Sometimes the enormity of just how much I love my children overwhelms me. This week the loss of a vivacious young woman in the community in a car crash focused all that love into a pinpoint of poignancy. I was deeply sad. And deeply glad. Sad for her senseless and early death and the mammoth void her family must be experiencing. Glad for the love the surrounds me. Truly aware of taking the time to listen to my children. To talk and share with them.  To remind them of their inner beauty and worth. To hold them, either in my arms when possible, or in my heart when they are far away. And to remember to take none of it for granted. Ever. And, then to take that intense and joyful love and spread it around some.

The night of the car accident I had dinner with a dear friend and she turned me onto a vocalist I had never heard, Beth Nielson Chapman. I immediately bought two of her albums on ITunes. Playing one that next day, which was a quiet and pensive one around here, as we all integrated the news, I wrote down this part of the lyrics of one of the songs _

“Life has  taught me this –

Every day is new

and if anything is true

All that matters when we’re through

Is how we loved.”