DAUGHTER SAYS

Great balls of fire, the laundry is piled.  Daughter says it's Mount Everest.  We emerge from Christmas while still keeping Christ. 

Ugh.  Clear out the sugar.  Enough red and green.  Haul out the planner and try not to faint because it looks like somebody puked on it.  Daughter says I need to get ready for the craziness.  Of schooling and driving and bleacher butt.  Ahhh, the rush again, run again, reel again, and the trusting that God is good and full of grace.   

Something going on with my skin.  Causing hot spots of itch that drive me crazy to scratch it off.  Daughter says no.  She holds my hands down and rubs them with gooey junk.  What is it?  Well...is there anything I have NOT eaten in the last month?  Diet...definitely diet.

Ugh again.  Because going to the gym isn't the cure for the crush of sugar and caffeine.  Daughter says it's time to ease back a bit, and I know she shows me that much grace because she doesn't know that I've been stopping there at the drive through for java more often than she thinks.

Are y'all with me?  Aren't you thankful for the New Year and the new beginnings and the fresh starts?  Time to take a look at last year, and put something like spring time in our steps, our thoughts, our lives. Yes.  Time to look forward by looking back.

Last year, we waited and prayed for METAMORPHOSIS within our family.  Certainly, we have seen some of that, and aren't we grateful?  We've seen our share of still ugly caterpillar too, but who can stop hope of more change into beauty?  Butterflies are beautiful.  Each one unique and hand painted by God.  Like us, right?  HE makes us uniquely HIS and sets us free to color in the Body of Christ with a delicate beauty that is pure and clean and makes me cry.  Daughter says we should all flutter our wings so we can flood the world with light and color.

Metaphorical painting of hands reaching down into the darkness to draw us out of sin, daughter says.  She paints too, coloring all this crazy kaleidoscope of beauty in our home.  She says HE is reaching for us.  And I'm going to fuss about her red paint plops on the carpet?

NO.

Daughter says,

Bernadette