five-minute friday: she

Okay.  So it's been a loong time, but I'm diving back into the five-minute fun this week :) 
You might remember this means no editing, or tinkering, or obsessing.  

Three of my favorite things...
 

Happy Friday!

She's been my daughter's "half" and one of my girls since forever, and she's getting married today.

(I'm embarrassingly giddy.)

She'll be five years old in just a few weeks and has filled my life up in ways I could have never anticipated.

I loved her before she knew how to read and now she lives across the world with her husband, loving others and inspiring me to do the same.

She is wading through the boxes and toys and general mayhem, her belly filled up with her first daughter, my granddaughter...my heart could burst thinking of them.

She's recovering from major surgery, no doubt utterly miserable and perhaps a wee bit discouraged, and I fear she can't fathom how precious she is to me.

She's a mere three months old and all chubby and long and warm and dimply and precious

...and infinitely full of promise.

She loves where she lives even while homesick for her soldier-son and missionary-daughter.  

She's scurrying around tending to the husband-with-the-broken-foot, possibly driving him nuts with all the attention and concern and healthy snacks, but most assuredly filling his life with love.

She's the mother of three of my grandchildren.  She's my firstborn & precious friend.  I'm so proud of her.
I couldn't love her more with chocolaty bribes.

She makes casseroles for the sick or the sad or the happy, and cleans houses for the overwhelmed, and offers frazzled mamas a break, and tends to the dying, and copes with unthinkable decisions, and mothers alone, and makes me laugh, and deals with her loss, and gets back up when she's blown it all to pieces.

...and I am in awe.

xoxo