Celebrating Love

We’re back to our normal schedules today.  We’ve been celebrating love and faithfulness and family for the past few days.  We really should do that every day—and for the most part, we do.  It is rare, however, that a whole family gets together for that specific purpose.  Our family chose to do just that and we spent the past long weekend together away from our normal routines to bond even deeper as we celebrated my parents and their 50 years of marriage. 

 Their actual anniversary isn’t until later in the year, but we all knew that our different busy schedules wouldn’t allow us to be together—just us—at that time, so we chose to celebrate early.  It was our gift to stop what we normally do and just head into the mountains which always seem to refresh our spirits–a gift of time together in celebration of their time together.  I don’t believe we could have chosen anything they’d have liked any better.

 God bless the ones who built a house that could so easily contain and entertain the 9 of us for over 3 days of togetherness without feeling cramped!   We had plenty of room to spread out and relax, to participate and withdraw as needed…all with a spectacular view of the Blue Ridge Mountains…close enough to touch.  We laughed and ate and played, yelled at football games, rode a train, picked apples and napped.  We rested our hearts and celebrated the two whose lives and love made ours possible. 

 As our time together drew to an end, I think we were all a bit sad to go.  We’ll see each other again pretty soon, but this time together was incredibly special.  As we stood in a circle holding hands before we left, my husband prayed for safe travel and gave thanks for the example of love and faithfulness lived out before us in my parents.  At the amen, we exchanged hugs like we wouldn’t see each other for months and then headed down the mountain.

 Yes, we’re back to our normal schedules today, but I don’t think we’ll ever be quite the same again.