Gratitude Friday...

I so had plans to keep this really light. I mean, tonight is our company Christmas party and yet again, I feel confident I might implode at any moment. It's amazing how much I love planning events and yet they are some of the most challenging things I do at my job. Not the most. That's a whole other post unto itself. But challenging nonetheless.

So that was my plan. To be grateful that a day from now the party would be over.

Until bath time.

Right about now ya'll are hoping against hope that Aubrey Kate will learn to shower on her own sooner rather than later

I hear ya.

There's just something about watching my daughter play that makes me think.

This time I was thinking about my grandmother. Okay so here's how the thought progression in my brain brought me to Grandmother.

My friend Elizabeth sent me an email of a drawing a second grader did about what she wanted to be when she grew up. Of course, said little girl wanted to be her mother. That prompted me to ask Elizabeth at what point do we decide we don't want to be our mother? Then I spent some time during that day thinking about whether or not I ever decided I didn't want to be like my mother. In some ways, I am completely like her. And in other ways, I'm more like my dad. But was that a decision or just how it worked out?

Then it's bath time. I'm watching my daughter and thinking what she will want to be? Will she want to be like me? How will she know if she does or doesn't? I bet she'll know me or at least know more about me than I have ever known or may ever know about my mom.

Thank you Internet.

Writing. That leads me to think about how Mom always writes notes in the cards she sends us because her mother never wrote. She would simply sign it "Love Mother, RC and Craig". I have a letter that Grandmother started to write to me near the end of her life. I treasure that letter and it literally has three sentences. One of them being "I know you think I have lost my mind". Eloquent stuff. And she kind of had. But only because she was on a great deal of pain medication.

That lead me to thinking about Aubrey Kate meeting Grandmother. What would it have been like to spend Christmas with my Grandmother, Mom and my daughter? I can hear Grandmother, in her very thick Southern drawl, saying Oh Sandra as she opens her Christmas gifts. I can see her sitting at the end of the kitchen table making her pears with pimento cheese. I can almost hear the stories Mom and Grandmother would be sharing about school as I sat listening buttering rolls and being exceedingly grateful not to be a teacher.

But I know I'll never get to experience that in this life. Thankfully, Grandmother is no longer in pain and is having far more fun worshiping our Savior.

I do look forward to seeing her again. I have no idea if we will remember this life and if we do, would we want to ever relive a moment of it? Will we sit around and talk about life here? Will I be able to ask her all the questions I never got to ask? Like why did you not write notes in the cards? And why in the world did you love pears and pimento cheese so much?

But I do know this, I am very grateful my mom takes the time to write those notes. I am grateful she and Dad have written notes to Aubrey Kate already. I am grateful we can write emails and texts and leave comments on blogs to stay connected. I am grateful that my daughter will be able to read the notes Mom has given me and the notes they have written to her. I am grateful she will be able to read about her parents before she was born. She'll have insight into her first days that no generation before her has ever had. She can read all about Lulu and Rita and the organic diet. She can watch my belly grow. She can see herself grow and develop. And likely she will have written confirmation of how so uncool her parents have always been.

Maybe Aubrey Kate will want to be like me. Maybe she'll want to be like her Nana. Maybe she'll somehow be introduced to pears and pimento cheese at some Baptist Pot-luck dinner and confirm that a love for that is a genetic thing that skips generations. Who knows? Regardless, she will know she is loved. She'll know she is wanted. She will know she is a gift from God.

Thank you Lord for this blog. This little digital scrapbook of letters to our loved ones. A record of how You provide, how You love us and how we share that love with others in our life. Gotta say, it's a pretty niffty little tool!