The Pinky Purple Tree

Olive and Stephen have started a new game in the car that they call "pinky purple tree bingo". They look for red bud trees (olive calls them pinky purple trees because they are not red, they are pinky purple) and they call out when they see one. Olive usually adds "I'm winning!" To the end of her senetence about seeing one. She even plays when he isn't in the car with us and wants to call and tell him how many she saw. She thinks this is the greatest game ever! It has definetly caused me to be more observant of all of the "pinky purple trees" blooming around us. Today I saw one and I was really struck with the thought that we are in the "pinky purple tree" stage of our lives and I could not be more grateful for that!  We are at a place of new beginnings! With Nora Kate joining our family any day now, we are starting fresh. With our new perspective to "just be", We are blooming!  Stephen and I's New Years focus this year was to try to have a more positive perspective. I will tell you that going jnto this year, I was terrified. I cried at midnight on New Year's Eve because I was so so scared of entering into an odd numbered year. They haven't been very good to us in the past.  A few days into the new year, I had a long talk with God and I was reassured of his goodness. I wasn't reassured that nothing else bad would happen, but I was reassured that we could handle it. That day Stephen and I decided to focus on a more positive perspective. This seemed so crazy to me, because I have lived my life as an optimist, but fear had taken hold and finding the positive had been very hard for me.  This is something I continue to struggle with daily, but now as I see the pinky purple trees popping up all over town I am reminded of this new season!  I am looking forward to tomorrow and our future as our little family starts to bloom and grow into what God intended it to be!