Death is a time of consideration, of looking back on the past and looking forward to the future. In my case, the loss of my mother-in-law last Saturday (July 2nd) has become a reason to look back and forward at the same time. How did I want to remember her, and what method would be…

As I faced summer vacation last week I had no idea that mine was going to begin with a proverbial bang. Yes, the 4th of July is right around the corner, but that didn’t prepare me for the ‘spiritual fireworks’ that awaited. My mother-in-law Judy’s condition (she has breast cancer), has steadily deteriorated, but we…

I officially finished my fourth quarter and final report for the 2010-2011 school year on Thursday, so Joelle and I are finally on summer vacation. She finished her last test Monday morning; my reports took a few days longer, but the end result is the same. We’re both looking forward to not having classes every…

They say time flies when you’re having a good time, but that’s not entirely true: Time flies even if you’re not having a good time, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it! As you get older the rate of speed and the rate of enjoyment are not necessarily cojoined, and sometimes you merely…

Flying somewhere always seems to take longer than the trip home, and this time was no exception. The only real problem we’d had getting ready to go was that we couldn’t get seats together on the flight beforehand, which made things difficult; we did not want to be separated from Joelle or each other, but…

Here we are, five days into our trip to Texas, and it’s three days from coming home before I’ve gotten the chance and energy to write. We’ve been up at six every day but Sunday and today, Thursday, and the time has gone by so fast I can hardly believe it’s almost over. My surgery…

I woke up early this morning (Thursday) at 3:00 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep right away, so I decided to get up and write tonight because on Friday and Saturday AM, my usual times to blog, I not really going to want to get up. There’s only two mornings left until it’s time…

I woke up early this morning and began the counting game again: One week to go. Next Saturday morning we will be up and moving early because we will be on our way to the airport. Then I wondered who else might be doing that this morning, and imagined the new people who’d be arriving…

Why do things (and by ‘things’ I mean ‘bad things’) have to happen at the worst possible time? Events seem to line up and then go down at the one time when there is no recourse to alter or change them. This week events in my life lined up in just that way, and I…

This week I feel like I’ve spent all my time either counting or waiting. It started on Sunday when Paul and Joelle went to our church’s sunrise service at 6:30 AM. Since the congregation was planning a shared breakfast afterwards, and I didn’t have the energy to climb up and down the church’s many and…