Anyway….what’s the point? What is it we’re doing here? What’s the frequency, Kenneth? I guess the bottom line is, I like to write. And I’m just arrogant enough to believe that what I put down may be helpful, or interesting, or at the very least, entertaining to you or someone else. So, here we are, me writing, you reading… and hopefully maybe even you returning the favor with a comment or two, in the spirit of connection.

The ugly facts are that I’m someone who’s experienced a fairly heavy dose of sudden and tragic loss. To bullet point it, I’m a wife, a mother, a widow, and a wife again with a granddaughter in Heaven.

As soon as I deconstruct it to that level, my inner criticizer, (I call her “the Valley Girl”), has her eyes rolling so violently that I should surely be able to hear them grazing the walls of her skull. She’s telling me how self-important I am to think that my comparatively minuscule grief somehow makes me an authority, and in her annoyingly “like” filled vernacular, she’s announcing with a pinched face, “Like…you are totally NOT, like…any kind of smart person about this”. Isn’t SHE delightful? Am I the only one with that voice? I mean, she’s not the only one, and the minute I say that I sense your eyebrow raise, while wondering if Schizophrenia is on the list, but hear me out. I’m a girl with an idea to write, and that inner voice, who I’m learning not to entirely ignore because she’s got some good insight to my inner workings…is at all times threatening to undermine my resolve to follow through. SO… I have acknowledged her. I have patted her on her sticky, high, Aqua-net hair. I have thanked her for her input, and here I am anyway.

The youngest of my two children is about to leave for college. When the first left, there was 8 years until the second, so while that was sad, (and it was,) I took great solace in knowing that I had a while before having to transition to the kid-free house. Well here I am, and I’m shakin’ in my tattered Birkenstocks. While most of me would rather staple it down, I feel a page turning here, and I’d like to take advantage of the clean page to jot down some things; thoughts and stories about where I’ve been so far, what I’ve learned, what God has done, and where I hope to go from here. My hope is that anyone who might be interested will come along too. So let’s together make like Tiny Tim – let’s let God carry us and prayerfully Bless us, every one.