To Lighten Up...

Some folks are putting pictures of their mothers on facebook, so I did too.  Do you see that tiny baby?  That was me.  On January 6, Epiphany, 1952.  The day of my baptism.  My mother is holding me, my father is standing behind.  My maternal grandmother is on the right, and paternal grandmother is on the left.  Maternal grandmother was born in 1872.  Paternal, in 1883.

I am the youngest of five.  My mother was the youngest of eight.  Her mother was the youngest of ten.  I come from a very very old family.  I only had to go back three generations on my mother's side to get to the Revolutionary War!

Tonight I stopped at Target  on my way home from work.  I purchased a lot of solar lights for my garden.  When I came home, I changed my clothes and started putting them in.  My wonderful neighbor came over and helped me dig holes and place lights.  Eventually, we ended up pulling weeds and pruning trees and bushes.  My yard looks like a place I like right now.  And that is a good thing.

It is so good to do physical work with someone.  We are both women in our late fifties.  We were both sweating and breathing hard.  But we were laughing.  It is good, so good, to just go out and do some honest work and get dirt under your fingernails (well, I would have if I didn't have gloves on).

I am sorry about my last two posts.  Sometimes life just reaches up and smacks me in the face.  That is how I have felt this week.  But you know what?  I think it is cathartic, and I am getting it all behind me.  My life has been so good, sober, clean, real, and honest for many years now.  It surprises me when some old remnant of an ugly life I once led comes back around.

God has done for me what I could never have done for myself.  I am more grateful than words can say.