Oy!

Yes, I'm still alive...just no time to post. School started today with a half day that I felt WAAYYY less than half ready for, to be followed tomorrow and the next day by an all-school overnight campout. Which I have to pack for right now, so ta ta for now. :-)

Happy Birthday to me!!

At 11:11 p.m. tonight I turn 42 years old. I'm lovin' it--I'm old enough to face facts, young enough to want to; young enough to seek beauty, old enough to know what it is; young enough to run, old enough to be impressed with myself when I do; old enough to have seen God's mighty hand, young enough to expect miracles; young enough to speak my mind, old enough to have one! ;-)

At a loss for words...

I'm in an odd place of having so much to say that I can't get myself to say any of it. Too many thoughts and events and ideas--too many activities and changes and plans. In the past week I delivered my firstborn to college and got word that my husband will at long last be switching jobs. So there will be big holes in my house this fall--Joseph eight hours away in Nebraska, Steve in Memphis five days of every week. I like change--the freshness of new possibility--and these changes are not unwelcome, but I don't like the distances change can bring and the fluctuations between anticipation and grief that they often stir in me. Neither of those emotions leaves me completely in the present. Anticipation hopes for future joy; grief mourns the end of past joy. Both take me out of today, which has joys of its own that I miss when my eyes are elsewhere.

There's a robin hopping unsuccessfully after bugs in the flowerbed under my window. It spreads its wings and hunkers close to the ground, then flies away. Now a swallowtail butterfly flitters from roses to cotoneaster. Gorgeous.

I might not have words for all of the hopes and ideas and events and fears that fill my past and future, but I can enjoy today and see God in it.