Small steps are magical. I took a small step in March: I signed up for a 50-mile bike ride. I didn’t think I could ride the 50 miles when I signed up, but I believed I’d be able to by September when my classmates and I celebrated our 40th reunion from the United States Naval Academy, which culminated in the 81(km or mile) Ride. I had taken a small step two years ago by engaging…
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Friends are Friends Forever part 2 of 3 A year into our time on Oahu, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I was also 16 weeks pregnant with our seventh child. I was grateful then that I had a year to make friends and weave our family into the Navy community before I had to make a “withdrawal” from those friend-accounts. Looking back I can see now that, I hadn’t yet learned what Henri Nouwen…
2 CommentsPart 1 of 3 And friends are friends foreverIf the Lord’s the Lord of themAnd a friend will not say never‘Cause the welcome will not endThough it’s hard to let you goIn the Father’s hands, we knowThat a lifetime’s not too longTo live as friends Michael W. Smith I wasn’t on Oahu one week before the connection with Cathie was made. After talking to an Air Force family that used the same homeschool curriculum I…
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My oldest just moved the day after Christmas. With my own Navy moves under my belt, I knew that sometimes moving across an ocean is a lot easier than moving houses 20 minutes down the street. When you move across an ocean, you know you need help. When you move locally, it’s easy to think you can get by with some help from family. When I showed up at Maggie’s front door, I had to…
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Do you know the concept of “six degrees of separation“? This idea posits that any two people on Earth are six or fewer acquaintance links apart. I imagine that this assumes that our linkage is with the living but I wonder what would be our linkage if we could consider as well the departed? Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with the Institute for Cultural Communicators student interns who have been serving with us…
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There are times in your life when you don’t want any attention. You want to just keep your head down and your nose clean. Plebe summer at the United States Naval Academy was one such time in my life. If I could have been invisible that would have been ideal because attention meant correction, some form of humiliation and demerits. It was bad enough being a woman in the earliest years of integration at USNA. Attention…
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