Chapters

We started off our Geography study this year by panning out. We made those little books (I've seen lots of versions) where you start with a picture of the child's house. Then you have them draw their street, then their city, then their county......all the way to their planet. You get the drift. It's a way of showing where they are on the map in the grand scheme of things.

So my children requested to watch this video which we have seen several times before.

All of this got me to thinking deep thoughts while I was cleaning up the kitchen cabinets just now. Our oldest daughter just graduated high school in May. This summer she got to go on two very special trips. Yesterday, she purchased scrapbook materials so she can put all the pictures from her trips inside. She's about to embark on a very different part of life: work and college. I was thinking how glad I was that she got to go on those trips.

But what if those trips are not the end of her fun teenage summer days....but rather the beginning of her young adult life, which could be filled with all kinds of adventures?

I realized that the chapters of her life are getting broader. When we first brought her home from the hospital, I was concerned with what she did on MONDAY. And then TUESDAY. We were getting by hour by hour and cherishing every minute.

As she grew, we thought of her chapters as "infancy", "toddlerhood," "the preschool years", etc.

But now, I feel a dividing mark between her "childhood" and her "young adulthood." Her chapters are long and thick and wordy.

And all those things you worried endlessly about in their younger years are simply dots on the page now. You would be hard-pressed to flip back and find some of the things that once were concerns.

So even though we are very perplexed about this new chapter which we have never been through before, if I have learned anything from her life--it's that at the end of this one, Lord willing, there will be a wonderful new chapter waiting to be written.

And I can't wait to see it play out.

Signing off,