Grateful For:

1.  Her honest anger and tears and the guidance needed to respond to them:  Love never fails in the moments that seem to require something else.  There is nothing else.

2.  The gift of two books when a day with her boys was payment enough.  How each book speaks to something I'd mentioned to her and how she heard what I was saying and acted on it.

3.  Acrylics, Mod Podge, canvas, brushes:  we are painting our desserts and she might be new to this mixed media, but she has already learned it in the way she looks at balance, color, space.

4.  Lynn parked on the John Deere mower under the shady tree.  We talk for a bit.  "Well, we're all amateurs," he says.  "I suppose.  It's just hard when the amateur phase lasts your entire life."

5.  [                                                                                                ]

6.  Her courage.  How she allows God to speak first.  How she did it for me.  How.  There aren't enough words to say it yet.

7.  Remembering suddenly now that he said they had put a toad in the sandbox and shut the lid.  And it hasn't happened yet, but how I walked out into the Nebraska night well past midnight with a princess flashlight so I could set him free.