Caterpillar Toes and Butterfly Wings

From the hills of Missouri to the top of the Twin Towers, and from the Florida swamps to the Brazilian beaches, God has refused to let His daughter get bored. Through life, loss, dreams, and disasters, He has proven His love and faithfulness. Her parents and grandparents taught her by example how to deal with life when it got difficult-how to laugh at the ridiculous and find joy in the simple things. Motherhood brought immeasurable joy, lots of laughter, and pain beyond expression. She had to trust the Lord to "give his angels charge" over her children to keep them safe through their many escapades, exploits, and accidents, and to hold her faith strong in loss. Rather naďve, she often innocently found herself caught up in embarrassing, and sometimes dangerous, situations. She learned to laugh at herself and the messes she got into because crying didn't help! Thanking the Lord for all things, good or bad, became a way of life as a matter of survival. Her family's attempt to build a two-story home in the Florida boonies provided more adventure than she bargained for with alligators, wild hogs, floods, and fires-but also beauty, bounty, and butterflies. Later finding herself essentially abandoned and emotionally lost, she also found she had lost her sense of direction, which led to wandering around in the wilderness ... until she received a call ... and life changed once more.