December 31

It's so hard to believe that yet another year has come and gone. Tomorrow will mark the beginning of the fifth (!) year of this little blog of mine. It started out as a means of coping with overwhelming grief by finding God in every single day. Though it's continued to do that over the years and will continue to serve that vital purpose in the future, it's also become something I hadn't intended it to be: a log of my blessings and a day by day, chapter by chapter rendering of our life as a family. A storybook. And I am so thankful to have this storybook to share with my kiddos.

With all of that weighty stuff said, I'll get on with today's thought. As we so often do, we took a walk this afternoon. It was chilly but clear out, and quite a lovely day for a stroll (or a bike ride, if you were one of our kids). I deliberately had us stop to take this photo during a pause on what we've come to call The Long Path:

God never promised that human life would be easy, but He promised to be present. And I can sense his presence with us every single day in an assortment of little ways: in the sun, the sky, the trees, the wind, the Cars with faces I trip over on the carpet, and most importantly to me, in the faces of these people.

And also in the love that I will always hold in my heart for my Logan, who is --as is often the case-- represented here by his dear Lambie, who I decided --at the last second-- to bring along for today's journey. Nope, life is not perfect. But it's good, I wish you all a blessed, God-wink filled 2017.