Life.  Beautiful.  Colorful.  Vulnerable.  Fragile.  Fleeting.  Tender.  

Laced with treasured moments 

Horrible tragedies

Excessive joys

Overwhelming sadness 

Mundane and extreme

Earthly and heavenly

    Ordinary and amazing  

And to think that God would love enough

to allow us emotions and creative outlets  

Thanx God.....

A couple of birthdays tomorrow!  My sister, Terri (left) and my daughter, Bethany (holding her niece on the right).  Guess we have a little reason to celebrate - again!  Little Nova, who Bethany is holding just turned a year old yesterday, and her momma (my daughter, Abi) had a birthday on June 11! 

Today we celebrated this little princess who turns ONE tomorrow.  It is hard to believe a year has gone by!  She is walking everywhere and quite the spicy little sweetheart!  Me....I can't get enough cheeky hugs and kisses!  She was born on Father's Day - such a precious gift to her daddy - and momma!  Of course, my heart is conquered for the second time since she is grand child number two!  Our whole family is pretty crazy about she and her big brother....just ask us! 

So...it was a "double your money party" here today: Dad's day and birthday - complete with potato soup, BLT sandwiches and some specialty cupcakes - for the little cupcake - and dads.   

I kinda like color.  I kinda like crafty things.  I kinda like bling.  A sweet friend made one of these and so I decided to steal her idea!  It took awhile to string all the beads...but it was rather therapeutic.  After finishing it and hanging it in front of a large window in my house, I have enjoyed watching the light shoot through the beads and literally put dance and dazzle into them!  .....Kinda like when the Light shines through us....and we dazzle and dance!

My Papa.  One of the "good-est" of all good ole' boys!  Dad's a story teller, hard worker, honest, smart, responsible, fun-loving, big laughing, joke-telling, blue-eyed smiler!  Oh, I've seen him grumpy, but you put him in a crowd and this guy comes to life with more tales than you can shake a possum at!  From river bank sagas to coon-treein' huntin' accounts, dad can talk about adventures that will make your mouth fly open and take your lips to instant teeth shinin' places!  His laugh shakes a room and rubs off on anyone within ear's distance!  

Dad grew up the big brother of 3 siblings, Loyd, Rosie & Lillie.  The girls were twins.  With teachers for parents and a dad who would be involved with a number of continued other jobs through the years, dad had quite a lot of responsibility.  He tells the predictable tales of walking miles to school, but always enhances with details of having to start the wood stove and get the building warmed and ready early in the morning before other kids arrived.  I remember him talking about a house he lived in that didn't have heat in his upstairs bedroom, but the flu from the wood stove went through his room and so he would scoot his bed close enough to warm his feet on the chimney.  His horse riding stories with his cousin/friend John Visiono and cross country trip with Buddy Cooper to California remind me of an era that I can only imagine!  One of the "wild west" adventures he has shared is about a roller coaster over the ocean where dad had to pry Buddy's hands loose after the ride as it was a harrowing first for them both!  

Dad grew up working in the fields, baling hay, feeding livestock, milking cows and keeping watermelons cold in the spring. He was familiar with root cellars, corn fields and "fresh" fried chicken that he most likely boiled and plucked himself on numerous occasions!  He hunted rabbits, cleaned squirrels and fished with a pole or a gig, whatever was most handy and would bring home dinner.  He drove a tractor, played and worked in a barn and knew the woods.  He knew how to shake sweet rich cream and make butter, how to plant, weed and harvest garden goods to can, store and eat through the winter.  

Dad went to work in the mines in Fredericktown as a young adult and carried a metal lunch pail every day.  I believe he has pumped gas, worked on cars, worked for numerous others and learned the business of insurance that eventually became his career until retirement.  Dad worked faithfully and quite successfully at his little business and established our home in a way that included security and provision all the years of our growing up.  It was dad who my sister and brother and I loved to talk into taking us to the store.  We could almost convince him to purchase anything from exotic fruit to pop sickles....that is, if mom wasn't looking!  The favorite?  A&W Root Beer nights with the family and Saturday evenings at the stock car races where inevitably I would get dad to buy me a fish sandwich and a coke! 

I love the heritage he lived and has so graciously shared.  He is a true, honest red-blooded, lovable American, but most of all, he is my dad!  What a blessing to have parents who cared enough to nurture and jump start our lives with love, respect and fun!  I realize that few in this era have such rich treasures.  Happy Father's day, Pappa!!! My dad & his brother, Lloyd and twin sisters, Rosie & Lillie

Loyd, Rosie, Harold, Lillie

Mom & Dad

"Make the world go away, get it off of my shoulders"...a favorite song from classic "crooner" days.  I suppose the lyrics have resonated with many since through the years.  Most of us can relate to life's challenges.  No matter how rich or poor, easy going or OCD, busy or bored we are, there are difficult days and seasons. I have yet to come up with a way to make the trials and pain of this world disappear.  However, I have found something that comforts my heart in a very broken world.  There is a place of rest and warmth in the friendship of our incredible and loving God.  Physically I can't say that I am "transported" or hear an audible voice when I pray and commune with Him, but when I contemplate the hope He has provided and promised and accept the love poured out through His one Son in order to reconcile our lives and sin before Him, I find rest.  

The older I get, the more aware I become of death.  I don't look forward to the process of death, but I do have an expectation of life forever - without pain or heartache.  What I look forward to was bought for each of us who accept the incredible gift.  It is the hope that is set before me.  And in that hope is comfort. 

Jesus once said that it was the hope set before Him that allowed Him to endure the cross.  It was a horrible death, yet a complete and perfect sacrifice - for you and for me.  Complete in that the finality of death was eliminated.  We will live again.  Oh, we have a choice as to whether it will be a heavenly ever after or a dark,  destructive one.  A critical and crucial choice.  Jesus is the truth, the life and the way.  It is through embracing Him that heaven is offered.  Our hope.  Our joy.  

When I think on those things; when I take hold of that hope; when I snuggle up to the One who offered me life beyond death...I find comfort...peace.  The weight of this world suddenly dims in the light of HIM!  There are two songs I'd like to quote a few words from here:

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus.  Look full in His wonderful face.  And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace." (by Helen H. Lemmel in 1922)

"He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.  When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions, eclipsed by glory and I realize just how beautiful You are, and how great Your affections are for me."  (by John Mark McMillan)