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I don’t usually answer my cell phone if I don’t recognize the number on the screen.

However, yesterday I was waiting on a return phone call from a furniture store, so when I glanced down at the ringing phone and saw a strange number, I answered.

I’m so thankful that I did.

It was my best friend from high school.  While we’ve kept in touch periodically through e-mails and special occasion cards, it’s probably been over twenty years since we talked on the phone.  She had remembered my birthday earlier this week and decided to call.

It was so good to hear her voice.  She’s a four-year breast cancer survivor and the mom of a one-year-old son that she and her husband adopted.  She’s a sister in Christ, and we talked about the church they’ve found since their move back to the East Coast and the way God has blessed our families.

We caught up on all aspects of each other’s lives.  I asked about her parents, doing well at ages 85 and 80.  She was amazed that my “baby” sister now has three kids of her own. 

We browsed through a couple of old memories….I was eating supper at her house with her family one night (while I can hardly remember what I cooked a few nights ago, I still remember that that meal was spaghetti!) and we bowed our heads while her dad prayed.  We opened our eyes to see one of their cats on top of the table poised to partake of a supper of her own!

Now that Susan and I have reconnected by phone, I hope it continues.  I plan to call her around her birthday in late July; if nothing else, we can begin a new tradition of talking on the phone twice a year.

God puts special people in our lives in different seasons.  Looking back, I remember my freshman college roommate, a couple of co-workers with whom I grew close during my pre-baby days, another new mom that I came to know well as we shared all of our babies “firsts.”  How thankful I am for those in seasons past that still touch my life and those in this season that are walking this journey with me. 

It’s finally all done!

The cookies are baked, the presents are wrapped, the stockings are stuffed.

Tonight we’ll read the Christmas story and prepare to celebrate the birth of our Saviour!

May the coming days find you surrounded by loved ones and thanking God for His bountiful blessings, especially the gift of His Son.

Wishing each of you a very Merry Christmas!

On Saturday, we attended the 80th birthday party of a wonderful man in our church.  It was a sweet celebration of him and all that he means to family and friends.

The same day, I read the following quote from Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather.

The old man smiled. “I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.”

I wonder how often I let fears or anxieties or pressing tasks or stress take away my living.

Whenever God calls me to heaven – at whatever age and by whatever means – I want to have lived, really lived.

To have embraced what He put in my path, and faced the challenges, and celebrated the joys, and mourned the griefs, and climbed the mountains, and felt the sunshine on my face, and slowed for the simple pleasures, and heard the still small voice, and loved my family with all my heart, and served Him for all the right reasons.

Let’s not fear the dreadful disease or the car accident or the weather disaster that might take us from this life, but let’s fear drying up and shriveling away and not really living, but merely existing.

Let’s choose to live today!

 I’m not overly sentimental.

I didn’t save piles of my girls’ baby clothes nor do I feel compelled to keep every piece of art they create.

But when it comes to cars, what sentimental feelings I have seem to surface.

We’ve been looking for a “new-to-us” car for several months.  We found one on Friday and traded in the gold 2004 Camry I’ve been driving for the past eight years.

It was a good car.  My definition of a good car is pretty simple – it’s one that’s never left me stranded on the side of the road.

That car saw many good times.  It took our oldest to her first day of kindergarten and transported some of our household goods as we moved from Raleigh, NC, back to Charleston, SC.  It carried us through many long road trips…Disney World, New York City, Washington D.C., and a memorable through-the-night trip from my father-in-law’s funeral in Georgia to my parents’ 50th anniversary celebration in Virginia.

Assuming we keep this new car for eight years, which is very likely, we will use it to take both of our girls to college.  I can’t even grasp that.

I’m enjoying driving this new car and looking forward to the memories we will make with it.  But a little piece of me is tucked away in the 207,693 miles showing on the odometer in that reliable gold Camry.

Are you sentimental about getting rid of the family car?

My 13-year-old daughter had been asking me to get out a box of memorabilia from my high school years.  Mainly she wanted to read the stories I told her I had written as a teenager, though I let her know they were pitiful.  I tended to take favorite parts of books I’d read and combine them into weirdly configured stories that I usually wrote several chapters of, but rarely finished.

On Saturday, I finally braved the storage closet and pulled out the box.  After lifting layer after layer of stuff from the box, I discovered a few things.

• Those overdone hairstyles of the ’80’s?  Yeah, my yearbooks were full of them.  Let’s hope they never come back.

• My parents spent a lot of money on me.  From senior pictures to a class ring to that high school trip to Washington, D.C., they managed to find the funds – making many sacrifices along the way, I’m sure.  Thank you, Mom and Dad.

• My husband wrote some amazing love letters!  Yes, we dated in the years before e-mail, texting, and cell phones, so I’m blessed to have a stack of pages-long letters from our college years.  Makes me wonder if mine will be the last generation to unearth those handwritten treasures.

• There are some tragedies we never forget.  I saved a newspaper from the day the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded; I was a junior in high school.  It was also the occasion for one of my favorite speeches from perhaps my favorite president, Ronald Reagan.

• This poem, jotted down by my dad on a small sheet of paper, but remembered from his own dad, made my girls laugh.

• Your perspective on life in high school and the one you’ve developed 25 years later are worlds apart.

And, yes, my stories really were as bad as I remembered them!

Lord willing, today brings….

this little guy….

and this big guy….

….through my doorway, along with my sister, my mom, and my dad.

It brings Italian Pot Roast for supper, along with baked macaroni and cheese and Strawberry Pretzel Salad and Peanut Butter Pie and Snickerdoodles (’cause it’s not often I get to cook for my family!)

It brings eating around our table, blessed with all this family under our roof.

Thankful for blessings to look forward to today, and praying that your day holds blessings of its own!

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My comfort zone is a very nice, safe, cozy spot.

It includes my home, where I homeschool our two daughters and share life with my husband.  There’s our church, which we’ve been attending for years, and a number of friends that I’ve known for over a decade.  We live in a city that I’ve navigated for over 20 years.  It’s all that’s familiar and expected and comfortable.

And while I love my comfort zone, I’ve realized that, in order for me to grow personally, I occasionally need to step out and try something new.

Now in this stage of life, it’s not going to be bungee jumping or mountain climbing.  It’s going to have more to do with little challenges like meeting new people, functioning in different settings, learning a new skill.  It will involve pushing this “most-of-the-time” introvert out of the house and into the world at large.

That’s why I included in my 2014 goals taking a cooking class.  While I cook nearly every day of my life, I could definitely learn some new techniques and would welcome ways to experiment with different foods. However, I knew it would involve being in a classroom setting as a student – something that hasn’t happened in many years – and being forced to interact with strangers.  Putting it on my goal list meant that I would feel the pressure of accountability and actually make myself do it!

So last week I braved this assignment and headed off one evening to our local technical college to take a class titled 30-Minute Meals.  The start to the night was not promising; traffic was heavy in that area due to a bomb scare, so while I made it to the building with two minutes to spare, I was not prepared for all the hallways I had to wander through to get to the classroom.  The place was huge!!

Needless to say, I was a few minutes late – which I hate.  I got signed in and tied my apron on just in time to start the cooking.  And I am happy to report that I enjoyed myself!!  I worked with a lady just a bit older than myself and a young college-age girl.  We prepped, cooked, and ate two meals – one of which included quinoa, a food which I’d never tasted before, but am definitely adding to our menu.

I made this beef stir fry for supper last night and served it over quinoa.  It was one of the recipes we cooked in class.

So what did I learn from this experience?  Here are four takeaways.

1.  I always want to be learning and growing.  This doesn’t only have to take place in a classroom.  I can read a book or watch a video about a subject that interests me.

2.  You can make a friend anywhere.  When class was over, I walked out to the parking lot (which is quite large and surrounds the building on three sides) with my older cooking partner.  She couldn’t remember exactly where she parked, so I drove her around the parking lot for a couple of minutes until she located her car.  We got to laugh together about our aging memory skills.

3.  Trying new things can yield unexpected pleasures.  I wasn’t surprised that I like quinoa, but bok choy?!!  I’d never eaten that before either, and when the instructor referred to it as similar to cabbage, I was less than impressed.  However, when we cooked it in a stir fry, I thought it was delicious!

4.  The best part of my comfort zone is the people who share it with me.  When I walked in the door that night, my husband and our girls were in the living room watching the Olympics together.  They had cleaned up the kitchen and everything in the house was in order.  Coming home to them was the best part of my night!

Stepping outside of your comfort zone may involve doing something much different than what I did.  When our children were younger, I likely wouldn’t have tackled taking a class.  However, whatever stage of life we’re in, there’s always room to learn and grow.  It could be something as simple as serving in a different ministry at church or introducing yourself to a new neighbor or shopping at a different grocery store. 

I’d like to take another cooking class this summer – and am going to be looking for other ways to step outside of my comfort zone.  Let me know what you might want to try that’s outside of your comfort zone!

 Life.

It’s made up of such small moments, finest grains of sand filtering through an hourglass.

It’s the four of us around the breakfast table, one daughter barely awake, one picking at her food.  It’s eggs on Monday and pancakes on Tuesday and get Daddy’s lunch packed before he leaves for work.

It’s our girls recounting kitty tales, one of them slipping into my bedroom to talk between school subjects.  Math, history, science, grammar, and a lot of writing and a few tears.

It’s making lunch for us to share around the small snack table, then exploring an island with The Swiss Family Robinson, getting into trouble with Tom Sawyer, finding adventure on Treasure Island, or solving a mystery with Sherlock Holmes.

It’s the clattering of dishes as the girls unload the dishwasher, followed by moments of silence while they listen to Adventures in Odyssey, create with cloth and yarn and paper, read books under blankets on beds.

Piano keys pound, school work is done, the afternoon hours float by.

Daylight slides away, kitchen beams light and warmth and good smells.

Faces at the supper table, the day’s events recounted for Daddy, who reads us Bible words, then our heads bow and our hearts connect.

Quiet evenings, warm pajamas, good night kisses, bedtime prayers.

It’s the rhythm of our days in this season, moments in days that make up the years that will one day be our memories.

Our 3rd annual Christmas Craft and Baking Day was a big success!

The cake balls were delicious and the Construction Paper Wreaths and Christmas Baubles turned out really well.

On Monday, my stopped-up kitchen sink sent the girls into “old-fashioned” mode.  They decided to hand wash our breakfast dishes in a bucket of soapy water outside on the patio. Then they expanded the idea and hand washed some of their doll clothes and hung them on a clothesline they created.  Thankfully it was a very warm day!

Last night, we celebrated Christmas Eve with our usual traditions.

I wanted to wish each of you a Merry Christmas and thank you for taking the time to read here at Girls to Grow.  I have been so blessed by you and hope your homes are filled with peace and joy today as we commemorate the birth of our Saviour.

“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” ~Matthew 1:23

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Sharing blessings from the weekend…

• Safety while driving rural roads in the rain

• A visit with my mother-in-law and a large assortment of relatives

• Homemade pecan pie and almond pound cake, courtesy of my mother-in-law…so yummy!

• A trip to the ER for my dad, but reports of his feeling much better on Sunday

• Watching Food Network in the hotel room with the girls

• A friend’s willingness to pick up packages from our front porch in the rain

• A beautiful Christmas concert at church last night

• Seeing my younger daughter’s kindergarten teacher (who is always joyful!) and being thankful all over again for her impact on our daughter’s life.

• Beginning a new Christmas tradition of reading The Gift of the Magi out loud with our daughters

Blessings, big and small, are abounding this Christmas season.  Let’s take the time to count them!

How were you blessed this weekend?