goodbyes and all that

Flew back from Kentucky to Washington this weekend where the pilot told me it had been 103 degrees on the tarmac at the Seattle airport. I wanted to cry as it was cold and foggy when I came in. Bless Randy - he had finished the deck and so I admired it in the rain (it was pouring by the time I got home). You'd think after living here a few years I would just accept the fact that it is downright dismal weather-wise most of the year but my southern roots always rebel.

Glory be, but the boys loved camp. And the girls loved the boys. It must start young these days. And this was a Christian camp but it seems the love bug bites regardless. Paul, who just turned 9, told me about a little girl named Grace, age 8, who just "wanted to snuggle me all week." He said he told her no every time. Mercy! Maybe she was just feeling homesick. I'm glad I didn't know this going into it or I might have kept them home!

I so missed my granny this trip but know I'll see her again. She would have been 98 this year. I went to the Berea cemetary and was glad it didn't affect me at all. When you are a Christian there is such hope. I knew she wasn't there - just a cold, stone marker. And I knew she wouldn't want to be back on her front porch waiting for me to come home. I thought of what she said to me once when she was well into her 90's. She told me she often looked in the mirror and was startled to see such an old face staring back at her when she still felt like a girl inside.

It makes me think of what the Bible says about our lives - we are all just a breath, like a flower that springs up and then fades. That truly puts things in perspective and reminds me of how wonderfully long eternity is and all that awaits us when we leave this life. Ours souls never age even though our bodies do. They are eternal. And one of the most amazing aspects of being eternal is that there are no more goodbyes. Ever.