All 10 Popes

This is going to sound like I'm bragging. I assure you that I am not. I do have a point, promise. Just keep reading or don't and go make a smoothie (yum!) for yourself and paroose something more interesting.Otherwise here goes...and stay with me ok? This morning I woke up at 5:30. This. NEVER. Happens. Ask my husband. He's usually up by at least 6:30. But this morning his phone alarm that rings every morning at (God help us all) 5 am, woke me up as well as my college aged neighbors (I'm certain of it) because the tone was shrieking at me loud and hard. Did I say 5 am? Ok I'm moving on...  Now usually, I don't even hear that dreaded melody, and if I do I lovingly (ok maybe not so lovingly all the time) wonder if he is going to get up and turn it off. 9 times out of 10 he does b/c well, I'm not sure that most of me is actually alive. Today it was my turn. Plus I can't figure out how to set my heater so it doesn't feel like Hawaii inside my room at ...

We walk to school back in June to grab the kids from school. She walking next to me, lanky, not even a foot shorter any more. Thick hair down her back and I see it then: who she is becoming. I see who the Lord is molding her into and what a hard, wild ride the last year has been. Really, how many years have been for us. A struggle. And how I praise the Lord for what He has done in her. I asked her if she remembered the day that she told me that she was going to run away and I asked if I could help her pack her bags. I asked her to look back and remember who she was and what a year with Jesus can do for the soul. She smiles big. There is sadness there for what used to be in us both as well as a love that was worth growing in both of our hearts that we would never want to be taken away. A mother's heart will always be for what is hers, for what came from her, for what has been given and I feared and worried that we were some how stealing something from our biological children b...