Dispersing kids....

This week Chelsea has been "around" like she was when she was younger(lol...aka...not married with a family of her own). As we stood in the pantry putting away toilet paper and paper towels Chelsea looking up to see trash bags said, "Just this week we ran out of the trash bags I bought when Bo and I got married!" Around here we run through those bags!! She laughed and said, "And that box only had FIFTY-FIVE bags! Funnier still is that Bo thinks we go through too much trash!" Perspective:) What an eye opener. She went on to compare toilet paper and paper towels and simple things we run through at rapid rates and she meanders through in months. What is huge to one person is small to another...perspective:)


This morning my biggies were up and laughing together. I just love those moments. Chelsea, Bo and Caleb were getting ready to head to Birmingham to the Southern Evangelism Conference. Bo is teaching a class and Caleb is going with them:) Caleb will return home tonight but Chelsea and Bo will head to their home in Georgia. Oh how I will miss them! My time is dwindling away. Doug went back to Freed last Sunday. Stuart went back yesterday. I have just a few days left with Caleb before he heads back to Afghanistan. Time is slipping away!


I had several people talk about the tears shed when Caleb came home. I did not cry that much....he was home. To me the goodbye is so much harder. I could cry just thinking about it....but, my like all my big kids it is the absence of their presence, of the joy they bring that I miss so greatly!


One of my oldest friends (haha...not "oldest" but longest relationship with) made the comment last week ".... Now, I like to think I am a strong person and a devoted mom, but if Wes came to me with the same prospect(the Army), I think I'd drug him and when he awoke, we'd be Canadians." How funny. It made me laugh. My response was...."...you are a supportive mom...period! The hardest part of parenting is ALWAYS knowing that our will is ours and our incredible children? Well, they have their own wills too:) Loving them means accepting choices sometimes that we might not have made for ourselves. We guard our children against sin....but how on earth do you guard them against honor? Even in Canada you would not be safe..lol!" Good kids, strong kids, those kids with unwavering faith? Those qualities are the EXACT thing we mom's pray for! Hard to knock a blessing.

I am so greatly blessed. I know that. If there is anything I have learned through parenting my children? The simply knowledge that there is only ONE DESTINATION to seek. But there are so many paths, no one road for my kids. They may be my chicks and they did an awesome job following for so many years...but now that row is dispersed and those chicks are making their own tracks:) I am ever so ever grateful their paths are headed in the right direction!