I can’t thank you all enough for your kind words and warm wishes for my parents’ 66th anniversary. Many, many heartfelt thanks!
The past few weeks, I’d been thinking about whether I would make the trip to visit my folks or not. I’m behind on my writing schedule, have two looming deadlines, several graphic projects that need attention, not to mention our ongoing landscape / yard project that I’d dearly love to see completed before summer ends. How could I possibly take time off and be gone a few days?
So the internal debate started… I should go. No, I should stay. Go or stay. Stay or go.
And the whole time, I just felt nudged to go.
Wednesday morning I made up my mind to go. I could no longer ignore the nudging and deep in my heart I knew it was the right thing to do.
So I contacted my brothers, nieces, and nephew and invited them all to converge at my mom and dad’s house Friday evening to celebrate – and to keep it all a secret.
My mom goes into this cleaning and cooking mode whenever anyone comes to visit (hmmm, wonder where I got that trait from!) and it now leaves her so exhausted to do that she can’t enjoy the company. I wanted her to enjoy their special day, so I didn’t tell my parents I was heading their way.
I stopped and purchased a big bouquet of flowers and had planned to sneak up to the door with them, pretending to be dropping off a florist delivery. However, my dad happened to be looking out the front window when I drove up and was out the door with a huge grin on his face before I even got the car parked.
Since I’d made all the food the day before (thank goodness for super-insulated coolers!), we spent the afternoon looking through old photos. They showed me some I’d never seen before and told me fun stories (some I’d never heard before).
I was super excited to see these color graduation photos of my parents for the first time.
It was quite a find and made me wonder where the photographs had been hiding all these years.
After dinner, I asked Mom and Dad to share memories of their wedding day. We sat around the table and listened, laughing as Dad added his usual flair to the story and Mom spluttered at his teasing.
And I might have gotten a lump in my throat as I thought about how close I came to missing the opportunity to be there, to celebrate their anniversary with them.
It made me think about our choices, the choices we make every single day — there is so much grace in choosing what matters.
I’m so grateful (and blessed) that I chose what mattered most this past weekend, to have followed that helpful nudge in the right direction. Even if I’m buried beneath a pile of work today, it was worth it to see the smiles on my parents’ faces.
