From my Mom to Me and from Me to My Daughters, Granddaughters and You -- LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO . . . . LEAVE OFF THE MARSHMALLOWS!

This, of course, is a picture of Allie and me making reindeer cookies during our first Christmas visit home from Ecuador. We were in the kitchen of dear friends Dave and Debi Russell who GAVE us their house for several days so we would have a place to "be a family." Allie was the only grandchild at the time. Since then, I've made chocolate chip cookies with Maggie and reindeer cookies with Nathan and will make many more yummy treats whenever the opportunity rears its head. Other grandmothers can do the healthy stuff. I choose to make cookies.

I remember one day in our apartment in Ecuador when some English-speaking ladies had gathered for a Bible study. I asked my friend Pat to pass the hot chocolate mix. Her question back to me was, "Do you want the kind with marshmallows?" My knee-jerk, long-ingrained response was, "Of course! Life is too short to leave off the marshmallows!" My mother said that or something similar practically every day when I was growing up, and it was very graphically demonstrated when she died quickly and unexpectedly at the age of 55. Mother was the type of lady who didn't "save her best perfume for special occasions." She splashed it on generously on a daily basis. In fact, the thing that my youngest daughter (who was 7 when she died) remembers about her the most was that "she always smelled so good." She also planned the dessert first when inviting company over for a meal. She figured you could always decide about the meat and vegetables later, but that wonderful last sweet taste was supposed to be memorable and worth her time in the kitchen and her grocery money. In the first months after her death, my Dad said on a number of occasions, things like "I'm so glad we went ahead and made that trip to Israel . . . or Hawaii . . . or wherever," and "It makes me feel so good that I replaced her lost diamond ring last Christmas." He seemed to take a lot of comfort in realizing that my mother had experienced a full, though short, life and that he had done everything he could to add pleasure to it.

Well, I hope this blog doesn't end up being "deleted into oblivion" because it is really going to be a collection of life lessons I've learned and been encouraged to share. I feel a new urgency about putting my blessings, blunders, adventures, and personal revelations from God into words. After all, LIFE IS TOO SHORT to keep them locked up inside rather than knowing that maybe you might laugh a little, shed a tear or two, raise an eyebrow, learn something the easy way through me rather than the hard way on your own, get a fresh perspective or idea or just sigh and remember a similar time of your own. For Steve, the children, and grandchildren, maybe they will get a fresh glimpse into what has been making me tick, but mostly, I want to praise my Heavenly Father who "knit me together in my mother's womb" and has bestowed abundant blessings on this person He wove together. Thank you, Father. You made me just as I am for Your honor and glory.

"Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away" -- James 4:14

". . . I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly" --John 10:10

"To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven. . . . a time to keep silence, and a time to speak" Ecclesiastes 3:1, 7b

I think maybe this is my "time to speak" . . . in this blog.