Dear Reader:

I am coming home today from Edisto Beach….the bittersweet day we knew was coming all week, yet we are never quite prepared when it arrives. Everyone is conflicted with mixed emotions…ready to get home to check on things and people but hesitant to leave the fellowship of old friendships behind.

An idea came to me recently… that we ought to make a Ya Time-line dating back to Erskine College- a line that (after plugging in all the benchmarks of our lives) would be a  visual map of the major events that have transpired among the four of us… criss-crossing over and under and all around bringing us back together again and again. It would probably cover several walls…we might need a castle to hang it in. What a marvel of the wonder of relationships it would show.

I have been in several church classroom discussions about the different ideas of heaven or another world…what it would look like, feel like, touch us like, with beautiful sounds and scents so exquisite yet simple that we can practically float among them.

The other day, however, I left the senses of the next world behind and thought about what we wouldn’t take with us to it….the burdens that would be released before we entered heaven.

Don’t we all second-guess ourselves periodically and during long sleep-less nights get caught up in the “What If’s?” We re-live conversations that went badly and re-analyze our thoughts and answers to questions or perhaps we spend time figuring out how we could have handled a situation better?  Truly re-living old grievances and mistakes while stirring the  ‘pot of the past’ is a definite waste of our precious time on earth. (Yet it appears that we just can’t help ourselves repeat mute practices again and again.)

In our new world we would never have to “manage expectations” for fear of being disappointed…but could wish and dream up anything until it became “reality.”  And think about all our fears that have kept us from being happy…who we were meant to be…they would all dissipate… leaving nothing but joy behind.

I picture that we will be surrounded in a cocoon of love so intense there is no room for anything else. We will live completely in a world of unconditional love….loved for whom we are, nothing less and nothing more…just the purest love of all.

Love is so elusive and conditional on earth…but one day…that will all change. All we ever needed was love…and now we will have it…forever.

So until tomorrow…I do look forward to sharing the fun, laughter, and special moments with you readers from the Ya Edisto Retreat- 2019! Hope everyone had a terrific week!

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*Can hardly wait to see more surprises in the garden…the pintas are all returning and the little garden rose bush was just starting to pop out when I left.

Brooke is returning with her birthday flower basket…who needs colorful bows and ribbons when nature give us Gerber Daisies!