Wow. I did not realize that it has been almost a month since my last post. Eek.

The days sure fly by, don’t they? Kids are growing. Activities swirling. Life is moving right along.

Sound familiar?

My goal has been to try to stop and smell the roses each day. It is hard. Very hard some days.

There is always something to do it seems.

It was a rainy afternoon. Sitting under a warm blanket, bible, notebooks, and prayer journals falling off my lap, I cupped my hot tea in my hands.

From time to time, I like to revisit old prayer journals. I picked up one from a dusty shelf that was from the Summer of 2013.

As I read page after page, I sat in amazement of how simple those old journals were.

My heart was all over the pages, but the times seem to be different then.

I giggled as I came across an entry that said, “Father, please help me to be better at small talk. Help me to enjoy conversations and to be interested in others and to also be interesting! Help me to have a fun personality and easy to know. Lord, let me never stray from who I am, but adhere to being Christ Like.”

The high school kid is taking over the college kids bedroom as we speak.

She has been wanting his room since we bought this house years ago. His room is in the basement and has much more privacy than her bedroom, which so happens to be right across the hall from our room.

I mean, I knew I would finally have to give in and let her take over that room of his. More than likely, he will not be living with us full time again, Lord willing anyway.

Already, the room looks completely different. It is cozier and warmer and just the female touch it needed to spruce it up. She has put her little girly things in that room and now it is hard to tell it was ever the home of a teenage boy.

As she was moving some of the college kids things upstairs to her old room, I came across a box she brought upstairs.

Sitting on top of the box was a letter written to my son, the college kid, from me in August 2018. I had no recollection of the letter, I just recognized my loopy handwriting.

I began to read the letter, needing to sit down as I was a few lines in, I caught my breath and pulled the letter to my heart.

Tears were stinging my eyes. My throat closed with that awful lump that forms when you are on the verge of full on crying.

I had written it to him on his 17th birthday.

My daughter, the youngest, is now 17.

Three pages later, I could not believe the treasure that God had just laid in my hands.