Yesterday, a big thing happened quietly enough.  I ended my co-op teaching career.  Week in and week out, for eight school years, I've been the main teacher and leader for a growing and vibrant co-op.  I've taught basically two groups of kids (with some coming in and out during different years), each for four years. With conference responsibilities and the Tapestry Redesign project coming up this spring, it seemed wise and good to all that Karen step in and teach our students for the fourth quarter. So, yesterday was my last class.  Sigh.

I will miss teaching.  I love it.  But, again, wiser heads say that I must decrease so that others may increase, and I agree.  I'm not really grieving today, because I've been through all that as the day approached.  And, next week I'm taking my second set of dear students on a deluxe field trip: two weeks in Europe seeing the sights of Western Civilization that we've studied together over the last four years.  Not a bad consolation prize!

This spring, Marjorie (my baby!) will be done with homeschool.  A 22-year project involving homeschooling six children through high school, something that I thought I would never, ever complete -- let alone, complete successfully -- will be done, and done well!  How did it happen?  God did it; before time, He created me for these good works, and then He gave me the grace to accomplish them, day by day.  There was even enough grace for spillover, and thus Tapestry of Grace.  We can't outgive God!

God is so kind.  How gently He can draw us through big passages.  Trusting Him through them is the key, I think.  Passages aren't scary when we remember Who is leading us through them, and why.  I'll be celebrating my birthday on the night that we fly from London to Paris.  I'll be 48.  That used to sound so OLD.  It does still, in ways.  "Pushing 50!"  My eyesight is less good, and my body doesn't do what I want it to anymore, but, again, I'm serene.   I'm grateful that the older I get, the sweeter Heaven seems.  And, the fruit of His faithfulness through the years: friends, co-laborers in the gospel, adult children who stay close and continue to love me despite my many sins, and my dearest friend, Scott, are all close and healthy in body and spirit.  That will all change, too.  But I can smile at the future, because I know in Whom I have believed.  I'm in that place in life where I have more evidences of grace than fears for the future.  Like Israel, I can look back into my own life and see amazing works of God -- miracles, every one -- and believe Him for the future with more and more confidence.

Trust in the Lord and do good, dear sisters.  Dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture!  God has a steady hand to guide us through this world!