Thoughts on suitcases

Since it's October, my sisters and I have started making Christmas plans and then talking our Christmas plans over with each other.

Olivia suggested I get Braeden luggage for Christmas.

Luggage!?!

I thought that was the worst idea I had ever heard.  I pictured Braeden on Christmas morning, morosely looking at his luggage while his siblings were happily enjoying their gifts.

(Actually, more accurately, I imagined me crying in the corner on Christmas morning.  It's not you luggage, it's me.)

Marianne confirmed that Clarissa got luggage for Christmas her senior year.  I told her I thought it was the worst idea I ever heard too.

It's possible I have separation anxiety.

Olivia doesn't just give awful present ideas, she also told me about a talk by Jeffrey R. Holland, entitled, "Remember Lot's Wife."

I will probably need to read and reread it in order to survive.  It gives me hope and is a wake up call to keep me from crying in the corner.  From the talk:

...We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives. So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say that she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently she thought—fatally, as it turned out—that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind.

As sisters go, Olivia's not half bad.  She quite often shares wisdom with me.

Braeden said the other day that he and a friend were talking about being grownups (it's on everyone's mind apparently) and they realized with dismay that they will have to pay for their own shoes and their own internet.

When Braeden recounted that story to me at dinner, I added, "And your own food and your own clothes and your own housing and electricity and...then you will need to pay for everything for your children."

But I think he had sort of stopped listening.  For him, contemplating paying for his own shoes and internet is quite enough.

Braeden spent the past several days on a school trip, a Shakespeare competition.  (Their team tied for first place!)  He had a wonderful time and texted me very minimally (limited to one or two words at a time), mostly when I texted him wondering if he was still alive.  He's prepared to do stuff like that without me.  He really doesn't need me to take care of him too much.  It is the natural order of things.

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
John A. Shedd

All of this doesn't mean I'm going to buy him suitcases for Christmas though.