Good morning... I very rarely sleep all night long, but this week's Spirit-sparked "birthday cake box" adventure required a huge output of my energy - mentally, physically, and spiritually. I did not blog yesterday, since I slept until 7:45 am when our puppy Cami made her first peep. On Monday, I dropped off our 60 happy treasures to [...]
Good morning... Just one week ago today, our blog post on my 63rd birthday invited everyone to join us in creating "birthday cake boxes" for thirty senior citizens who live in the Grove Park neighborhood of our city. We were hoping for 30 boxes, 30 boxes filled with a cake mix, frosting, oil and birthday candles. What we [...]
Good morning... I am experiencing my once-in-a-lifetime "golden" birthday. I was born in 1963, and I turn 63 today! A longtime friend came up with a fabulous way to celebrate. Jeannine Rollins, a beloved Northside Church member, wrote me after recent a blog post, Kindness Is A Ripple. At the end of our post, we watched a short [...]
Good morning... This is a week to celebrate Baby Allen, our first grandchild now developing in a cozy womb, as we anticipate his May 15th due date. On Thursday morning, our class celebrated my birthday a few days early by showering me with children's books. These favorite treasures will stay at "Sue Sue's" [...]
Good morning... "We travelled through dark moments together," writes Katherine May on page 120 of Wintering. "I won't pretend it was fun. But it was necessary all the same. We raged and grieved together. We were overcome with fear. We worried and slept it off, and didn't sleep, and let our timetables turn upside down. We didn't so [...]
Good morning... Yesterday was a magical day and night. For Christmas, I gave my sister from Ohio a trip to Atlanta to join me for Kay Warren's talk at Peachtree Road Methodist Church. After a full day of crazy flying delays, Cathy finally arrived yesterday morning just in time for us to change clothes, hop in the car, [...]
Good morning... This week in class, we read aloud these words from the prologue of our book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. ****** Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in your life when you're cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from [...]
Good morning... This week we received handwritten envelops, one for Steve and me as well as one addressed personally to each of our four kids and our daughter-in-law. At ages 88 and 87, my parents are still sending out Christmas cards. Pretty amazing, right? I took this photo as I visited with them in Ohio earlier this month. [...]
Good morning... My favorite Monday of the year is when we set up a Secret Santa Shop at PAWkids for the kids in the afterschool enrichment program. This past Monday was the day and my car was loaded down like a sleigh! This year we simplified our giving, relying solely on the donations of our Thursday morning class, [...]
Good morning... After a crazy ten hour travel day for my seventy-five minute flight, my sister battled airport traffic to pick me up in Cleveland, Ohio. Happy to be together, we arrived around 11:00 pm at our parents' independent living villa in their senior living community. With their teeth out and their jammies on, our parents hugged us [...]
