What I Learned From: A Writers Conference, A Wedding, and a New Baby

 Townes was born last night at about 1:30 in the morning. He is the second grandbaby of my extra kids. He weighed eight pounds, From his picture I'm sure he's  beautiful!!! I get to meet him this afternoon. I can hardly wait.

On Saturday Josh married my niece Erin. The sun didn't set in DuBois PA, that night because Erin glowed so brightly.

On the way home from the weekend in DuBois, we stopped at an antique shop. We talked  philosophy with the antique dealer. He said, "Hope is the rarest of diamonds."  He talked about how hopeless people were and how it was so hard to maintain hope.

I say, go to a wedding like Erin's and you will see hope. She is not naive. She knows how hard it can be to maintain a marriage, yet she and Josh jumped in with both feet, as my mother would say.

Go look at Townes little face on his mother's shoulder. Bobby and Shayna know something about the world, yet they welcomed Townes into it. 

Hope might be rare. It might just be an ember guttering out until we go to a wedding or see a newborn. They fame the flames and our hope lives again.

Or go to a writers conference. People there come back year after year, take rejection after rejection, yet do not give up on what it is they are called by God to write.

Hope is hard to kill and easy to see.  Just as Mrs. Erin Fredrick or Shayna and Bobby. Only Shayna and Bobby won't answer you. They are too busy looking at baby Townes.