COWABUNGA DUDES!
Groovy Greetings from California--

We are in California on vacation.  The ocean is as incredible and
wondrous as the big ol' Texas sky.  I am reading 'Texas' by Michener
while I'm away just to stay connected.
Our first night here was a big Miner Family Gathering.  It's crazy
madness always-- kids get bigger and older and married, softer around
the edges-- while us parents stay young and thoroughly hip eternally...
it's a mystery, really.
A friend of the family was around for the big hoopla.  She has terminal
cancer.  She talked to David at length of the oddity of waking up with
it, going to sleep with it, living with it...how it's changed her
perspective on everything--- money, family, career-- though it wasn't
clear to David if she had a firm grip on Jesus-- never the less, her
world is rapidly changing.
I started thinking about being given 12 months to live-- or 6, or 6
weeks.  There's really not much about the way I'm living now that I
would continue.  I would sing and worship.... But I wouldn't keep
worrying about stuff (that I have no control over anyway)....  I
wouldn't run at the pace I run... I wouldn't keep lying about how I'm
just about ready to start exercising.... I wouldn't make Henry beg
before I headed outside to watch all his skateboard tricks.  I wouldn't
fall asleep while I "played"  XBox with Ethan.  I still wouldn't let
Liv wear 'that' jean skirt, but I would let her drive around the
block....I wouldn't wait for extra time to write endless odes to
Tucker-- I'd just start scribbling on paper napkins... I'd make sure I
told Hannah everything she needed to know to bless her as the new
matriarch... I'd look at David more and wonder less if he's ok with
being married to me...

Then I remembered that country song 'Live Like You're Dying'.  That's a
great song.
Then I remembered a song my friend wrote.  The chorus says something
like.... if you find out you have a year to live, move to Odessa it'll feel like 2......

I hope that I'll come home from vacation and remember to hold this life
loosely. I hope that I'll have less 'wouldn'ts' on my list....  and
strive (in a 'hold loosely' kind of way) for more 'woulds'... that's my
truest hope.

More woulds.

It's with that in mind that I leave you with this:

Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going
on all the time. We are in it now.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1860-1935
American Author, Artist and Social Reformer