One Way Ticket

I just realized I haven't shared the best news of all.  Mister is home for good.  That's right.  We booked a one way ticket home and he's here to stay.  I picked him up at the airport on Saturday afternoon.  There is not much more to be said except..YAY!  It's about time!

Sunshine and Love - Ode to Sammyantha

"We all grow better in sunshine and love."

For the past nineteen years, nearly twenty, I've been in love with a little girl and watched her grow.  My firstborn niece.  My little Sammyantha.  Only she's not so little anymore.

In two weeks, she'll become a wife and then one day possibly a mother of her own children.  It is a struggle for me to figure out where all those years went.  That little baby girl who threw her bottle into the Spokane River and sent her Auntie in after it.  Or whenever "Wink" by Neal McCoy came on would dance up and down uncontrollably from the first opening beat in her little diapered tushie.  The same little girl who asked for her favorite Reba song, Till You Love Me, by so sweetly asking "Want Sunlight Moonlight!" Or the same little girl that when I asked her which shoes we should buy her to match her new dress wanted the "black ones that make noise!" She was and is nothing less than a most special and charming little baby girl.

But when I turned away for but a moment, somehow, that beautiful little baby I held in my arms all those tender years grew.  The little girl who I tucked into my bed to sleep or held in my arms on the bus against my chest as she breathed ever so sweetly in and out calmly trusting me as she slept.  Oh how I long for those days one more time.

My little Sammy is all grown up.  And I for one wish she wasn't because I haven't been as much a part of her life the last ten years as I was the first ten - not even close. But I hope she knows how much I love her and think of her every day even if I don't always say it and even if I live thousands of miles away.

But the best part of it all is I will get to tell her in person in a couple of weeks.  This Auntie has herself a wedding to attend.  I can't wait to hold her in my arms just one more time before the man that stole her heart holds her forever as his wife.

Is this how my mom felt when I got married all those years ago?  It has to be.  I'm not even this little girl's mommy and it is killing me.  Forgive me if I cry.  Forgive me if she is still that little baby girl in my eyes.

I love being ME

I sat wondering just now what makes me so special to write a blog?  What goes on in my life that doesn't happen a million times over in everyone else's life?  Why do you need to read about it happening to yet someone else when you are already living it?

Then I realized something:  I am not just like everyone else.  My life is not just the same.  I am not just another life wandering around on Planet Earth.

I am me.  I am me.  I am a miracle and I am special.  I am beautiful and I am loved by Jehovah God, who created me.  He knows me as myself.  As the individual person I am.  He knows my heart, my thoughts, my desires and goals.  He knew me, and LOVED me, even before I was born.

Just by being born I am a miracle.  I had a  1:2500 shot of even being born.  The other 2,499 girls who had my birth defect never made it to birth.  They were never born.  But that wasn't me.  I was the one who made it.  Me.  And then there was the miracle of surviving being run over by a car on the freeway at 2 1/2 years old when I tumbled out and fell underneath.  Yes, indeed, being alive is a miracle.  Every day I wake up able is a miracle.  I need not look further for other miracles.

I love being ME.