Good evening....and a quiet evening it is. It seemed made for dusting off an almost forgotten blog and trying to catch up on some news.
A lot has happened in the past few months. God seems to enjoy changing things up every now and then, which keeps life from getting monotonous. Some of the changes have been good and some hard. And through it all, God steadies us with His faithfulness, grounds us with His love, and comforts us in His great, big God-arms.
A very trivial, yet welcome change was the addition of Maya, to our family. She's half Australian shepherd and half German shepherd, and altogether adorable and fun. We can't help but love her, even when she pulls laundry off the line, adds yet another stick to her scraggly collection on the patio, and jumps up on us in muddy exuberance at seeing us come home. We are working on her training and are happy that she seems to be a fairly stubborn smart dog.
She could about get away with murder with that look!
Part of her playfulness/naughtiness issue is the fact that Shadow, her rolemodel, mother figure, seems to be "in the family way" and gets tired of immature puppy antics. Bless her heart :)
I've also been on a few trips since the last post. One such trip was to get acquainted with this beautiful little baby:
Her mom, Tina, and I taught school together in Arkansas and therefore (that is such a KJVword) have lots of shared memories of good times together. I so enjoyed loving up on a little baby again and Sierra sure is a honey!
My family spent Labor Day down in South Ga with my mom's folks. We always have such a fun time and get to do things such as visit the Islands. We spent part of the day on St. Simons along, with bakoodles of other people. I tried to get my fill of the beautiful old live oaks with the spanish moss hanging from them. I would give a lot to have one in our yard. St. Simons Is. is the setting of many of Eugenia Price's books and that makes it doubly interesting.
Another major highlight was going flying with my cousin Derrick, who recently got his pilot's license. Flying in a small plane is just way more fun than riding in a jet, because you can do more stuff in a small plane. Derrick is a terrific pilot and did a wonderful job of taking a number of plane loads up and over the area. We are so lucky to have him in the family :) ;)
My grandma is such a good sport and enjoys stuff like that as much as the rest of us. She climbed right in as agilely as could be and thoroughly enjoyed her ride. I want to be just like her when I'm her age!
And then God brought us to a valley.... a deep, dark valley which we are still in but still feel His Presence.
Our dear friend/member of our church was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor two and a half weeks ago. It was a huge blow/shock to us. She went into surgery a few days later and they removed what they could of it. She was in the hospital for a little over a week and came home last Saturday. You can read more of the story here.
She is the mom of some of my best friends, so walking through this valley with them has been so very difficult. Everything happened so fast and they didn't have much time to process things before more were piled on. And yet, I see peace in them.... resignation to God's will.... and a sweet spirit of acceptance. And like I mentioned, seeing people you love suffer so deeply and not being able to do anything but care for them is hard. I'd love to make the pain go away, turn the clock back in time, shake them up from the bad dream. But I can't. Here are a few words I penned in a very dark time for me emotionally in this:
Pain
Jagged
Tearing
Blinding
Crippling
Numbing
Stripping
Raw
Hope
Enfolding
Life-giving
Comforting
Soothing
Healing
Trusting
Beautiful
God
Loving
Upholding
Changeless
Timeless
Merciful
Giving
Forever
Please continue to pray for the Whitt family. The future looks uncertain. There are many things they will have to work through and figure out.
But God is good, and somehow that thought comforted me through this. For some reason, it is His will and His intentions for His children are always good.
Well, I should run along. I hope to post more in the future. Several topics include:
1. Restaurant Etiquette (I'm loaded on this one :)
2. What It Means to Be A Southern Lady
3. Living Intentionally and with Purpose in a Ready-Made World
etc. etc.
until then,
Vicki
Photo credits for all but the Sierra pictures go to Kelly. Don't think i could do stuff like that. Please.
