Fall!! This is my favorite season of the year. I think it is because I love the colors of the autumn - the browns, oranges, yellows, reds and even the deep purples of the leaves and the bright blueness of a crisp fall day. I love the smell of bonfires and burning fall leaves. The crispness of the air is so refreshing. At this time of the year I love to wrap myself up in a blanket and lay on the trampoline to watch the stars as they come out. Even the stars are more beautiful in fall.

Since I last wrote my little granddaughter Savanna was born. She came into the world on October 7t h. She is beautiful and we love her beyond words. I am excited, because tonight will be the first night she comes to visit her grandma and papa's home. I'll have her little cradle ready, and I'm sure all the aunts, and uncle and grandparents will have cameras trained on her. I promise I will post pictures someday. I have tried in recent posts, but I am doing something wrong.

Today found me in another philosophical mood. Our family has suffered hurt. Not that this is unique. It would be unique to find someone untouched by pain. Most of the time I just move on and don't dwell on how things are and how things might have been. But sometimes I indulge in a little "self-righteous indignation" when I think of the responses of only a handful of people. It is not anyone where I currently live, for everyone here has been wonderful and supportive. It is people from the past who are quick to judge a situation and find the "obvious" causes and the "easy" solutions. The quick response to this is to say that such folks are not worth worrying about. But really, how do you handle the rejection of friends whose company you've enjoyed and whose friendship you cherished and would have counted as unbreakable. David expressed something of what I feel when he said "If it was an enemy who reproached me, I could've borne it. But it was you, my equal, my friend. We walked into the house of God together." This isn't an exact quote, just a quick paraphrasing. I could have borne this if it had been an enemy.

I was thinking about all this while getting my day started. I thought of how I'd like to ask these folks how they would respond if given the same set of circumstances. I wanted to fill in the gaps of their knowledge and show them how much they don't know and how foolish their judgments have been. But then I thought of others whose stories I have come to know. I see the courage and bravery they show. I see the compassion that comes from the ones whose lives have also been touched by sorrow. Then I realized that no one comes through life unscathed. The hard times in life are necessary. The secret is in how we handle them. Hard things will do one of two things. They will make us bitter, or they will make us better. I pray that I, and my family, will come out of this better.

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