My Favorite Pictures from 2009

A Year in Review

January: A year of hair evolution

February: Happy Valentine's Day!

March: A Spring Break trip to Chattanooga

April: Happy Easter!

May: A new playroom!

June: A trip in a hot air balloon and swimming lessons

July: A trip to Germany and to Oshkosh. We were tired.

August: Joshua started Sunday School and Clare turned 2

September: Stopped in St. Louis on the way to the 50th anniversary celebration of Hope UMC in Joliet

October: My princesses

November: Joshua turns four and celebrates with his friends!

December: Merry Christmas!

Miss Morgan

This past Monday I lost a wonderful young friend. Her name is Morgan. Morgan was the president of the the Lambuth University chapter of AOII where I serve as the Chapter Advisor. That means that Morgan and I talked a lot. And because college students can apparently only meet at ungodly hours of the night, it means that I spent a lot of late nights hanging out with her and the rest of the women. Usually by the time the meeting was over I was too tired to actually get up and walk to my car, so I'd sit on the big red couch and listen to the girls talk and laugh. Morgan was always there.

Morgan was born with a broken heart. I don't know the details, but it wasn't in good shape, and required surgery through the years to rebuild as she grew. Last Monday she had another open-heart surgery to replace the aorta. But when the surgery was over and she was back in her room, they realized that the aorta had burst and she was losing blood. There was a second surgery to stop the bleeding, but it was too late.

I was telling the story of Morgan the other day and someone asked what her life expectancy was, and I realized that I had never thought about it. And I never thought about it because I would have never known she was sick if she hadn't told me. She was bright and shiny and passionate and funny--immortal, really. Just like the other girls in the sorority who are just exploding with potential. I never considered her life expectancy because she was just so full of, well, life. How could someone with that much life ever be defined by "life expectancy"? She couldn't. Life expectancy was irrelevant when it came to Morgan.

So you know how you say really nice things about people when they die? Well, they're all true. She was wet-your-pants funny and generous, and smart and beautiful. She loved people and she embraced her life with every ounce of energy she could muster. And she was so unassuming. I imagine she has no idea just how amazing she is...how beautiful, how good, how she exemplified everything that every young woman wants to be.

Her mother came over to the house last night to hang out with the girls--we initiated her mother last semester--and I was watching her. She's been crying for three days and she's obviously exhausted, but I watched her alternate between laughing and crying with those girls and she looked so young and so fresh....despite what she's gone through. And I think about how proud Morgan would be of her for just putting one foot in front of the other, for being willing to spend an evening with the women who shared Morgan's life even though it must feel so raw and painful. Morgan's mother says that Morgan was her strength. If that's the case, I have no doubt where Morgan got that strength in the first place.

There's no visitation because Morgan wouldn't want a somber procession of sad people around, so there'll be a memorial service tomorrow at Lambuth and a funeral service at Morgan's church on Saturday. It will be hard but healing.

I miss her so much.

It is Finished!

Before I forget, I must post my final post for NaBloPoMo! Maybe I'll get a prize! You'll be the first to know!

One Day More

Hooray for the next to the last day of NaBloPoMo! What have I learned from this? Mainly that I don't have enough interesting things to say to last a whole month. There were some things that I definitely wanted to share, and there were some things that I shared simply because I needed to check off the "I posted today" box. I'm really glad that I finally got to write about my early church experiences, and I'm grateful for the alliteration in "Friday Flashback," because the jazzy alliteration itself seems to justify a whole post dedicated to photos. But really, this hasn't been a life-changing discipline for me. Not that I thought it would be, but mostly I just like discipline for the sake of discipline. Maybe that's why I'm such a good Methodist.

So, yeah, I've learned that blogging is a good way to talk about things that I really need to get out of my system, and a really good way to remember the cute/funny/interesting things my kids say and do, but as a daily discipline it's really not my cup of tea.

My First Advent

Since I was on maternity leave during Advent 2005, this is actually my first time to journey through Advent as a pastor. That's not exactly earth-shattering, I realize, but I feel like I'm finally getting to catch up on something I missed out on before. I did have to preach one week of Advent while on leave as it was required for my ordination process, but it still didn't feel very Advent-y to me. So I'm looking forward to it. That, and an early bedtime tonight.

Flashback Friday

Two years ago at this time my dad was retiring from his lifelong job at the US Army Corps of Engineers and had a great bash.

We had an almost new baby in our house.

And because that wasn't challenging enough, we also brought home 18 more babies, too.