Mornings have not been my friend lately, but his face, just the right distance for me to focus on and see clearly, was the friendliest thing I know. “You gotta get up” he told me quietly. At least he was smiling while delivering that news.

The drapes were still mostly pulled shut, blocking light from the storms we had night before last, but the middle was cracked open, and the contrast of the chocolate brown drapery and the lightened sky caught and held my fuzzy vision. My hands wavered all around the area next to my bed until I found my glasses.

Aha.

I stood and took a step to the window to see what this decidedly pink vision was in the atmosphere. As I rose ever so slowly into that next level of consciousness, I pushed the panels apart and tried to take it in what I saw.

But how do you really take in something like this?

I found myself holding my breath as lyrics raced through my head of mentions of early morning meetings with Jesus.

“As surely as the sun will rise You’ll come to us, As certain as the dawn appears. You’ll come, let your glory fall as You respond to us…”

“Glorious. My eyes have seen the Glory of the Lord…the hope of His returning, fills the universe!”

“In the morning when I rise…give me Jesus.”

This was by far the prettiest morning meeting I’ve had.

After delivering the kids safely to school, I came back home and crawled directly into bed, this time accompanied by my cup of coffee, devotional, laptop, paperwork, and calendar. I figured I could stay put a while that way.

The silence and stillness of the room was more than welcome. It was a relief. I stared ahead and breathed in the moment.

For every hat I wear in life, it seems that a voice accompanies it, and so it wasn’t long before reminders and responsibilities swept in fighting over what should take priority for the day. Every ‘to do’ came louder and faster than the one before it to where there was shouting occuring in my brainspace. I just sat there, completely still but internally screaming, “I want to run away! Or maybe I need an assistant. An assistant? Wow. You are insane.”

I would make a disastrous life coach. “Suck it up and go put in some laundry.”

I was not getting out of that bed though. Sometimes the best thing to do is be still for the moment and work faster later.

I just want to spend time with the Lord right now.
I NEED Him.

I had other plans for the morning, but decided to stay home and punch some of this to-do list in the mouth. I reached over for my Jesus Calling devotional. I’m about a week behind but turned to that day’s dated entry.

“Let My Love enfold you in the radiance of My Glory. Sit still in the Light of My Presence, and receive My Peace. These quiet moments with Me transcend time, accomplishing far more than you can imagine. Bring me the sacrifice of your time, and watch to see how abundantly I bless you and your loved ones.”
-Jesus Calling, January 25

I sat with tears streaming off my face, top lip curled in ugly cry position and heart waving a white flag of surrender, yet again. And not in a ‘bring on da’ blessings’ kind of way, but because I am known and communicated with in ways nothing else and no ONE else can. Period.

I can’t help but imagine, as I lay asleep in bed each morning, the Lord is swirling around the sky and creating these outrageous sunrises, anxious for us to wake up and see them, kind of like we feel about our kids on their birthdays or Christmas morning.

A thought to create such unspeakable beauty… that I would see it as I stumble up and out of bed, and not only notice it, but be moved so deeply by His love of color and timing and, well, of me. That it would cause me to worship before even speaking my first word for the day.

I’m kind of wondering if God doesn’t have a special palette for brilliant shades of pink. I believe without a doubt that we ain’t seen NOTHIN yet.

Months ago, we sat again, discussing our individual & family wants & needs in designing the new space. Our home. No pressure.

Wants: Big Kitchen Island and a cozy sitting area adjoining. 3rd car garage. Small dedicated area with built in shampoo bowl/mirror for washing & cutting hair. Double Vanity Jack-&-Jill bathroom for the girls. A family library room. A craft area…girls paradise. Built in grill on the patio….daddy’s paradise. All the little details, mine.

As we started talking about timelines and what we would want for the girls space, we soon discovered that by the time the home were saved for and constructed or acquired, they would be within a few years of potentially moving OUT of it.

I was married and gone at 19, and while I might hope it goes different for my daughters, this is not unrealistic to consider. Putting voice to the idea that they could be gone in as much time as we have HAD them was a sobering moment. We both just sat with tears in our eyes, unable to speak for a while.

We work and work and strive and plan and design and dream and all the while, these little people are taking impressions of what home is to them, not what we want it to be for them. Not what we wish we could provide.

The reality is, everything our kids want from us, minus a pony, we had the ability to give them, TODAY. All they want is us.

They want our time.
They want our attention.
They need our affirmation.

We didn’t know how long we would live here on this street. If we would want more house, or more land, or more space in the coming years. And honestly, we probably will. We already sometimes do.

But this is the house where our girls are growing up. It is the house they have lived in the longest of any house. Ever. Already. And it is the house that when asked years down the road about home, their minds will most likely conjure a snapshot of.

That’s why the house we live in, now, is actually OUR dream house.

It doesn’t look like what many people would consider dreamy at all. Some have referred to it as a ‘starter home’ and then tried to pull those words back into their mouths as I smile on. I don’t care because my husband & girls are here. It’s a 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bath home with a good size family room, dining room & bright kitchen in need of some updating. I don’t mind though because the drywall is well saturated with laughter and picture frame nail holes from moments that mattered to us and the smell of Brian’s good cookin.

So I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning when I get to wake up in my dream house. Despite the fact that I’ve dreamed of having a home on some acreage, I’ve also dreamed of not having a mortgage. Working toward the latter faster & more aggressively will make the jolt of morning all the better for Brian and me. But knowing that we are giving our girls that mental snapshot their father wishes were more clear for him, is pretty priceless.

We are not in the know. We just assume it’s healthier than white bread and unpumped / unsprayed full of bad things.

Wheat is bad for you! No, it’s grain!
What did that animal live in while it was alive? How do I know?!
Do you know what “All Natural” really means?
Refined sugar is the sweetest poison of all. Huh?
Do you know if your ground beef was washed in ammonia solution? If it was WHAT?
Canned tomatoes can kill you? I seriously love canned tomatoes.

I also really love a fresh piece of Bunny bread slathered with butter and sprinkled with semi-sweet chocolate chips and white sugar.

Brian & I both, admittedly, are intimidated by our beautiful new Whole Foods grocery store up the road because we are not fully aware of the differences in what we’ve been accustomed to eating or how to balance the cost comparison of what benefit we are gaining. I mean, minus sugar mountain on the white bread. That’s just a blatant disregard for my insides.

We aren’t actually sure, aside from “healthy”, how we wish to eat. We REALLY LOVE to cook together & eat different things. I asked for a deep fryer but Brian said that was not happening, so I’m at least clear on that side of the spectrum. Sadness.

Last week we ventured back to Whole Foods. “I’m glad we’re here together. It’s less intimidating to be with you.” Awww.

“I feel the same way”  I whispered to him…  “And I’m SO glad you wore your Vibrams in here today!”  It kind of balanced my fur boots.

We didn’t do so good that day with finding something new & healthy. We made it out of the store with beer, organic cheese & local onions. Nothing groundbreaking, but at least we bonded over exploring a new environment together. Win.

Despite my feelings of being lost inside that specific grocery store and the health food world in general, I have really grown to love some things about it, specifically the cheese department. Show me a Dutch girl who doesn’t appreciate cheese and I’ll ask for her genealogy records. Whoa man. There are some crazy good cheeses to be had in the back corner of that store!

This afternoon I found a recipe I wanted to try using spaghetti squash & I remembered the beautiful display of them at WF. The girls & I headed over there and hopped on inside to get what we needed and uhh, splurge on a bit of cheese for the weekend.

As we walked out to the car, my friend Rachel drove up next to us and said hi. I told her I noticed something under my windshield wiper and was so curious I just had to go get it a second…I walked over grabbed it and in my hand held this:

Oh my. I laughed a little, but inside I was sucked back into the hyper colored tunnel of emotion known as 10th grade. I started looking around. Like, in the parking lot, down the lane, at the front door and on the top of the building.

Was someone watching me? Did they do an emissions test while I was sampling Brie a few minutes ago?

I felt safe hugged up against Rachel’s Ford Expedition. “Is that a bad parking job?” I asked her. We agreed it wasn’t. I was totally between the white lines.

I’m fine with hormone-packed poultry. I think it’s tastier. I thought.
No one liked the fresh ground peanut butter I bought from here last month. Meh.
The crab cakes weren’t mind blowing.
I sure will miss that cheese department. They are the friendliest folks ever.
And the Napoli Sausage.
And Lucy’s Cheesecake.

Dog.Gone.

I’m not about to be losin out on Lucy’s Cheesecakes now! Truth is, I love my vehicle. It enables me to help with the kids field trips when my nerves tolerate it the need arises, or like last week, load up with some of our best friends & the kids and mugs full of hot chocolate and buzz all over town looking at Christmas lights. So much fun. I don’t feel bad about the size of my car OR my parking skillz one teeny bit.

Big cars are great. So is good quality cheese though. Perhaps next time I go back, I’ll have an I LOVE WHOLE FOODS sticker firmly in place on my bumper. And a Publix one on my heart.

Yet some days, we just know.

This morning I woke up at 9:50AM in a silent home hearing only the wind rustling the trees outside my window.

Good morning, Lord.
Tuesday. Laundry day.
The 18th. Dad’s birthday…

I don’t exactly do well to make complete sentences upon waking.

I’ve felt a bit childlike, appropriately so, in my prayerful approach the past few days, asking the Lord to please allow me just a moment of awareness of my dad. Just a reminder that would be so of him and from Him that I wouldn’t mistake it. For whatever reason, my often unsentimental heart needed it more than ever. A whiff of his cigar. A glimpse of a stranger in a crowd that looked like him. Anything, really. It’s been so long, it would carry me for years.

Months ago I decided to choose something each day to celebrate. I usually only put it on parade in my heart and mind. Today! Today I celebrate….

However, I drove this afternoon to a little cupcake bakery, bought a treat and drove home. I pondered how ordinary my day had been so far with decreasing laundry and increasing quantities of sweet memories of my dad.

Although he’s been away from us for 21 years, today would have been his 75th Birthday.

I set the cupcake on the kitchen island and went upstairs to switch, load & fold more laundry. It wasn’t long after that I learned my Aunt Michelle, my dad’s only sister and safe to say one of his best friends, had passed on.

It was as though I could hear my dad say, “For my birthday, I want my sister here with me!”

And I believe he got it.

I smiled and then began sobbing.

Today I celebrate his adventurous spirit (which he did not genetically pass down to me), and his love of food & laughter and friends & family (which he did)… and blew out a candle in honor of what would have been his 75th Birthday.

“Oh, no thank you. I already have 2 of these nail sets at home” I told him.

“Oh! That’s wonderful! … Wait, are those your real nails? Can I see your hand for just a moment?”

Crap.

I may have the nail stuff but I realized real fast he was selling skin care. I had just done my very effective facial the day before, purging my entire face of every possible unwelcome impurity or otherwise, so I was feeling pretty sure I’d be back on my way to shop at Gap within 30 seconds.

Wrongo.

After a salt scrub to show impurities coming off my clean hands and a mask done on the inside of my wrist, he laid out all the products I never wanted and offered me a super special deal because I was a return customer.

I was headed to Gap 10 minutes ago. How am I standing here derailed getting a wrist scrub? One wrist.

“Let me think about it and I’ll be back at the mall tomorrow.” That’s laughable to a salesman.

“Are you a model?” he asked. That is laughable to me. For a split second I debated asking if he had something that could remove the zebra tube dress of stretch marks that exists from 6 inches below my breasts through the 9 inches above my knees, but I decided to hold that one to myself and let him teach me about the Dead Sea for a minute.

I must be fairly friendly because he said, “I know that you will tell me the truth… what is holding you back from buying this today?”

He was right. I speak truth. “I don’t want all these products” I told him. “I will get home and forget how to use them & when.” I explained that I only use vaseline, warm water & a washcloth on my face. That is all i have the mental capacity for in the morning. Or ever. I loved the look on his face when I said that.  What does that cost me, like, $10 a year?

He informed me that there was a lightened place on my skin. Really? He picked up a mirror to show me. “oh no…no i dont want to see….” I stepped backwards and shied away. I’m sure the away movement was the total opposite effect of what he intended.

He said that because we were becoming friends by now and wanted to tell me his real name. I’m sure he thought I would appreciate that and it might make it harder for me to say no to his next sales offer. He helped me say his name a few times and get my Rs successfully rolling and I softened up a bit… until he tried to sell me more. I flat out denied any hope for purchase to my new friend and he bent over laughing, put his hands over his face and said “ahhhh! You are a tough cookie!”

I had to be. Little did he know it was payday and my family’s entire cash envelope system of survival for the next 2 weeks was freshly counted & divided in my purse.

It would be kind of hard to explain to the kids that mommy had a lightened place on her face that required special lotions and that if they would just hang in there, my skin would be more even toned and my pores smaller in just three months. Also, our dinner this month will be ramen-noodle-this and ramen-noodle-that.

He wanted to educate me. I get it. His skin, absolutely beautiful. Why wouldn’t I believe a man who carries toner in his backpack so he can use it midday, right?

Then he lowered the boom and told me he those few lights spots on my face inhale pollution.

Excuse me?

IN.HALE.

Pollution into my face?

I blankly stared at him but behind my eyes a reel of images raced. A nuclear smoke stack, Al Gore’s face, my pores opening like funnels and dirt flying into them with vacuum force.

I bought that skin cream so fast your head would spin. Damaged box 75% off what my new friend was initially thinking I was willing to part ways with.

Satisfaction danced over our heads.

“You are gonna be back here in three months hugging me and thanking me!” he said. We’ll see my friend. Don’t count your chickens yet.

[gasp] “Mommy! I want to read you this book!” Oh Lord, I thought, I just want to go sit in my chair. Alone. Quiet.

“Okay! I would LOVE that babe!” was the right answer and the one I gave.

And so she began Dr. Seuss’ Hop On Pop Book. She loved reading it and I was completely captivated by her happiness. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and snapped a quick picture. Somehow my phone, dropped no less than 50 times, just doesn’t seem to take pictures as nicely as it used to.

I was walking a fine line…living in and soaking up this very moment with her. And wanting to capture it forever in a share-able format.

“I’ll be right back! I’m gonna go get my good camera!” I promised as I raced downstairs and swapped out the lenses. I ran back up and tried to drop back in to where I was emotionally with her just 90 seconds before.

I haven’t picked up my camera more than, say, five times this summer. It’s usually found as an appendage on me, and yet, this summer has been quiet. Mostly undocumented. Just as children gravitate toward a special blanket or cuddly animal, I think the camera has become my comfort item of choice. One that is easy for me to hide behind and observe from. My position of choice in any environment.

Avery continued reading her book and found it absolutely hilarious. So much so that she threw her body back and put her hand to her head after reading a specific portion. I thought my heart would explode right then. I was beaming watching her happiness and I was actually capturing it in the lens too.

My phone rang as she ended the book. It was Brian, who has been away this week. “What are you up to?” he asked. I walked out of the room.

“Ohhhmygosh” I whispered, “I was in the midst of the sweetest moment with Avery and I ran & got the camera and … I just… I love the picture I got! I captured the moment and…” I started to cry.

I can’t remember feeling simultaneously so excited and so sad. It was a perfect storm of emotion as I told him about the moments just prior, packaged with the reality of my camera left cold on the desk for the past couple months.

“What have I missed?” I asked him.

I suppose what I may have missed through the lens of a camera, I’ve found in experience and conversation and observation. And perhaps I needed that just as much. It’s a risk.

I am, however, freshly reminded today of the power that lies in the simple click of a camera. And even better than that, the reward of not crashing in my chair to have some “me time” a moment too soon.

Perhaps this summer will be remembered by me as the one when I stepped out from behind the camera and learned to live in the moment a little more. To just go and sit and hold my daughters hand instead of take a photo of her there alone. To study her face as she laughs and memorize the sound so that no matter what technology may ever fail me, my memory, I pray, will not.

I’m thankful tonight that I have a summer’s worth of these moments stored up.

And a couple photos too.

One reason I like to admire trees from afar is that I can not stand the thought of ticks and how sick you can get from them. Although, until last weekend, I had only ever laid eyes on one tick. It was a year ago on Taylor’s neck and it sent me dry heaving into the sink and calling on two friends to help remove it after my attempts to do so left the head and front legs behind. The girls still talk about it. ((shudder))

Last weekend after a fun night playing outdoors, both girls woke up with them. After undergoing a first and then second checking and removing process, I asked Brian to check my head. This took only 1/100th the time it took to check Taylor’s head. My word, that child has a head of hair for three people. Even though I was in the clear, I could not shake the horrible creepy crawly feeling so I headed upstairs for a shower. I was checking myself over in the mirror, yet again, (OCD anyone?) when I saw a black spot on the backside of my outer thigh and called downstairs for Brian. “I need your help. I got a little tick on me.”

“What.” Not a question. A statement. This was serious news.

Upstairs he came armed with supplies: a ziploc, box of matches, paper towel, a lighter, tweezers…the whole nine yards. I bit my lip, worried about what was about to go down and not IF, but how badly it would hurt. The curiosity of it all, being my first tick, was probably comparable to wondering about your first tattoo. Don’t worry mom, it’s just wondering.

It was small. Would that make it faster? It was all the way in my skin too. Was it already a lost cause? I laid on the floor with my leg bent against me to make it steady. I was sure a game of cat & mouse was about to ensue between Brian & this uninvited bug. I occupied my mind by looking the other way and checking facebook and email on my phone, trying to ignore the sound of the match that was just lit and the fact that it was headed toward the surface of my skin.

I could cuss here, but I will refrain at my mother’s request. Let’s just say, my eyes were big and the match was unsuccessful.

Next came my very sharp tweezers being pressed into my leg in an attempt to pop that sucker out.

Nothing.

Brian started looking at it weird and sighing. He grabbed the lighter most often used to light our grill. The flame was open all the way and I dodged my eyes away from what my facebook friends were doing and around to what was about to happen to me. A 3″ flame was headed my way. Visions of very unhappy things raced around my brain, like the pennies circling that cyclone thing at the mall, except they were faster and angrier.

Why would this thing not back it up & out of my skin?

Brian tried a while longer. His head kept turning different ways to get the best light. He was so steady and I, in turn, grateful for how determined he was to get it. I tried not to breathe. I tried to relax. I tried to think happy thoughts of hydrangeas and new shoes and mojitos.

Finally, after the best effort ever given, Brian concluded, “Baby. I don’t think that’s a tick. I think… I think that’s a mole.”

Seriously. The one thing you should never EVER pick at we nearly just lit on FIRE and attempted to pop out from an inch beneath it?

Let’s just say, laying on your back is one of the heartiest ways to laugh out loud. Our lives…One part drama. One part sitcom. I try to keep him on his toes and be sure life with me is a little bit exciting.

We laid in bed Sunday night side by side, staring at the ceiling. Aside from the enflamed spot on my leg, all the drama of the previous day had faded. We talked quietly about the week ahead and what plans and goals each of us had. It got quiet and I thought he was drifting off to sleep.

“Mondays are the hardest days for me.” he said out of no where.

“What? Why?” We turned our heads to face each other.

“Because those are the days I miss you most.”

That makes them my favorite.

Sounds like something I would love.

So I opened it and saw a photo that looked very familiar. Of Brian and I.

I looked back up at the title and saw the end of it, “Heather + Brian”.

Well I’ll be. Our vow renewal photos, taken by the gifted Jenny Lindsay along with a few words written by me describing the planning of the party are being featured on Wedding Wire’s blog today.

You can see more of Jenny’s photos of the evening on her blog or in our home. Happy Friday!

I walked across the room and scooped her up in my arms as she lay flat & straight on the bed staring at the ceiling. My face dove into the pillow next to her, our cheeks touching, her arms thrown around my shoulders.

It didn’t take more than 3 seconds for me to realize that my daughters face was wet with hot tears. I lifted my face of the pillow about an inch so my words could escape the space between. “What’s wrong!?” insert 3 second silence – enough for her to weigh her answer and … “Nothing.” she whispered.

I didn’t know exactly what she & Brian had talked about for that half hour before bed but I knew enough. I had passed by earlier and through the crack in the door had seen the compassion on his face as he sat Indian style on the ground with his hands folded under his chin and his heart on his sleeve as she talked.

I felt the burn rise in my face as she kept her feelings from me in that moment. I was okay with it and yet, I wasn’t. Why wouldn’t she tell me too? I welled up with tears and already being face down in the pillow broke down into ugly cry mode. It was quiet between us except that I began to shake ever so slightly, and there I was laying in my daughters arms, crying.

“What’s the matter, mama?” she asked me. She rubbed my back and patted me for a moment. I didn’t know what to say. I’m supposed to be the compassionate comforter here, and here she is, extending that to me. I cried harder knowing nothing was getting past this child.

“I just love you more than anything in this world and it hurts me when you are sad. I would do anything to take it away. But I don’t. know. how.” She squeezed her little arms around me tighter and whispered, “I love you too.”

Taylor has had a difficult year. She has struggled socially more than I ever did from 9 thru 19. Her heart hurts as she craves a friend who doesn’t share her same last name.

As I was out for a drive earlier this year wrestling with my feelings over her situation, the Lord dropped some thoughts into my heart to ponder; that nothing we go through is ever wasted. He will use everything for His glory. Everything. For years Taylor has said that she wants to be a missionary and a nurse, so while this year has felt dark at so many turns, I believe God can and will use it to cultivate a spirit of compassion in her. I’m not sure we can become something if we haven’t had it shown to us or had a real need for it. We are experiential people.

I’ve grown up in church, and never once heard about a heavenly garbage can where our hurts and things that didn’t work out – the scraps of our life – go to pile up. God doesn’t do experiments and just throw His hands up at the end and say, “Oh well.”

Even still, I feel like curling up in a ball and crying out, “Don’t waste it God! It hurts her too much! I beg You to make something really beautiful out of this!” She’s too precious. But He already knows that. All I can do is stand here with my hands open in surrender. I can’t control any of it. She was His before she was mine. I have to trust that He is speaking to her and protecting her in His perfect way. Ways that I, sleeping the next room over, am incapable of.

^5-12 Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track. Don’t assume that you know it all. Run to God! Run from evil! Your body will glow with health,  your very bones will vibrate with life! Honor God with everything you own; give him the first and the best. Your barns will burst, your wine vats will brim over. But don’t, dear friend, resent God’s discipline; don’t sulk under his loving correction. It’s the child he loves that God corrects; a father’s delight is behind all this.

Proverbs 3: 5-12 (The Message)

And I don’t like ‘see ya later’ much better.

Two weeks ago I turned onto my street and could not help but ONLY see the FOR RENT sign in the yard of the house across the street from us. I was certain that I was seeing things, so I slowed down to study it and utterly confused, I turned quick into my garage, jumped out of my car and clenching my jaw so as not to cry, marched across the street. The clenched jaw thing gave out. Chin quivering ensued.

My neighbor Beth, with her ugly new lawn accessory, saw the whole thing go down from inside her house. She later told me she watched me march over from the window wondering if I was mad or upset or how I would react. Of course, when she saw me crying, there was no denying, I was seriously unhappy.

“I should have told you before the sign went up! It happened too fast!” she told me. Arrgh. Now we were both crying. The tears were rolling off my face so fast I was relying on my forearm to wipe them. “I can’t even hug you because I have PINK EYE and my TEARS are CONTAGIOUS!” Ugh…we talked some more. “I’m going home to cry in private.” And as I turned to go home and do just that, she took the sign out of her yard and put it on the side of the house. Thats some neighborly LOVE right there. She told the other neighbors and then put it back out when everyone was up on the news.

Her husband got a great job. They are moving back into their old house. This is a GOOD thing! And yet, we wish if it were to be, that it were only just across town. But it’s not.

It’s a blessed thing to love your neighbors and live life the way we do. I hear how uncommon it is, but I guess for me, the truth of that fades because for the past two years, it is all that I’ve known. Toys, coffee, wine, leftovers, dogsitting, babysitting, bachelor & -ette viewing, prayers, time, advice, recipes, clothing and kindness. We share, exchange and give it all around here.

Tonight, we hosted a lawn party and neighbors from many surrounding houses gathered to spend time with them. It was pretty great. As the kids played behind us, the adults gathered near the table and we each began to share something special that we love or appreciate about our friends who are moving away tomorrow. I bet we stood there half an hour doing only that.

When different people say things that resonate with each other, you know it’s truth is abundant. This family is well loved. They have been an example to every one of us. We have been challenged to love people well and serve them joyfully and I am nearly positive that every person spoke of their patience as parents. I can only remember Beth being upset once, and even then she busted out laughing! That’s really something significant to have said of you.

Mark has an unbelievable memory and a gift for making conversation. It just seems so easy for him, and he shows such interest in everyone, every time.

Six weeks shy of two years as neighbors; I have only seen Beth hold a phone twice.

You can go ahead and read that again.

No joke. She’s always 100% there.

I wanna be like that. I need more of their example in my life. Although I’m not ready for a moving truck to be parked outside my front window 12 hours from now, I can smile because I know without a doubt that they are following God’s lead. No mistakes in His call.