Spring is in FULL swing, tax season is over, and we’ve also managed to soldier through some very wonderful, “brutiful” events in our family.  I can breathe a little again now; feel some flex in my time and days.

While I get the rust out of my blogging engine, I’m going to add – in the next several days – one, two or three things I wrote in March/April, plus some other writing I’ve done over the last couple of years: several prayers I’ve written and shared – in my role as Worship Leader – with those attending our church on various Sundays.  I’ll be backdating the prayers so they “fit in,” time-line-wise, amongst other blog posts I was writing about the same time; the first and oldest will be showing up in August 2016.

You may find them too religious, or too full of Jesus, for your liking. And that’s ok. 

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May 2018 was the month of corner-turning, the month of next steps.

Sarah graduated with her master’s degree in teaching in the first week of May, and once we managed to take a breath from all the celebrating associated with this significant accomplishment (and: she has already secured a job for this fall! YESSS!), we proceeded down to Mark’s university for what would have (ostensibly) been his graduation weekend as well (his friends were hilariously blunt: “Mama Slough, he probably wouldn’t have made it in 4 years. Almost no one does in aerospace.” Fine. I’m calling it THIS weekend.)

We were there to dedicate a memorial in his name, a bronze plaque affixed to a bench just outside one of the engineering buildings; and, if we had the emotional wherewithal, to also attend the commencement ceremonies – the entire class ceremony and the aerospace engineering one, which were on separate days. Steve and Sarah weren’t sure, but I knew I wanted at least one of us there at each, in Mark’s stead. It just seemed fitting, like the closing of a loop; I felt so strongly that I wanted to somehow finish what he had started, and what we had started with him.

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Although “miracles make me lazy,” I am still deeply appreciative of them when they occur. Although these things that happen to me are not huge, and are entirely “dismissable” (if you are someone who needs absolutes/proof, I cannot give it), the timing is always unmistakable, often humorous and always loving and encouraging.

There is MORE. There is MORE!

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