One Foot In Front of the Other

This morning was beautiful...sunny and cool.   My dogs and I walked around the park in the middle of our subdivision.  Birds were singing, the grass was like a green carpet all around. I was thinking today of all the wonderful times the three of us have had over the last 30 years.  Like a movie, images flooded through my mind.  Lacy loved to travel, loved to be in the back of the car singing or looking at the atlas to follow our route.  Our week in California - Disneyland, Sea World, Universal Studios - was the perfect vacation.  All of our pictures of Lacy have him wearing this huge smile.  Happy, happy, happy. I remembered, too, how Lacy and I drove for two days from Arkansas to North Carolina.  The image of he and I at a restaurant sitting across from each other talking about where we would go the next day, and his curious questions that always started with "Mom (Dad), I wonder about something..." Those memories are his, too, and we have ...

Last week, we heard the news that two young people were killed in a boating accident.  Their families were well known by a colleague of mine.  Everyone is devastated - two lives full of dreams and possibilities are over even before they truly began. I can almost imagine the parents' grief.  I know that I will be there some day.  I know Kenny and I will be called to bear the unbearable. Over the years, I've known people who lost children, and who have put "one foot in front of the other" and kept going.  But a door closes and a part of their lives is gone.  They are never quite the same. Our pastor preached about death a couple of weeks ago.  He talked about the writing of Corrie Ten Boom - she wrote of a conversation she and her father had about death.  "What will it be like to die?" she asked her father. Casper Ten Boom reminded her of their travels by train.  "When do I give you your ticket?" "Just before we get on the train,"...

Looking out the front door this morning, I was so happy to see green, green, green - everywhere I looked.  I love the springtime green that seems to suddenly pop up overnight, and the deep, healthy green of the grass and trees in my neighborhood. For the first time in a while, I woke at 5:30am on a Saturday without an alarm.  Walking every day for a couple of weeks has improved my mood.  I am beginning to feel like myself again,  losing this fog I've been in for a while, and seeing things in a more positive light. This week, we dealt with a strange symptom of HD - Lacy's speech became unintelligible for most of a day.  We got a call from his care giver on Wednesday evening.  She sounded very worried and wanted us to come an take a look at Lacy.  He'd been coughing all day, and his speech was so garbled she wondered if something terrible had happened in his brain. As it turned out, the coughing was just a result of Lacy's allergies really kicking ...