Celebrating Lindsey

December has been a month of celebration for us. We had Casie's birthday first, college graduation, and yesterday was Lindsey's 14th birthday. Hard to believe my "baby girl" is in junior high and is fourteen years old. She graciously decided to hold off on a larger birthday party this year until sometime in January. We'll have a group of friends over to our house then or maybe to another location. But with graduation added into the mix this year, December became overwhelming pretty quickly in the scheduling department.

She went with her dad to lunch and spent the afternoon with him, and they had a great time together. After I left the office, I picked up Linds and a friend, Alexandra, and we headed to Memphis for dinner and a movie. Listening to Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber on the way, I had alot of fun with those two girls in the car. Just listening to teenagers is a riot at times. We had a burger and fries at Steak 'n Shake, and then arrived at the movies too full to even get a popcorn.

As her dad and I were talking about Lindsey yesterday, we both traveled back to the day she was born. When she was born, she had Group B Strep and also pneumonia. My baby girl went straight from my arms to the NICU at the hospital. We could see her every 4 hours for 10 minutes. Linds came into the world not only very sick, but with alot of spunk. She fought hard those first few days, but she won. She's been spunky ever since. She's such a whirlwind, that sometimes I have trouble keeping up with her. She is a very social person, and likes to be around friends or family most of the time. There are times I have to make her slow down, and just have some time to herself. She looks at me with that look that only teenagers can give, but she goes along. She is a curious young lady, and has been since birth. She wants to see new things, go new places, have new experiences often. Life with Lindsey has been adventurous to say the least. She has a quick wit, and keeps me laughing alot. One of the things I'm the most proud of in her is that she is a person of compassion and caring for those around her. In her earlier school years, she felt bad that her best friend and our next door neighbor didn't receive an award at the end of school that year. Most of the kids seemed to have one at least ONE reward or certificate, but not Tate. We drove home, and she couldn't stop worrying about him. So, she marched into our computer room, and began to get on a program to design him a certificate. I went in there to help. We printed out an award for "Best Friend Ever" and she signed it, making it all official, and then marched straight next door to knock on his door and give it to him. I think it was one of the sweetest (and shortest) award ceremonies I've ever attended. But what a precious moment! His toothless grin stretched from one end of his face to the other, and he treasured that award. They promptly waved me off and then went off to play outside. She's always been that way, and we've come up with many things like that to do for her friends and encourage them when they are down. That makes her a pretty special young lady in my unbiased (ha) opinion.

So here's to you Linds...may your life continue to be an adventure...and may your inward beauty continue to shine. I love you!

Look Out World

What a celebratory weekend in our family! My oldest daughter, Casie, graduated from the University of Central Arkansas with a Bachelor of Health Sciences. She had papers, presentations and finals right up until the very end....by the time the Big Event arrived on Saturday, I'm sure she was simply running on adrenaline. But she was glowing as she walked across that stage to receive her diploma.

She had quite a crew cheering her on....her father and I, her sister, both sets of grandparents, 2 aunts, 2 uncles, and 5 cousins. Not to mention all the cards and phone calls she received this week from so many others family and friends.

In the words of Dr. Seuss:

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go..."

Casie, it's going to be exciting as you begin a new journey in life and to find out what God has in store for you!

I Am Taking Care of You

God's faithfulness is something that I am sure of, and yet, constantly amazed by. Throughout my life, God has never changed...He has been the constant. Life has changed, circumstances change, relationships change, I have changed, the people in my life have changed....but God is always there...unchanging and ever faithful.

As a newly single woman and mother, there are times that I feel frightened, alone, and overwhelmed. God is there to hear my fears and answer them, He comforts me when I feel alone and reminds me that I am not, and brings about a calmness, blessings, encouragement and solutions when I am overwhelmed.

Often the Lord uses the people in my life to bring about the solutions, encouragement and blessings. I am so filled with awe and gratitude for these earthly angels.

In the last week, I received a card from a girlfriend. That's not unusual...she and I correspond quite a bit, and we love to send cards. Inside was a Christmas ornament with a friendship saying and then a note "This is not a Christmas present...this is something to get you through the slump". (She and I decided not to exchange at Christmas a few years ago...although we frequently find reasons to send each other things throughout the year. We simply didn't want to the other to feel overwhelmed during a financially stressful time of year). Anyway...the "UNChristmas present" was a Visa giftcard to use when I needed. I just sat there with tears in my eyes...she has walked the scary road of divorce and single motherhood, and she now walks the road of healing and a new life filled with love. But she remembers...and she is a huge source of blessing, encouragement and friendship in my life.

I also received the blessing of having my lost bifocals replaced. I won't share the person's name just yet, but maybe someday. The message to go pick up something at the clinic was sent privately, and this person is a pretty private individual. I have been wearing my old "backup" pair from years ago, simply because replacing the new pair from last spring was going to be too costly for me at this time. The others, while not that attractive, worked just fine. But I missed my newer ones quite a bit (they were lost in July) and this person simply told me "Merry Christmas". I sat in the parking lot and cried as I put on the new bifocals....I had been blessed in such a huge and generous way. I am so filled with humble gratitude at this gift, but also at the blessing of this person's friendship.

Tonight, on the eve of Casie's college graduation, Linds and I met up with Casie, my parents from Texas, and 2 of my aunts and uncles for an early Christmas dinner at a restaurant. The hugs, laughter and conversation that soon filled the table were heartwarming and encouraging in a way that only the familiarity of family ties can bring. The girls and I met up with Mom and Dad a little after dinner at their hotel and visited. While the girls were opening up birthday presents (both have December birthdays), Mom pointed to a beautifully wrapped gift on the coffee table. Cellophane with snowflakes and a big gorgeous red ribbon tied up this beautiful package. She told me that one of her friends in my hometown of Grand Prairie, Texas, who I have come to know through my mom, sent it for me. As I untied the beautiful bow, I was already touched not even knowing what it was. Just the thought of someone that I have only recently, in the last few years, come to know and only see when I go home for a visit, yet was kind enough to send a gift, was already causing a lump in my throat. Tied to the bow was a beautiful cross ornament with a butterfly and the word "HOPE" dangling from it. I love the symbol of the butterfly...something beautiful emerging from a caterpillar and cocoon. It just fills me with hope for new possibilities. And of course, the symbol of the cross...the power of the Savior's love, is very important in my life. And I haven't even OPENED the package yet! Inside the cellphane was a gorgeous bronzed tin with a cross on it and the words "FAITH". This round tin is one that can sit out on a table all year long...it is simply beautiful. And inside were the most scrumptious homemade buttery cookies in the shape of Christmas trees that I have ever tasted. We sat around the hotel room, nibbling (scarfing them down is more like it) on those yummy treats and talking about the giving spirit of the woman who had baked them and put together this gift for me.

As I looked around the room...I felt such enormous love...the love I have for my parents, and they for me. The love I have for my daughters and the love they have for me. The swelling in both my heart and throat were growing by the minute. It was ABUNDANT.

All week long I have felt God's encouragement raining down on me, and the reminder that "I AM TAKING CARE OF YOU". I don't need tangible gifts to know this truth...but this week, God chose to show me in tangible ways. He used these people to lift me up, and I know that they are going to be filling the blessings of the Lord raining down on them. That's the wonderful thing about allowing God to use you in meaningful ways....you not only bless the recipient (me in this case) but God chooses to bless you for being a faithful servant.

Tonight...well, this morning...(I am wide awake at 3:50 am) I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the abundance of encouragement, generosity and love that has been sent my way. And I am praying an abundance of blessing on all of these angels.

The Birthday Girl

Yesterday was Casie's 23rd birthday. I can't believe my firstborn is 23 years old. It seems like just yesterday she was snuggling in my lap. One of my favorite memories is how she would cuddle in my lap when she was a toddler and preschooler and hug my neck and say "Oh how I love that Mommy smell!" My heart would just melt.

So she's older now, and she is cuddling with the purse of her dreams and probably saying "Oh how I love that new purse smell!" But that's okay...because, I, the mommy, found it for her! :)

Seriously, I am honored to be her mother. She was a beautiful baby and has grown into a beautiful woman. And I'm not even talking about the outward appearance, although she truly is beautiful outwardly. I'm talking about something more important...her soul. She is a beautiful soul. She is a young woman who lives out the fruits of the Spirit....love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

My own mother and I are very close...and I considered myself close to all my grandmothers and great grandmother. I'm blessed to still have one remaining grandmother as a matter of fact, and I treasure her. So, I always felt loved and nurtured by the women in my family. And yet, until I held Casie in my arms for the first time, I never knew the intensity of the love between mother and child. And Casie won't get it until she is blessed to have her own child.

I'm glad that we had a good celebration yesterday. Her dad even came over and took us all to lunch to celebrate her special day, and we all four had a lovely afternoon together. We ate her favorite cheesecake from the Cheesecake Corner in Memphis, and we played a boardgame together, all four of us laughing quite a bit. Although life's changes aren't always good, I'm glad for the bond of children, and how the celebration of life can bring people together for awhile. She hugged me and said her birthday was a great one, and those words have made my heart melt all over again.

The Loss of a Friend

I mourn the loss of a very old and dear friend this week. He was in a fatal traffic accident in Dallas this week...leaving a void in the lives of many.

We were high school buds first, high school sweethearts off and on for a time, then buddies again. Being young and immature, we went through phases of extreme devotion or extreme frustration with one another. Our friendship began at age 15 and lasted until age 47. Our friendship began in the excitement and idealism of our teenage years, and most recently found itself in the reality of life....finding contentment in the joys of it, realizing the sorrows of it, and talking about you hopefully are constantly growing and redefining yourself.

I tried to write about Eric earlier this week, only to find myself not knowing where to start. I wasn't quite brave enough to put thought or feeling to paper....(er, computer screen). Another wonderful friend of both of ours, who now lives in Virginia, and writes a wonderful blog, wrote beautiful words about him yesterday. I finally decided to sit down myself and see if I could find the words.

My friend's name is Eric Heebner.  From the time we were teenagers, he was determined to be different. And he succeeded well in that endeavor.

 He wanted to prove to people who did not believe he would be successful, that YES, he would be. He wanted to be successful in friendships, family life, school, his career (both military and post-military), hobbies and pursuits. He pursued life with gusto...mixed with lots of caring and compassion. He wanted to see the world, and he did see probably most of it.

Eric seemed to succeed in everything he touched...his military career was successful, his undergraduate and graduate career was successful, his writings were successful enough to be published. Since I was fortunate enough to reconnect with him in adulthood, I knew him as a nurse, nurse practitioner, public health officer, writer, speaker, and most recently, business owner and practitioner of his own mental health business. But it's not his professional life that I want to write about.

He chose to reconnect with people and make amends many years ago to anyone he felt he might have hurt. He chose to forgive those in his past that had hurt him. He was on a mission to make any "wrong" relationships "right" again. He found me about 10 years ago, living in another state, and we began to re-establish a friendship and catch up with one another and follow one another's family life, career, etc. He was a husband, father, brother, son, and wonderful friend.

Eric was kind, warm and extremely funny. But one of the most tragic things about Eric to many of us who knew him well, was that he seemed to still be a lonely soul in many ways, and still seemed to be seeking something that was illusive to him. I'm not sure he ever quite grasped just how many people truly loved him, wanted to be his friend, just enjoyed his company. If he felt he had let you down in any way, he would often "retreat" from the friendship for a little while....seeming to not understand that most people accept the flaws of each other and move on. He could be incredibly tough on himself.

This morning, I was re-reading one of his older blogs...and came across these words, used in describing himself.

"I study hard, work hard and always want people in my life that 1) Reciprocates 2) Encourages 3) Forgives 4) Grows and 5)Judicioulsy exercise Ecclesiastes chapter 3 in friendship. A tall order indeed. Who am I that I should ask for so much? Worthy of my own expectations? (See #3) I know who I am not, I know that I can be something worse and have. I know my friends have said the same about themselves. This is why they are my friends, partly."

* I left his misspelling in his words just as he wrote them. Eric was a NOTORIOUSLY bad speller, and I am a very good one. In high school, he would usually show me his homework so that I could correct the spelling. It became something we joked about later in our 40s.

In 2002, he sent me a package that had a piece of lava in it that he had picked up somewhere in one of his many travels. He had carried it for years, and was now sending it to me. I was going through a particularly tough time, and quite down on myself. I wish I had kept the words he had written, so that I could quote them here. But what he sent to me was more than a piece of lava...he sent me encouragement. And the meaning behind the words I have forgotten, was that there are times in our life that we are going to be refined by fire. We will feel like we will never survive the intensity. But we will..and when we are in the fire, we are being refined. And we will come out as something very unique, if we allow ourselves.

Now...knowing Eric and his quirky and hilarious sense of humor...he probably picked that lava rock up at a landscaping store and sent it to me with those words. I know him quite well. But the gesture of sending that piece of lava, carefully placed in bubble wrap and placed in a cardboard box with words of encouragement for me showed the kind of friend he was. It has set in my office since 2002...and my office has changed locations 3 times since then. The rock has always made the move with me.

So thank you my friend....for high school "love notes", holding of hands, dances, getting me into trouble in choir, making me laugh on school bus trips, for sharing your poetry with me, for movie dates, for being brave enough to face my parents when we were late once, for helping me learn you can argue and still speak to one another (well...after the obligatory length of high school silence), for meeting me at the school bus with flowers you brought to me to take to drill team camp, for late night phone calls (I talked under the covers of my bedspread as if that really fooled my mom), for eating the inedible brownies and cookies I made for your our sophomore year when I was your spirit booster for football (or pretending like you did), for the kimono you sent from Korea in our early 20s, for well wishes sent from afar when I was getting married, to later comforting me with phone calls when my marriage was ending. Thank you for sharing poetry...from the writings of a 16 year old boy to a grown man in his 40s, excited over having one published. Thank you for wanting me to know you had become a man of faith, when you weren't even sure God existed when we were young. Thank you for sharing tips on how to lose weight as we both talked about mid life weight gains and health worries. Thank you for for making amends. Thank you for accepting mine. Thank you for taking the time to reconnect. Thank you for making me laugh when I wanted to cry. Thank you for calling me once when YOU needed to cry, and you did. Thank you for most recently helping me rebuild self esteem which I had seemed to lose. Thank you for my cup of coffee and the hug in June. Thank you for my lava rock.

The First Few Days of December

It seems as if I'm becoming a lazy blogger these days, but it's not intentional. I love this time of year, and like everyone, my life just becomes busier and busier. Working in accounting at a law firm, one of my busiest times of year is the end of the year. So when I walk through the door a little after 5 pm, I'm already feeling wiped out. And simply because it's December, there are all sorts of seasonal activities and tasks to be done.

Before I sound like I'm complaining, I'm not. I LOVE THIS TIME OF YEAR. Seriously, I love it. I love it all...the decorating, the gift buying, the cooking and baking, the parades, the concerts, the church plays and music, the Christmas music everywhere, Christmas movies on tv, the anticipation of getting together with extended family, and the anticipation of the actual day itself.

In addition to the hustle and bustle of everyday life, I find myself in quite a more emotional state than I had been in October and November. While I still feel a peace about my new stage in life, I find myself very sentimental and reminiscent lately of Christmases past, and I feel both of our daughters are going through this also. I'm trying to keep our family traditions that are the most meaningful the same, so there is continuity. Both Casie and Lindsey enjoy that immensely. But I'm also trying to come up with new traditions, activities, etc now that our lives are different than they were previously. It's a hard balance to find. Couple that (the sentiment) with the hormones of my late 40s, and I seem extra weepy as of late. I have a couple of other girlfriends who are admitted "cry-ers" as I am, and we have joked that ever since our mid 40s, it isn't a normal day if we haven't had at least one good cry. The last couple of weeks, I've done more than that. And I never know when they will come...sometimes they are happy tears, sometimes they are sad tears, sometimes they are frustrated tears, sometimes they are just sentimental tears. But boy....do they come! Just today, my good friend Vicki and I shared a cry (well, a couple actually) over a gift and the words sent to her by another friend encouraging her before her 3rd chemo treatment tomorrow.

Think I'm through?? Not yet! In addition to the hustle and bustle of the season, the roller coaster of emotions, I also feel as if I'm entering a new season of "reflection and teaching" by the Lord. I'm feeling like a mirror is being held up to my soul, and while I see things I like, there are still those dark hidden corners that need to be opened up and cleaned out. So I'm learning alot about Tracy right now....and not necessarily anything I'm ready to put into the written word just yet.

December is flying by quickly..sometimes I want the pace to change so that I can savor it a little more slowly. I'm trying to squeeze every bit of savoring out of it that I can. All in all, even with the extra tears, December is a good month. I'm blessed beyond measure, and life is good. Difficult some of the time...but very, very good.

Time To Be Still

Over the past couple of weeks, I've found myself slipping into a "funk" (as I call it) every now and then. I don't stay that way very long...sometimes for a day or two, sometimes maybe only an hour or two. But the busier I get, the more I find myself having these moods where irritations, wounds, stresses, worries just pop up and take over.

This morning, as I was sitting in my favorite chair, house all quiet, Christmas tree lights on, hot cup of coffee, I got out the current devotional book I am using. Today's reflection was on "Being Still" and how that we find ourselves best prepared for life's battles when we have taken time to get to know God during our moments of simply "being still".

I realized again (sigh. Sometimes I am a slow learner) that I have been so busy that I have stopped the being still part. And I know from past experience, that when I get too busy to simply be quiet and still that I find myself frantic, hurried, worried, and my emotions seem to have more emphasis placed on them than they deserve.

So I was so grateful my Christmas tree this morning. Why you ask? Because every year when my tree goes up, it just beckons to me....I can almost hear it..."Come sit for a spell, Tracy. Enjoy my beauty". Ever since I was a little girl, I have been mesmerized by Christmas trees and Christmas lights. So for the last couple of mornings, I have been getting back into my routine of making sure I get up early enough to enjoy the quiet and stillness of the wee hours. I slowed down enough to spend time with God in prayer, reading and reflection. And as a result, I have felt better all day long.

I'm going to give myself a gift this Christmas season...the gift of stillness before God. And I'm going to unwrap it each morning (hopefully) with anticipation. Because I much prefer the joys that come from a few moments of stillness and quiet over the "funk" that I get in when I neglect that need within my soul.