I know it’s been a long time…too long. Let me bring you up to speed on what I have been mixed up in. Oh September, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

1.) Birthdays – 7 of them that we celebrated to be precise. Including a slumber party for my now 12 year old daughter and 5 of her nearest and dearest where the conversation swung from ISIS, to music, to “Did you see what she did/wore/fill in the blank” and back again in the blink of an eye around the breakfast table. (Breakfast is one of my favorite times for conversation with my kids and their friends. Maybe it’s because they aren’t quite awake yet or aren’t in a hurry to go off and do “things” but I have found that if I feed them good food they will hang around and keep eating and keep talking and you can learn a lot! And they never fail to make me laugh!)

2.) Sporting events – which means practices, and feeding the team, and ticket taking, and ticket selling, and lots of cheering, and even more prayers blasted heavenward for protection. (Thankfully our only ER trip has been on a Sunday afternoon for an infected cut that looked pretty nasty and had gone from 0 to oozing and disgusting in the span of 36 hours.) Then there is a little job I got my husband and myself into this year called Visiting Locker Room Ambassadors. Trust me, not as fancy as the title sounds. In all of this I am considering buying an RV and living in the parking lot at the football field. It would make life much simpler.

3.) Travel – I spent the end of August and beginning of September getting ready for my trip to New York where I made some wonderful new friends and had the opportunity for some real “life” conversations. This was a mid-week trip which meant all the members of my household realized how much “behind-the scenes” work goes on that they were unaware of and yet even out-of-state I was the go-to middle man coordinating rides and pick-up times, and last minute changes of plans.

4.) Homework, Homecoming, and House Renovation – Back to school…back to homework. All I will say is that sometimes a new teacher’s expectations of their students aren’t quite realistic. We are struggling through the work load and learning great life lessons while we do it (says the mom confidently out loud even when she don’t always agree with it in her head.) Then there was the first homecoming and the flowers and new dress clothes (to coordinate with a specific dress color) and the honor of being the freshman attendant and the stress of which group to go with and the parties…which brings me to the house renovations.

“Have a homecoming party” mom says. “We’ll reno the back room in the basement” mom says. “It’ll be great” mom says. So I watch a few hours of HGTV and suddenly I am an expert and have my husband and son removing load-bearing walls and installing header beams and we were all pulling crazy hours in the underworld of our home. (There were only a few tense moments and sleepless nights when my husband was convinced our house was caving in…the things he does for love!)  The furniture delivery guys just got the couch “slightly” stuck in the doorway and had to develop a Plan B (Pivot! Pivot! for my fellow Friends fans) but the basement was finished (enough) in time and my house was full (and loud) and we loved it! (And I think the kids did too.)

The month of September was packed full of craziness, and great experiences, and as always lots of fun. But because of that I have all of these thoughts filling my head, bouncing around off of each other and I can only hope that as they begin to pour out I can make them make some logical sense. (I kind of feel like my head is a balloon that is filled too full and about to burst.)

Here is a taste of some of what is going on up there and headed to you in the coming days…

I am loving getting older (yes, crazy) but I am finally confident in me for the sake of me and not anyone else. CS Lewis said, “The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become – because He made us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be…It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.” Love that!

In New York I talked a lot about moments and I want to share some of that with you too. When you think about your life what are you really thinking about? What defines our lives? It’s the moments…the snapshots of memories that are framed like pictures in our minds. These are the building block of our triumphs and our tragedies. Some of my most treasured moments have occurred in the everyday. Moments also frame the pain that leave us breathless and forever changed. I have learned that God’s most gracious gifts are delivered to us exactly in these moments. Steve Maraboli said, “Sometimes it’s the same moments that take your breath away that breathe purpose and love back into your life.” YES! Who isn’t searching for purpose and love?!

And then, I am a fan of the big gesture. I have shared that before. Go big or go home. I have big dreams, big plans. God has been teaching me a lot about the small lately though and I am beginning to understand on a deeper level Ephesians 3:20 ^“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” “Infinitely more” to me means huge, big things happening here in the infinitely more place, but I am learning that God is a fan of the small. The small is what, through His mighty power, turns into something big, and chances are we don’t even have a clue.  The words of Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold come to mind. “It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for…the masses.” Christ left the ninety-nine for the one. So I will challenge you as I find myself challenged to embrace the small.

So much to say…so little time to say it!