Well, the sun streamed into my window this morning! Today will be another day that will bring new challenges and hopefully a growth in faith. My children, after twenty some years of being home (I homeschooled them all these years), are off to new adventures and experiences. I am so blessed and grateful that my children are normal, happy, and well adjusted, but where does that leave me? For all of my adult life, I knew where I was going, and that what I was doing had so much meaning. That was here but what in my life has meaning after?

As, I sat in my favorite chair looking out my window, I had to let out a giggle recalling the events of yesterday. I stepped out of my "comfort zone" and got me a blog! I was so excited and if I am honest, so proud, that I immediately called my baby sister. After several tries, I had to face the fact that she was not home. An answering machine would not stop me from receiving a big pat on the back. So I put in a call to to one of my big sisters. Great, she was home! She answered. I could hardly contain myself and politely asked what she was doing, knowing nothing could be more important than her seeing my blog. When I inquired innocently what she was doing, I was informed she was washing her little dog. Washing the dog!...not high on my list of priorities. I hinted to her several times about my blog and finally asked if she could sit down at the computer while the dog was drying and look my blog up. After, several attempts at giving her the blog address (dyslexia seemed to be playing a part) the page appeared before her eyes, like a blind man seeing for the first time. I held my breath as I waited for the marching band to start playing in approval for what I had done. I breathlessly asked what she thought...Confident that she would reinforce my thoughts that I was headed for a Pulitzer prize. The next thing I remember is her voice saying, "here, there, after...it's kind of confusing". She did think my blog was neat, but by that time I knew there was not going to be any confetti, balloons, marching band and, for sure, no Pulitzer prize.

First of all, our measure of who and what we are in life has to come from being a child of God. That is why we are here. He decided to give us life for His glory and to build His kingdom. Somewhere along the way we get twisted around into forgetting that and wanting to be important and stand out to someone...everyone! In a perfect Christian walk the first arms we run to would be God's. That is not always so easy. We want to hear the sound of a sister's voice giving us approval, we want to feel the loving arms of our earthly father tight and strong around us, we look to our girl friends to seek our advice and then use it, and want your husbands to look into our eyes the way they did twenty-five years ago. I don't see that happening!! That does not mean we are not respected, loved or even treasured, but humans fail us.

In the book of Hebrews it tells us that "faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see...by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible."11:1-3. In the after, I have to hang onto faith, trusting that I can find meaningand purpose between the here and after. With these verses in hand, I am going to lay my head on my pillow tonight, with sweet thoughts of my two sisters and the hope that when the sun comes streaming through my window tomorrow morning that somehow between the here and after that my faith will be strengthened.