The Time She Taught Me to Choose Joy

She almost jumped out of the car in the still dark morning at the airport, about bursting in her eagerness to go with me on a grand adventure. We were to fly across the country together and meet her new niece, my new granddaughter. This sweet 7-year-old girl who had spent so much of the last few years saying goodbye to people she loved was being afforded the opportunity to be among the first to say hello to new life.

Her daddy pulled our luggage from the trunk. One. Two. Three. She looked for the fourth. It wasn’t there. “My fun bag?” she asked, looking in the trunk for the backpack we’d so carefully packed with all the things to occupy her happily, the pillow for her head, the gluten-free food for the journey. It wasn’t there. Please read the rest of her story here.

Beach photos credit Kristin Joy Foss, who totally gets this concept and lives her middle name every day:-).