Heading North

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Daddy loved to explore Tennessee and Kentucky. On countless Sundays Mother or Daddy opened a front door of our two-door white Ford Falcon (our car before we got the VW bus), so that my brother and I could push the front seat up and climb into the back. Then we were off to wherever Daddy’s nose led him (stopping somewhere to go to church along the way).

When we asked Daddy where we were, he would often answer, “We’re right here.” When I grew up, I found this barnwood plaque at a craft show and bought it for him.

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During one of our jaunts, we ended up in Pulaski, Tennessee. I thought that was super-cool and couldn’t wait to tell the kids at school that I had been to Pulaski. To me it sounded so exotic because the name was so close to Alaska!

I wish I could tell Daddy where Ray and I are headed today. This year is a celebration year for our family. Ray and I are inching toward our 40th wedding anniversary in December, and in July we celebrated fifteen years of working together and with our children in Notgrass Company. A few weeks ago John, Bethany, Mary Evelyn, and their spouses surprised us with a present–a cruise to a destination of our choice.

We were absolutely gobsmacked, as we say in our family. Shocked. Amazed. Humbly grateful. And gobsmacked!! If the good Lord is willing and the creeks don’t rise (as Daddy used to say), we plan to sleep in Anchorage, Alaska, tonight.

When our children were young, I used to say that we would try to get them to the lower 48, but they were on their own for Alaska and Hawaii. I certainly never dreamed that they would be the ones who got us to Alaska!

The price for Internet service on the ship is somewhere between OUCH and BOING and we are on strict orders from the children actually to have a vacation, so I have already written blogs for each day of our trip.

I studied our itinerary and wrote about each day’s plans. I have included spiritual lessons, just like always, but the ones I learn in Alaska will have to wait until I return. My plan is to send John a photo each day and have him add it to those pre-written blogs. We’ll see how the technology works!

Meanwhile, I look forward to sharing the trip of a lifetime with the gift God gave to me almost forty years ago, with a grateful heart to the three gifts He gave us both.

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of lights,
with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
James 1:17, NASB

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