Chartered by Grace...

We walk up the ramp...my girl and I...

We are thrilled to spend these moments together...we so enjoy one another...

We grab our fins and wait for the boat...

We gab as girls do and sweat in the sun...

As the boat fully loads, it strikes me..."We are the only "single" family on this boat."

We sit surrounded by intact families...spouses helping carry the gear...mothers ramrodding children while fathers apply sunscreen...

Boat crew asks several times "Just you two?"

Yet we are unaware...we are so thrilled with one another and our lives...It does not cause us to falter any longer.

It was not always so. When we first lost our full time Daddy, it was crushing.

On donuts with Dad day at school, I would drop Syd off and weep on the way to work.

I lamented about the wrongness for them...for me...the injustice of it all.

I worried incessantly about us being "different"...

Syd seemed to feel the sting of being from a single parent home in school...sometimes bringing home tears rather than Father's Day cards...

It was a tough run...

But grace...

Grace has been a neosporin to our cuts...God has seeped in the wounds and cut out the sting and disease and we have healed...

There are undoubtedly scars and hard days...but we are a unit...a thriving family of 3 plus one emerging Daddy...

Peace and Grace have helped the four of us to begin to charter new waters in hopes of our girls being able to know their father...

In fact, their Heavenly Father (the one that has never let any of us down) has helped us charter towards their earthly father...

So we ride off into the ocean...hand in hand knowing all is well...blessed beyond measure...

Nothing can shake God's kids...nothing...

We text pictures to her father...and laugh when we leave because of multiple jelly fish...

Long story short...

What you think will absolutely kill you...wreck you...

Once faced down...eye to eye...does not...

What you think you can never accomplish...(co-parenting after a nasty divorce)...can materialize...

God has superior ways of mending and healing...and We are all the same...Just "sinful objects of a holy love"...(A Kingdom Named Desire)

Grace n Peace,

A ~