Dear Reader:

Yesterday morning I realized when I went to water the garden that Mother Nature had “snuck” in during the night and done just that  for me! All the flowers and plants were beaming in satisfaction… fully refreshed and ready to grow and go wherever the day lead them.

When I got to the “back” of my garden and took the title photo, I suddenly realized that this angle of the main path through the garden is so much clearer and readable (backwards) than a photo taken, from the “front” of the garden, by the moon gate, going forward. The bend in the path, from that spot, prevents one from getting the “big picture” of where the garden leads and ends.

I went and sat down on my yellow garden bench and started thinking about my own path through life. Initially my path looked quite similar to so many others of my coming-of-age generation, especially for young women.

I was informed before my junior year at college (by mother) that I simply couldn’t just major in history….after all, what kind of job could I get from that? Oh no…I must get my teaching degree, thus buying me a “secure future” that I could always fall back on whenever… as life necessitated.

Mother was right in a way, I suppose. Teaching did provide me job security when I found myself a single parent with three children. The children and I had the same holidays and summers together….and overall, I enjoyed teaching….being able to create new learning ideas within the curriculum.

But I also felt trapped many times by circumstance and practicality. I feel sure if I had felt freer to detour off the same secure path I would definitely have leapt at the chance. But after awhile our paths become so familiar to us that it is simply easier to keep going the direction we are headed than take a chance at something different.

It is, at crossroads along our paths, that the trickster, life, likes to erase our nice, familiar, secure path and throw us into the unknown. My new frontier was called breast cancer. I sure didn’t know the direction I was headed and I suspect most of the doctors weren’t too sure either. At times the new path didn’t even appear viable, much less do-able.

But God knew something I didn’t….the “dead-ending” I feared, looming closer somewhere around a new bend, suddenly disappeared and the path took  a completely new direction. Here I was at the end of my working career, getting ready to ease into retirement and suddenly my whole life was about to be turned upside down. (Obviously I was a slow learner.)

My age, however, actually helped me understand that I was being given a most beautiful gift…..the gift of hindsight. I understood that it was time for Becky to leave the pre-“Little c” person she once had been and morph into the person God intended her to become.

It was time, for me, to look at my life path differently….by starting at the back and now working forward….the new path would be leading me… home. It had been there all the time…right behind me.

It was time to stop with all the obligations and commitments left behind on the old path and seize opportunities to travel new paths going in different directions.

As I looked at the beautiful morning glories forming two different climbing-vine paths, along the fence yesterday, I realized that soon the two separate vines, across the top ledge, will connect… uniting into one.

If we listen to our heart and God’s Voice….we  discover one day that it isn’t the “right” path taken that is as important in life… as the knowledge that by the end of our journey we will all be united again…as we realize, collectively, we are finally home.

My detour, brought on by “Little c,” (breast cancer) allowed me to add my voice to the world’s in something as small as a little blog. Yet the magnitude of being a voice for everyday path seekers, has renewed my passion as a wordsmith and a path-finder. It has filled my soul with joy and gratitude for the gift of life and new opportunities to share it with others.

So until tomorrow….God will find a way to make us pause and find our passion if we just turn our faith over to our Creator. There’s a beautiful, personalized path that calls all of us home one day…when our mission is done. The secret to life is discovering our passion, the gift of ourselves to fellow path-climbers beside us.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*Libby shared this beautiful photo her son Robby (with some of his friends) took at Edisto Beach on a weekend retreat a few months ago. It is just breath-taking. For all of us who think Edisto is a slice of heaven anyway….this just confirmed it. It certainly is my image of what heaven should be…”It all started and ended in a garden.”

It’s Coon Dog Days in Saluda and Brooke, Ted, and family are all up  in them there mountains. Brooke’s son Riley, his wife Veronica, and precious little Caleb is making his appearance too.