Dear Reader:

Rutledge and Lachlan came over to play with Boo Boo for awhile yesterday while Mollie waited on their car to get fixed. Pirates became our favorite game…..We named Rutledge Captain Dolphin because he rode a dolphin of “hope” across the seas leaving hope wherever he went…much better than buried treasure.

He was so into the game that Mollie turned around and saw that he had fallen asleep in the back seat going home… with his mask still on and his hands on his hips….an unconscious but determined pirate captain.

He might have been riding home in a car seat instead of on a dolphin ( in real life) but I bet in his dreams he was still riding high with “Hope” the dolphin …soaring over waves and any other obstacles coming his way.

I fear that too many people give up “HOPE” on their original story…..hard times come, disappointments reign and one day (  just an ordinary day) our original story leaves because we opted out for an easier one.

Donald Miller (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing my Life)  encourages us all not to give up on our original story because it is a good story….a great story…but also the most important story we were meant to live.

I have mentioned several times before in my blog (but worth repeating) that I would never want to return to the old Becky of pre-cancer days. She was pretty nice but she was living  life on the surface and not taking time to see the real world God made around her. 

After my diagnosis….children’s laughter became sweeter, colors more vibrant, plants and gardens worth pausing for to watch, family and friends the greatest blessing, and God, my constant companion.

My ophthalmologist has informed me that my cataracts are ready to be taken off when I am ready to do so. Think it will be next month. Friends and colleagues have informed me that I will be able to see better than I have in a long time.

But you know what? Since 2008, when I was diagnosed, I have seen better than I ever did before….there are many kinds of “seeing” I have discovered.

It was Donald Miller, from his book cited above, that gave me an “Aha” moment a ways back. Do you remember when Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley gave us the mantra….“No two snowflakes are alike.” We have all used that metaphor to explain the importance of individuality in God’s Creation.

But Miller looked at the reasoning behind this quote, after researching Bentley’s life and studies, and  “saw” something even deeper and more meaningful from this quote.

” What amazed Bentley was the realization that each snowflake was unlike each other because each snowflake bore the scars of its own unique journey. Each crystal  was affected by sky temperatures, altitude of the cloud from which it fell, and the trajectory wind as it plummeted to earth. (among hundreds of other variables.)

It is these very “scars” by the end of our journey here on earth that will make our story worth telling, our story worth living.

So until tomorrow….Each of us has a story to tell. It might not involve riding the waves on a dolphin named “Hope” while dressed as a pirate….but each of our stories has the potential to be an adventuresome and important piece of a bigger story yet to come..

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*Boo Boo’s Boys Day: Rutledge loved it when Lachlan pushed him on the tractor….but not when he stopped and not when it was Lachlan’s time to drive.