My friend and I met up for a walk the other day. She lives right down by the river surrounded by the most beautiful natural park. We haven’t seen each other in awhile and it was high time we did some catching up.

She looked at me as we stared out and asked “So, do you want to go on the pathway or onto the trails?” I defaulted to her- knowing that she is much more fun than me and could only smile when she confirmed that fact with the word “trail” on her lips and a twinkle in her eye.

A friend texted me last night: “What was the highlight of your day?”

My response: “Drinking my morning coffee and watching the snowflakes falling outside”

Huh? When did noticing the snow become a highlight?

They say when someone loses one of their senses their other senses can become super-heightened. Blind people may hear better; the deaf can have a type of enhanced vision.

The noise of our everyday world is getting quieter by the day. When the distractions of business, sports, school, kids activities, and other social commitments are stripped away what are we left with? Could it possibly be sight? Sight for the seemingly unnoticeable. All those little everyday gifts that tend to go overlooked, now we can see them- and not just see them….but be thankful for them?

This morning in an effort to avoid the three loads of laundry, sticky floors and mountain of dishes I decided we needed to head out and run some errands. After a couple of stops we found ourselves at Costco.

The kids browsed the book aisle and I quickly grabbed the few things we needed….and a couple things we didn’t. Thanks Costco, you get me every time! After our shopping we headed to the food court line up to grab a quick lunch. Because feeding four kids and a tired mama for $7.88 sounded a whole lot better than adding to the sticky floors and pile of dishes back home.

After we were done our lunch we stepped outside to a rainy parking lot. The five of us raced to the van. We quickly loaded up our groceries and hopped in for protection. The girls were giggling in the backseat (thanks to the pop they had for lunch, I’m sure 😉 Evan was trying to ask me about the song that was playing and Ellie was “reading” her new library book out loud. I sighed as I started up the van. As I checked my mirror I saw a lady trying to load up her groceries beside us. She was clearly struggling to pull the heavy boxes from her cart and so I asked Evan to hop out to help her. I watched the relief on her face when he offered and so I decided to hop out as well to help get the job done a little faster in the rain.

I was not expecting what God was about to do.

This past week we escaped away to the mountains with Chris’ parents. We had such a wonderful time away. We hiked, we swam, we read, we played games and truly had the most relaxing time.

On our last afternoon we took a little walk around the villas. There is a golf course that wraps itself around the resort and while walking along the road back toward our villa our little Abby was hit by a golf ball.

It came out of nowhere. We were just singing and walking together when all of a sudden she started screaming out in pain.