Spring IS Coming

Look what I saw on my walk this morning! It may still feel like winter, but the sky is blue today and the daffodils are a certain promise that the cold won’t last forever.

Do you ever get stuck in the muck of life and feel like the way life is at this very moment is the way it will always be?

I’ll miss a fire in the fireplace, and I like a chilly morning walk around the neighborhood – only because I layer up like I’m headed for the ski slopes! But it will be fine with me if I can walk across the lawn for a while without getting cold slimy mud all over my shoes. And I am ready for Freshway Produce to open again, to buy Kimberly Queen ferns and red geraniums for the flower pots, and to see Bradford Pears in full bloom.

Oh, yes….and I think I will buy new Flip Flops!

MoMs

Marietta Pride, Me, and Dewayne Neil

Moms R Us…it’s a lifelong sentence filled with highs and lows for sure. I got to speak to the Jackson Academy Moms two weeks ago and the Jackson Prep moms today. I guess my Mom Tour is over, but it was fun to look at the faces of these really young moms and find out their anxieties are exactly like my anxieties were…and the hard part is well-meaning MOMS, no matter how devoted, cannot fix everything in their children’s lives. But everybody just wants their children at every age and stage to be “okay.” Whether they are 13 or 30 or 50…we want to fix everything. I have always been a fixer…and messed up a lot of stuff along the way of “fixing.”

These get togethers are something Young Life sponsors each school year. They invite moms to hear from other moms in February and dads to hear from other dads in March. All I can share are the things I learned through butting my head against a lot of walls and doing a lot of things very wrong! The amazing truth I have learned at this late date is God’s grace is sufficient, and it was never ALL up to me – and what an ego trip to have ever thought it was! I am more fallen than I realized originally!

My friend Shirley reminded me a few weeks ago that ultimately the Mom calling is to do all you can to get your children to the threshold of a relationship with Jesus. The real transaction is between the child and the Lord and you can’t push, pull, or kick them over. The hardest part is that God does not seem to be on Central Daylight time and even though His ways are higher than our ways…don’t you wish He’d give you a print out of His time table?

Snow Day!

I remember when we occasionally got snow when I was a little girl – I well remember a big snow around spring break in the 1960’s….(I was very young of course) Even when I saw the 100% chance of snow, I was skeptical. I mean…has the weather man ever been wrong or anything?

I got up early to let Daisy and Thurber out and could not believe it! LOTS of snow…inches of it! I also could not believe how much they loved it. Thurber does not venture out if it is sprinkling the slightest bit, but he was prancing through the snow….made me wish we had some sheep or something out there for these 2 Corgis to “herd.” They are forever trying to herd Charles and me.

I spent a few minutes debating whether I should go to the office. My mother NEVER and I mean NEVER let us stay home from school unless we had temperature over 100 degrees and were on the verge of being comatose. I still feel like a shirker if I am not working at something….What is that old proverb about Idle minds are the devil’s workshop or something? My mother ascribed to that wholeheartedly. Imagine how happy I was to see our neighbor’s tree across our driveway. All my guilt was erased. God’s grace was sufficient for me and I went back to bed. I really felt kind of sorry when the neighbor called a few hours later to tell us she had the crews on their way to remove the tree. I kind of liked being stranded.