Directions to where I am

Start in Mansfield, Ohio on a hot fourth of July. Be welcomed by a three-year-old sister whose world will never be the same. Find yourself in Indiana by the time your second birthday comes along. Enjoy Indiana sweet corn, swim in a wading pool on hot summer days, run around until you are hoarse and hide in basement windows after Sunday night church services. Get your sister to fight with you. Get spanked by your first grade teacher and understand God's grace for the first time when you don't get in trouble when you get home. Understand God's grace for real when you feel the weight of your sins removed. Believe your dolls come alive at night. Be the best reader in first grade and the best handwriter in second grade. Get kissed on the bus on the way home from school by Jeffrey Fry and confess to your daddy in tears. Get glasses and find out you can see blades of grass standing up and that streets have sign posts. Ride around in cars in the back window or standing up next to your daddy while he's driving. Play with your Ohio cousins. Jump in lots of leaves in the fall, hunt for mushrooms, hang upside-down from your swingset for hours and watch the clouds, get dizzy looking up at a night sky of falling snow. Make snow tunnels for your dog. Get your appendix out and understand real pain--and get over your fear of shots.

Get dethroned at eight by a much worthier princess. Cry behind a locked bathroom door when you find out she is not ever going to walk. Pray and ask God for nothing else in your whole life but for her to walk. Cry and pray many time after that. Be amazed at the miracle of her life whether she walks or not. Recognize the gift your family has been given.

Detour to south Florida--watch out for culture shock! Fall in love with the beach: the sound, the salt wind, the sting of the water, and especially the burn of the sun on your skin even when you overdo it. Grow your hair out and fall in love with books: biographies first, then move into fiction--no fall into fiction and read until you can't see the world around you--until you are part of the stories you read. Find out that there are certain clothes you are supposed to wear. Pray (hard) to get those clothes. Be very afraid of your science teacher and your math teacher. Don't act like you like English class as much as you do. Try your parents'patience by asking them "why" for every rule--no every statement about every thing they hold dear. Go to summer camp and follow boys around the lake. Fall in like at the roller skating rink to "Love is Blue." Wonder if you will ever get taller--and prettier. Get shy. extremely shy.

Get contacts and lose the glasses. But realize you won't ever grow taller. Get kissed and hate it. Get kissed again (different boy) and realize it's not so bad. Move closer to God and move away from people's opinions. Fall more in love with books. Think you're in love. Look at your parents in a new way--they are cooler somehow.

Go away to college and feel like you fit in for the first time. Clean slate, such freedom. Have more fun than you thought possible. Have your mind opened up to so many new possibilites and ideas. Love going to classes for the first time. Love learning for the first time. Feel accomplishment and trust yourself more. Fall in love for real with the smartest man you have ever met. Get engaged in the math lab (knowing he loves math even if you hate it). Get married in Indiana in a borrowed dress with a blue ribbon on a beautiful day in June.

Begin married life in a tiny apartment in Tennessee. Cry for your mom when you drop one of your first meals on the floor. Learn to adapt to each other, and learn what it means to love.

Move to Oklahoma for the first of many adventures--picture cowboys--well, there are a few. Have an indescribably perfect blonde baby boy and try to understand how you could love this much. Spend every minute with him and ask God to help you give him back to Him. Be amazed at everything he does, and then double your joy two years later when you are just as amazed by another baby boy (black-haired) with equal delights but as different as is possible. Just when you think you have all the love you can handle, be in awe of God's grace to give you the icing on the cake--a girl. Soak in the baby years, smell them down to your toes. Sing them to sleep with their own special song. Tell yourself you will remember every funny thing they say, and then forget too many!

Make a couple more moves, to Tulsa and Arlington, but continue to enjoy the school days, the soccer, baseball, football, and basketball games, the birthday parties, slumber parties, sleep-overs, camping trips, traveling to grandparents' through the night. Keep the memories of silly songs and heartbreaking sobs close to your heart.

Detour to Jakarta, Indonesia for the time of your lives. Take it all in--the culture shock, the school with kids from all over the planet, the trips to Bali, Thailand, and Europe. Treasure the treks up to volcanos, through rainforests to waterfalls, rides on wild horses with little boys chasing after you. Bond together, laugh together, cry together--get very sick together. Wonder if they will ever be friends with each other.

Arrive back in Houston determined not to like it. Gradually come to love it as the place where your kids grow to adulthood. Buy a homey home for them to bring their friends to and listen for their laughter and kidding. Watch more football games than you thought possible. Learn all about cheerleading. Hurt for them. Watch them gain spriritual insight and be amazed at their discernment. Marvel that they become friends with each other and support each other. See them make mistakes, but never stop loving them.

When your baby sister, the real princess, is taken home by her Prince, run to your Lord for comfort. Be grateful for the life He gave her--her humor, her miraculous voice, her love for all people and creatures great and small, and her spirit which could not be crushed by something so small as a handicap. Be thrilled for the beginning of her real life--the one where she dances all over heaven!

Endure--I mean enjoy--the college years as the kids pull away more and more. Be happy for them and sad for you. Try not to let your heart break as little by little the laughter and music leave. Watch them become best friends with each other. Think they are the most beautiful people you have even known and even more, the best human beings. Enjoy their company and look forward to times with them.

Make it through a cancer diagnosis--depend on your Lord again. Realize just what you have had and hope to have more to come. Be astounded at God's healing. Be grateful for every good bloodtest. Never take him for granted again. Learn what it means to love.

Praise God for the love your children find. Understand these are the mates you have prayed for since they were babies. Feel stunned and in awe at their weddings. Realize they will now go on their own adventures--just like you did.

Feel so proud when they accomplish much more than you ever dreamed. Try not to be surprised that they are so responsible!

Welcome grandbabies--oh this is the best yet. Be amazed again--It is the same love but at a different level. Now you get to sit back and just love them--no strings attached and no expectations. Just love. It's the circle completed! Start blogging. Write this. You're here!


(The idea for this came from another blogger: These are a few of my favorite things. I'm not sure how to give credit yet.)