These days and my dog who warms my heart...

Summer for most students has officially ended! Schools are again filled with students and one lucky school in Eden Prairie has my niece in a kindergarten class filled with other sweet, bright eyed kids, excited to learn.

I am stunned by how fast she has grown up. I look at her and remember how small she once was

and all the special moments that I got to have with her when I had babysat or just had been there for her and her mom.

These days just seem to disappear so fast and just when I seem to get used to how things are, they change again! Change doesn't scare me too much and growth in life has always seemed like a good thing... But growth also can also be a bad thing.

The growth in years brings new knowledge and insight that sometimes makes me wish that I was a kid again. Not that my childhood was an easy one, but as bad as it felt sometimes... it definitely beats some of my adulthood.

Some of these days are filled with difficult health problems and medical bills that I am still trying to pay off. Sometimes I feel like I am drowning in this situation and I wonder how my mother managed my health issues when I was a kid and one of her five kids no less! With an insufficient amount of child support for her oldest three!

How she stayed calm, how she didn't get a lump in her throat just looking through the bills, how she managed the tough phone calls and managed to keep from bursting into tears, must only be by the grace of God. These days I don't feel like I have much of that...

It must of been all her goofy kids that put a smile on her face some days. Like my dog, who I now call my "fur-baby" Fergie stares at our mirror and poses! Or she cuddles right up to me and pats me with her paw! She just warms my heart!

I hope that I brought my mom joy some of those days and I hope that I will someday have all of this stuff down. Until then I will look to God for the grace and peace to survive it all.