Hello, Mom.

It's time for the Golden Globes to begin and I miss you so very much. By now you would have called me 5 times just to chat about the fashions. I promise that someday I will go to the ceremony just like you and I had planned to do.

I love you and miss you every minute.

Bon Voyage, Dad!

Today Dad leaves for a 2-week cruise in South America with his cousin. This is a trip that he and Mom planned together, and although it will be bittersweet we're glad he is going to enjoy some sunshine and start the year by exploring new places.

Happy New Year

I was reading over old posts this morning, and I stumbled across something I wrote exactly one year ago. "We are choosing as a family to look toward 2010 with hope and anticipation of God's continued provision and care." It was a statement of faith, and at the time I thought that I was writing it with the intent of showing everyone that I believed God was going to heal my mom physically. As I re-read that entry and thought about how much has happened in the past 12 months, and as I considered that statement and whether or not it held true for us, I was reminded that nowhere in Scripture does God promise that his care for us will be manifested in the form of our choosing. Just as a child makes a Christmas wish-list for Santa I sometimes petition God and then base my enthusiasm for him on how well he grants my requests. We are told to come "boldly before the throne of grace" when praying for someone's healing (or anything else) and my entire family did just that, yet Mom still lost her battle with cancer.

Does that mean God didn't grant us provision and care? Hardly. His provision came in Mom's relatively pain-free last days. His care came in the quiet moments where we sat in Mom's bed with her and held her hand and were just able to be in her presence. He provided emotional and spiritual encouragement, friends and family to surround us, the chance for us to express love to one another so that there was nothing left unsaid when Mom died.

At the dawn of 2011, "We are choosing as a family to look forward with hope and anticipation of God's continued provision and care." He didn't leave us throughout the trials of 2010 and he will not leave us now.

Revelation 21:5 "He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!' Then he said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.'" My New Year's wish for you, friends, is that God would enable you to start anew, whether you have to shed pain or grief or disappointment or anger or bitterness. I am resolving to do that because that's what Mom would hope for.

And I'm eating a bite of sauerkraut, for luck, and because Mom would have told me to.