role Models, Shadows, Tim Tebow on April 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

For months the name Tim Tebow has dominated sports news in North America. There is also growing attention for Jeremy Lin. They are both amazing athletes, they are both young men (Jeremy is twenty-three, and Tebow is twenty-four), they are both sought after to market many products, they are both nice young men (going only by what the press has said … so far … about them), and they are both loudly professing Christians.

Not long ago, I awoke to the sports newscast on the radio. There was great excitement over an amazing, game winning basket, scored by Mr. Lin with less than a second of game time. One of the radio personalities, after the sportscast, said something negative about how Lin, like Tebow, talks about God all the time.

The comments of the radio personality jarred me into an irritated state to start my day. Just why is it that when individuals are successful, when individuals are doing good things, when individuals are living in a manner that is good for society (ie. Tebow (Tim Tebow Foundation) and Jeremy Lin (Jeremy Lin Foundation) both have foundations to support underprivileged and and ill children), when individuals are doing it all in the name of God, our society would rather cut them down, and have them shut up? In a day and age of acceptance of all and toleration, can the name of God not be tolerated?

To be fair, to be a Christian means living in the shadow of those who have blown it (remember Jim Baker? Jerry Falwell? Pat Robertson? Jimmy Swaggart? The ‘Christian Brothers’ of the Mount Cashel orphanage? and so on). Sometimes it is almost fearful to state, publicly, that you are a Christian. As soon as people know this about you, you are pigeon holed with those who have blown it before. In a sense you are convicted before you even sin, because it is expected of you.

God expects it of us too. That is why his love is not a conditional one, that is why his love is littered with grace. That is why those of us who profess a belief and reliance on God, want to share it with others. We know that all that we have, and are, is due to the God who provides. That is why Tebow and Lin (and others in the spotlight, and out of it) want to share it … it is just that good. This belief in God does not make the believer better than others, it makes his or her life better than without it.

I fear for individuals like Lin and Tebow, because they have been placed on impossibly high pedestals, elevating them above all other mere mortals (much like OJ, Magic Johnson, Joe Paterno, Tonya Harding, Roger Clemens). I fear for them, because they are mere mortals, and all of us fail, and mess up, and make mistakes, and do things that are contrary to our beliefs (even atheists have been heard calling out to God before fading into the foreverland of death … you cannot get much more contrary to beliefs than that).

Jeremy Lin said, “there is so much temptation to hold on to my career even more now. To try to micromanage and dictate every little aspect. But that’s not how I want to do things anymore. I’m thinking about how can I trust God more. How can I surrender more? How can I bring him more glory? It’s a fight. But it’s one I’m going to keep fighting.” May Lin win this fight!

When being interviewed by NFL Today, Tebow said, “Mom and Dad preached to me when I was a little kid that just because you may have athletic ability and may be able to play a sport doesn’t make you any more special than anybody else, doesn’t mean God loves you more than anybody else … at the end of the day, it’s a [football] game.” And may Tebow keep this perspective.

As a fellow Christian, I pray that these two young men continue in their life walk with God, and I pray that they continue to give God the thanks, whether the Lord gives or the Lord takes away … praise the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).

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A Titanic Week

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged 1912, April 10, died, Life, loss, marketing, one hundred years, perished, sinking, Southampton, sunk, Titanic, tragedy, voyage on April 10, 2012| 1 Comment »

One hundred years ago today, the RMS Titanic set off from Southampton, England. It was to be the cruising experience of a lifetime on the most luxurious vessel of it’s time. For most on that ship, it was the final experience of their lifetime.

One hundred years after it’s first and final voyage, we are still fascinated by it’s dramatic demise and mysterious grave.

Last week James Cameron’s epic Titanic was re-released in 3D. If you enter a book store, books on the Titanic are featured in almost every reading age and genre of the store. Television specials will be on for at least a week. T-shirts are in stores with pictures and references to the ship. For those who are really intrigued, you can even book a trip on a luxury cruise ship to commemorate the titanic voyage, by sailing the same route as the Titanic, with a stop above it’s watery grave for a memorial service.

Truly, the Titanic has been, and will continue to be, a titanic money maker for those marketing it’s memory.

There are times in my life, when I have had a decision to make, that is a difficult one, and I do not know which way to go. Or times when I am in the midst of a stressful struggle in some part of my life, and I feel overwhelmed with my circumstances. During these times, I try to ask myself, “in one hundred years, will this situation, this decision, matter?”

I find it sad to think that those who perished on that voyage, will be mostly remembered for their deaths, rather than for their lives. For them, their decision to take a cruise on the Titanic, was a decision that matters still, one hundred years later. For those who were directly connected to the passengers or the crew of the Titanic, the people on that ship lived a life before their death.

In the deaths of those over fifteen hundred men, women and children, died people who were more intimately known for how they lived. There were mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, sons and daughters. There were breadwinners and homemakers, debutantes and male bachelors, there were dock workers and billionaires.

These people were people, just like us, who awoke each day desiring a cup of coffee or tea, who had worries in their hearts and to do lists in their heads. And they, like we will, died with the name of a loved one on their lips.

Those who were lost in the cold waters of the Atlantic, were not just passengers of a ship, they were people who left holes in the lives of those who felt the very real loss of that tragedy. But, it is their lives, not their loss that left the legacy that matters one hundred years later.

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Dearly Loved

Posted in GOD, life, Love, WONDER, tagged dearly loved, forgivable, GOD, Jimmy Needham, John Piper, Love, Mark Driscoll, nothing, Passion, redeemed, Romans 8, separate on April 9, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I have one passion, that, I hope with all my being, I communicate with those around me.

That passion is that there is nothing
… NOTHING …
that anyone can DO that is
so bad,
so evil,
so sinful,
that is unforgivable,
by the God that I love.
And more importantly,
the God who created and loves all people.

I know, in my human frailty, that I fail to communicate this on a regular and daily basis. I hold onto resentments, I struggle to forgive, I bring up things from the past, I walk with one foot (regularly) in my mouth, I think thoughts that are vile. I am a walking, talking example of failure, of weakness … of sinfulness.

But, because I am fully human, I am the perfect material for a God who understands what it is to be fully human. I am the perfect material for a God who can heal and forgive. I am the perfect material for a God who rebirths, who recreates, who reconstructs, who redeems … saves … from myself.

It is so easy to look at our life and our choices through the shadows that our sin creates. It is so easy to look at our life and only see our mistakes, our failures and our sins. It is so easy to look at our life and think that
there is no way that the God of creation,
that the God who sent his own son to die,
would ever take us into his arms
after what we have done,
what we have thought,
what we have said,
who we are.
That is the work of Prince of Darkness … to discourage, to cause despair, to kick us to the curb of life.

Romans eight (Romans 8) is the most enlightening, the most encouraging, the most truth you can find about what God really thinks of us. At the end of the chapter, is the grandest of hope, offered to us”

^“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else (NOTHING) in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (vs. 37-39)

Let me give it to you, in the Carole version:

“It doesn’t matter what sin you committed. I love you, even if you have done wrong with your hands, with your ears, with your mouth, with your eyes, with your mind … to yourself, and even to others. I love you. And all you have to do is accept the fact that Jesus paid for it all. And he did so knowing that, even after you accept my love, you will still continue to do wrong. I love you that much. And NOTHING can separate you from me, once you accept my love for you.”

My version may not be a perfect translation, but, believe this:

NOTHING can separate us from the love of God, made possible through Jesus, our Savior, our Redeemer, our Lord.

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On the Third Day

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged Chocolate, Easter, raised from the dead, Scripture, Sunday, the third day, video on April 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Last year, on Easter Sunday, I posted a video (More than Chocolate) that had been speaking to me, that Easter season. In that tradition, I am posting another this year.

I love the use of scripture to tell a story, to teach a lesson, to touch my heart.

May God,

through words He inspired,

and man brought together,

touch your heart this day of celebrating that

“God raised Him, on the third day.”

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How He Loves Us

Posted in GOD, life, Love, WONDER, tagged Cross, David Crowder, Easter, How he Loves, Jesus, John Piper, Loves, Pursuit, Suffering on April 6, 2012| 4 Comments »

I have this picture in my mind of Jesus on a cross, near to the point of succumbing to death. He is beaten and bruised. He is bloodied, with fresh, as well as hours old dried blood. He is alive and yet so near to death.

In my mental picture, I am standing behind him, as he breaths some of his last, pain-filled breaths. I am dirty with the shame, the guilt, the sin that is part and parcel of being fully human. I am marred, scarred and unattractive. None of the dirt and the shame and the guilt and the sin is visible to anyone … except for me. It is internal. I look to others normal, clean and attractive, but, in my heart … that is where the reality of my condition is visible.

Then Jesus turns his face to look at me behind him. I know that He can see the real me … one who is so unworthy so close to one who is so perfect. He looks at me, and a tear falls from his bruised eye. He can see the sin in my life, and the embarrassment I feel causes a lump to form in my throat. I bow my head in shame, and tears fall from my internally bruised eyes.

I sob, more for myself than for the man suffering on the cross. I now feel the guilt of turning my face away from him, in HIS final hour. “How selfish,” I say to myself.

I force my head to lift, I force my eyes to look up to him.

He sees my guilt-filled eyes, he sees my sins … ALL OF THEM. I muster all that is within me to not look away.

Then, he does something that changes my life … forever.

He moves his head, how I do not know, for it was taking such efforts for him to even breath. He positions his head so that he is now looking at me through the cross, not around it. It is as though the wooden cross has become translucent, so that he is looking at me through the cross.

What he sees, as he looks at me through the cross is very different from what I know I am. He sees me as clean, He sees me as spotless, He sees me as beautiful.

Through the cross, Jesus sees me as the perfect creation that I was always intended to be. But, it is only through His seeing me through His cross that I am made new.

“So, Jesus sees you, and he’s like, my son, my daughter, perfect, spotless, blameless.”

“That’s the whole point of the cross, is that you’re gonna fail, and you’re gonna stumble, and you’re gonna feel dirty and you’re gonna feel awkward the whole point of the cross of Christ is there be this mighty picture of His love and pursuit of you, so the cross is necessary, because of you but it’s also the picture we have of just how far God is willing to go because He loves you.”

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To My Copper Knob

Posted in FAMILY, The Kids, WONDER, tagged 15, Birthday, cell phone, Choices, Copper Knob, Cris, dating, Daughter, Growing Up, Love, Memories, proud, red head on April 5, 2012| 4 Comments »

To my Copper Knob,

I remember a dear old Scottish lady (who made the BEST shortbread, in the world, hands down … but I digress) looking at you, the first Sunday after your birth, and saying in her strong Scottish brogue, “oh, look at that beautiful copper knob.” From that moment on, there is rarely a time when I look at your bright copper hair, and do not hear the echo of her voice.

As you awaken today to a new day, to your fifteenth birthday, I will flashback, while you will flash forward.

You, as a brand new fifteen year old, will be thinking of your future. You will be hoping that your parents will fulfill their promise of a cell phone when you are in grade nine, TODAY (no comment on that one). You will be thinking about how it is only one more year until you are old enough for your driving ‘learners’. You will be thinking about three more years until high school graduation (and that means, your own car, IF you have decided not to date in high school … so you will probably also be looking forward to the freedom of having your own car AND the freedom to date … but, I digress). You will be looking forward to the future you desire most (and I will not share here, because that is YOUR hearts desire).

For myself, as the mother of a brand new fifteen year old, I will be thinking of your past. I will be thinking of how I was not with you, last year, for your fourteenth birthday. I will be thinking your thirteenth birthday party, when you CONVINCED me to allow you to invite EVERY GIRL IN YOUR CLASS to your sleepover party (really, you should consider a future as a lawyer). I will remember your emotional struggles through adolescents, relationships, and math (and how I paid you, YES I PAID MY CHILD to have her ‘let’ me help her with her math homework … again, a career in law might be worth considering). I will remember your first day of school, your first steps, your first words. I will remember how you never saw differences in people, and that some of your best friends were fifty years or more older than you (especially that next door neighbor who you loved so much that, if you saw he was outside, you were out of your car seat before our vehicle came to a stop in the driveway). I will remember the day you were born, and what seemed like forever before you took your first breath.

You look ahead.

I look back.

Each day of your life, my influence on you decreases. Each day of your life, you grow up, and apart from me (and your father). Each day of your life, you become more independent in your thoughts, your actions and your choices and plans for the future. That is how it is supposed to be. And, it IS good … even if sometimes it feels as though a limb is being torn from MY being.

There is a portion of a wedding ceremony, that your dad reads when he is performing a marriage that states, “you are giving your children to life’s adventure, and not merely away from yourselves. This is what you raise your children for, to let them go their way. And in their going they come back again to share their discoveries.” It is this that gives me joy in anticipating the future with you, that you come back to us, to share your discoveries and joys, with us.

I am proud of who you are choosing to become. Do not forget that who you become is YOUR choosing. The most important choices in your life are ones that your father and I cannot make for you. There are many that I wish for you, but they, and how you choose to life your life, are in your hands.

I love you, my Copper Knob, my favorite red-haired daughter. Continue to put your life in the hand of your Creator, and you will never walk this life alone.

Your favorite mom.

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