Grateful Acres

I've been feeling a post brewing for a few weeks now... my words aren't clear yet, but my heart is full enough tonight that I'm going to try writing and see what happens. I'm taking a parenting class through my church right now. I realized recently that I studied theory in college to be more well equipped in music (that and I didn't care about much else :)), I took marriage counseling before getting married, and have been offered birthing classes during pregnancy... but I didn't do much reading up on raising kids before having them :) **and they don't come with instruction manuals** Anyway, I've been really deeply chewing on the concepts and material we're studying. I've been processing and praying about punishment vs. consequences, approach, how things affect kids psychologically long term, how to teach responsibility and grace at the same time, how to be nurturing and firm, and occasionally spiraling into a mild amount of panic that I may, ...

I've begun this post several times, and I'm just not sure I can get the words out right... it makes sense in my head, so bear with me. I've spent so, so much time watching the people I love grieve. I've watched them reel at the shock and horror of brutal, unexpected loss, which gave way to more loss. My husband and his family have been through now 4 losses in the last 6 years: murder, suicide, Evelyn's still birth, and now they are in the muck of it all again, having just lost their oldest and most respected member. There's no way to describe what I feel as I sit with them in an oddly still room, surrounding someone they freshly lost, all of them still in shock and horror at what they had just seen. There are no words for watching their bodies and hearts wretch with each wave of pain that comes... tall, strong men bent in grief, wrinkled and fresh faces both twisted with pain that will only fade with time. As I look in their eyes, dull and numb with it all, ...