I’m going to take a few weeks off from this blog. I’m saying that for my sister-in-law Vickey, the one person I know for sure who reads it and wonders if I’m dead or dying if a new one doesn’t appear each Monday morning. Well, Vic, just let me say, the little story you’ll find in this blog is worth reading three weeks in a row. (That’s in my humble opinion, of course.)

We’ll be moving from Joplin soon, probably by the end of March, and I’ve been cleaning out thirty or forty years of my life. (When Tony and I leave this world, it won’t take the girls long to “tear down the tee-pee.”)

Last week I shared a note I recently wrote to a lady who had left me a note on my website. This week I want to share one more. This note was to a lady who said she had read Tender Grace four times in six months!

Well, she had her reasons.

I’ve always been affected by the story of the ten lepers that Jesus healed, affected specifically by the fact that only one thought to say, “Thank you.“

I’m sure it was love that led Jesus to heal them, not the desire to be thanked, and so those of us who “give a cup of cold water in his name” don’t do it to be thanked either.

But it’s so nice when it happens.

I’m ready to begin a new year, which surprises me. It has always been hard for me to let things go, even a calendar year.

For instance, before I left the first house we bought and moved “up” to a nicer one, I actually went through a mourning period. Brief, compared to some of my more notable bouts of mourning, such as the emptying of our nest or leaving the college classroom I loved, but significant, nonetheless.