The hubby and I made time to go for walk on Wednesday. After a much-needed rain, the maple tree leaves seemed to be waving to us, the spruce — laden with water — bowed in a greeting and the columbine, catnip and fluorescent purple salvia had popped up and flowered in bloom almost yelling that summer is on its way.
As we have for the past 28.75 years, we walked and talked. The conversations have evolved, but the main topics remain the same: guiding, encouraging and mentoring our daughters, what God is teaching us, family, work blessings and challenges, major changes in our lives and family, making friend time, etc.
But this conversation was a bit different. Instead of discussing how to encourage our daughters and their teachers or volunteering and coaching at their schools, we high-fived each other for paying our last tuition payment for our youngest daughter, Phoebe, who just graduated from Anderson University.
The Hubby, the family numbers guy, figured out we’d spent 24 years paying tuition between our three daughters. We counted preschool at Mt. Pleasant Christian Church and the Creative Learning Center, kindergarten through eighth grade at Mooresville Christian Academy, high school at Covenant Christian High School and college (with some great scholarships) at Milligan and IUPUI, Indiana University and Anderson University.
Our deal with the girls when they were little was that we would help them get a great education through undergrad if they studied hard and applied for scholarships — the rest was their undertaking.
The Hubby and I talked about our current goals, dreams and challenges, upcoming changes and blessings.
I jumped three-inches to hit the top rim of a street side portable basketball goal as we walked on Wakefield Road.
We talked about upcoming changes, blessings and pending vacation plans.
The Hubby shared the story of his buddy Jim, a former Marine, who used to run endurance runs of 50-100 miles — for fun. He was the guy who took our family rappelling in southern Indiana for fun when the girls were in grade school. Jim is now fast-packing the highest points in all 50 states.
He shared with the Hubby that he’d recently visited an orthopedic surgeon for a hip replacement, which was denied because the surgeon “didn’t think he could survive it.” The same guy who is currently fast-packing the highest points in all states with a bum hip — the same guy who rappelled ‘Austrailian-style” (head first) into Viet Nam.
We continued to walk and ran into a long-time friend, Mark, who we talked and prayed with.
And then we walked some more.
