A couple of months ago on a Friday evening, I took Lillian on a "hike" to one of our favorite spots, "Rosy Mound".  It goes through the woods up and over hills until you finally get to the shore of Lake Michigan.  The payoff for Lillian is, at the end, she gets to swim.  The payoff for me is walking hand in hand with my four year old daughter through one of the most beautiful places in our little town.  After nine years of living in Grand Haven, I still haven't lost the childlike excitement of seeing the water.  It even outweighs my adult like hatred of sand in my shoes.  When we got to the water, we had the beach completely to ourselves, it was an evening I'll never forget, and it'll remind me of many nights like it we've had since then in 10 years or so.

The next night, after work, the whole family went for a walk in our neighborhood.  It was another wonderful evening.  We were almost home and Christie was making Lillian laugh really loud.  We heard someone yelling from their driveway.  I thought maybe the gentleman was working on his car and was upset that we were being too loud.  It turns out, he had fallen and was asking for help.  We helped him into his house and as we were helping him, he kept looking back at the stroller that Emmett was in and Lillian standing right next to it.  We assured him that they were okay.  His wife came out and talked about calling an ambulance and then called her son.  She informed us that their granddaughter had died recently and he said maybe that is why he fell.  We got him in the house and told him we'd pray for him.  Christie wondered if maybe their granddaughter was the four year old who tragically died recently.  It turns out it was.  My heart sank.  She was younger than Lillian. 

I visited the gentleman the next day, he was feeling better, but started talking about his granddaughter.  I told him I don't want to imagine what that might feel like.

When my son was a few months old during church, the thought popped into my head that someday I'd have to give him up.  I'm not sure if that meant one day he'd leave our home to live a life of his own or something worse, but it was a good reminder that these children of mine are a gift from God entrusted to us for a short time.  Those two suck the life out of me sometimes, especially the boy at the moment, he is overly fussy (unless he's going for a walk or sitting in the grass), he doesn't want to eat anything that isn't a cracker or a piece of fruit, and he is in to anything and everything that he's not supposed to.  This post is three months in the making & as I speak, he's up earlier from his nap than expected.  They suck the life out of me but without them life would seem like it weren't worth living.  There a lot like the leaves on the trees in the yard at this time of the year, so beautiful, yet so much work.  The boys awake & the leaves need raking.  Happy Autumn, friends...

Five Favorite Songs of the Day

Autumn Leaves-Nat King Cole



Everytime we Say Goodbye-John Coltrane



Autumn Serenade-Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane



Autumn-Joanna Newsom



Daddy's Little Pumpkin-John Prine



Take a drive in the country and listen to these songs and see if they don't put a smile on your face.