Hello, my blogger friends:

I just finished posting my devotional, "Fancy", on the Portions of Grace blog site. I hope it will be well and widely read. I love writing the devotionals and will continue to do so. That is my 70th one in four years. Woopie!

Today is a cold, rainy day. All during the summer we had meager rain now and then. Here it is in the bloom of autumn with leaves changing and dropping profusely and it is now raining, making the day dark and bleak. Makes me want to sleep and go into that blessed dreamland for a couple hours. But...there is no time for that. I must get to cleaning the apartment for our company that will be here on Monday. They are my Aunt Jeannette and Uncle Delain, from Georgia. They are up here for their grandson's wedding in Pennsylvania. Wish I could be there but my cousins do not know me and I don't know them. That's the way it is in a large family like ours. I probably have at least 1,000 relatives spread all over the east coast. There are also a few in California and Texas. If we all got together, we'd need the whole building of Mountain Christian Church just for us alone. Wow! Wouldn't Pastor Ben be impressed?!

On the 25th of this month (October 2013) my husband, daughter, son-in-law and I will be traveling to North Carolina for our one and only granddaughter's wedding. Alena is a beautiful, ambitious, thirty year old woman who has worked very hard in her job as a television news producer. She went to college to learn about media and she has succeeded! Her boss remarked that she is the best producer the station has ever had. Wonderful! Good job, Alena. I know her mother and dad are proud of her. As her grandparents, Charlie and I certainly are proud. I am anxious to see her again. I only wish we had known more about her as she grew up. We missed out on so much of her life when she was small. She lived in Florida and Charlie never seemed to have enough time off from his job just to go to Florida to visit with her and her family. We saw her and her parents only when they found the time to come to Maryland to visit her mother and fathers side of family at Christmas time. Speaking of her father, he was a true father to her even though he was really her step-father. Our second son, Alen, was her biological father, but Clipper was her read dad. And she loves him with all her heart. Too bad our Alen missed out on all of the things that make a real home, family and fatherhood. But, that is another story, another time. The most important thing is that Alena is a well-rounded, beautiful, happy young woman who is about to embark on the most important aspect of her young life, that of being a wife and eventually, a mother. We wish her all the happiness her young heart can hold. True happiness is there if one chooses to reach out and grab it, hold on to it and work at it daily the rest of her life. It is "do-able". I know. My husband and I have been married for 56 years. Life is not a rose garden. As I have told many young brides-to-be when I was baking and decorating wedding cakes, "keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half closed afterwards." It is a true and honest statement, one to be reckoned with. But, it CAN BE DONE!

Well, dear friends and bloggers, today is a new day. As the Bible says, "Today is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." Amen.

See you all next time, God willing. E. Bonnie Ryan