Happy Tuesday!

Yesterday, I went with some of my family to decorate Moms grave for the fall. My Aunt Sherry set up some beautiful sunflowers and cut the grass with scissors. We had a really good time visiting together… and after everyone else headed for home, I remained behind for some time.

Since Mom is buried on a lovely country hill only a few hundred yards from her house, I’m able to sit at her feet, leaning against another stone facing moms headstone… and whenever I glance to my right, I can see the window to the room mom spent most of her final years. I can see the exact places I rolled her wheelchair on our walks to see the cows. I even saw the path we took through that exact cemetery in front of that exact gravesite… only a week before she passed away.

I could almost FEEL her as I remembered things she said to Heaven and me during one of those last walks.

As is my custom, I always listen to moms last voice mail to me… my friend Rob Powers added background music and recorded the voice mail to a file. It’s so nice to HEAR her voice. In that one minute and two second voice mail, she said a prayer for me… it captured so many of her amazing qualities.

So yesterday, I listened to that last voice mail five of six times… looked over at her old house… remembering all the time we spent in that family room, talking about EVERYTHING! Mom was such a good counselor… and even though I didn’t always take her advice, she was an amazing LISTENER… and such an ENCOURAGER…

I remembered as much of my childhood as I could during yesterdays visit, thanking God for the beautiful love Barbara Lynn Dobzeniecki Balsamo gave me. Us kids and her siblings, and her parents… we were everything to her… she lived for our visits… she measured time as the intervals between those visits!

For some strange reason… yesterdays visit ended up being the most difficult one for me in a VERY long time. I could not stop crying about how badly I desired to see her one more time. Life has been so challenging since her departure only three years ago. There are so many things I would love to SHARE with her! She would have loved an invite for dinner on my completed patio… she would have loved for me to read to her from my book… mom would have loved Facebook Farm-town… she would have commented my blog EVERY MORNING… mom would have knocked the lights out of a few people on my behalf! lol

There is no treasure in all the earth more precious than the treasured relationships we share with beautiful people! Even though Mom crossed over into eternity knowing Jesus… and even though she has joined in my great cloud of witnesses… I still miss my time with her. I miss her smile, and her laugh, and her HUGS… I miss her saying, “I love you more” every single time I said, “I love you.”

Today and everyday, I want to cherish each of my beautiful relationships. I pray to never take my dear Emily for granted… or my kids, Coree and Heaven… or the rest of my living family… or any of you guys! Love is a gift we experience AS WE SHARE it with others! The more we share it the more we know it!

1 John 4:12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

I hope todays blog inspires a phone call or a visit to someone special from each of you guys… just to let them know you CARE! Life is short… and the real value of our key relationships is never truly known until the people who love us the most are no longer here. Have a most outstanding day good people! God bless you all!