Bill of Sale

As I sit here composing a bill of sale for our minivan, my mind wanders back to the time we got this old girl. We found her on eBay, and won with a crazy low bid, an obvious answer to our prayers. I was 8 mos. prego with Clara when we went to retrieve her, driving from Iowa City to Denver in the "BLIZZARD 2003!" (which shut down the entire city 45 minutes after we left and splashed through the national news for the next two weeks). These reminiscings led to other memories of our school years, which produced mixed emotions, which made me feel hungry, which made me happy we have snacks in the cupboard that I can fetch for myself, which led me again back to the lean years of school, which eventually brought me to the grateful thoughts that inspired this post.

The greatest blessings we had during those years were our friends. I am grateful to the Lord for providing us with an atmosphere where we could safely learn the difficult lessons that were our privilege to learn, at BYU, in Iowa, and in Texas. I am equally thankful for the long suffering friends that were patient with us (mostly me), and forgiving of our (mostly my) pride and immaturity. (C. T. Warner wrote, "To the immature, other people are not real." I like to knaw on that one.) Not that anybody who knows me now could say with any truthfulness that I've "arrived," but I feel like an old woman sometimes, looking at that little girl and thinking, "Poor clumsy thing. She thinks life is so complicated. She'll make it through okay, though we'll see how many mistakes she makes and how many bridges she'll inadvertently burn getting there. Thank goodness for all the patient angels around her." Yet another proof that God is real, that prayers are always anwered, and that love and forgiveness and faith and hope are steep trails that lead us to the summit so we can at last see where we've been and where we're going.