Had a beautiful drive home late morning from Peachtree City. Been with my grandchildren for five fun days. Father Sky had rendered a summer blue sky and shaded the skyline’s horizon a deep aqua blue. The sky, on the drive home, was full of the prettiest small wisps of clouds in glorious shades of purples, mauves, and blues, swimming across the sky’s ocean, shaped like a pod of dolphins. I’ve never seen the little cotton candy clouds those colors. When I crossed the Alabama state line, big bright white fluffy clouds gobbled up all the little dolphins. The gobbling clouds looked like the scary fish in Finding Nemo. I almost ran off the road watching the clouds, so pretty when they melded together.

Well, I’m home now and I’ve filled up the bird feeders, cleaned and filled the bird baths, watered the plants, now on day 15 without any rain, and I’m perched in the swing telling myself I’m not hot but I am, so off I go to the reading chair.

Had the best time with my grandchildren. I went to the football game Friday night to watch my oldest grandson march in the high school band’s halftime show. Brought back so, so many memories of happy football Friday nights when I was in the band. And man, did I feel old watching my grandson. He plays the mellophone in the marching band and the French horn in the symphonic band. He’s as slender as a toothpick so could pick him out easily as they performed their halftime show. Course I teared up with pride. I’m so proud of this boy, soon to be 15 years old, so genuinely kind and sweet. He’s going to leave his mark on this world and make it a better place.

Saturday the parentals left for their weekend trip and soon as they backed out the driveway my granddaughter broke out the Whoopi cushion. We laughed ourselves silly till we lost our breath and then she hid it for the next visit. We enjoyed watching the Alabama football game, all of us dressed in our Alabama shirts with spots of Rotel dip on them! Sunday was a Go Fishing and Blackjack card game marathon. We played with French accents and we laughed ourselves silly. I think my middle grandson has X-ray vision. He beat me every game. And before you think anything, Blackjack is great for math skills! Gotta add those numbers on the cards! These children are so much fun! And they love to laugh, too! We played a few more card games today and watched The Little Rascals movie. I was thinking I might be old but after watching that movie I realized I am old! I used to love watching that show as a child.

I hope the Lord will bless me with a long life so I can see these beautiful grandchildren of mine march into adulthood. The whole world is open to them. I just want them to feel loved and wanted and to be healthy. So much sadness and confusion and anger in the world lately. We all need to pray for love and kindness and compassion for each other to become vogue.

After two days of card playing, I’ve been thinking about life as a deck of cards. I found this quote by Jawaharial Nehru — “Life is like a deck of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play is free will.” All of us are born into a life that is predetermined. God knows the path we need to travel, but he gives us free will with our lives’ deck of cards. We can be happy and work with the cards we draw or we can be miserable always searching for that card that wasn’t dealt. We are all give unique abilities and skills, gifts from God that with nurturing can enrich our lives and the lives of others.

I think one of the hardest things in life is just to accept how the cards were dealt. Complaining about things we can’t change just wastes our time and our energy. We need to pray for the strength to accept the things we can’t change, turning those worries over to God in prayer. We need to find courage to deal with things we can change and pray for God’s grace as we work toward those life changes. It’s how we deal with life’s challenges that makes all the difference. Complaining about what we cannot change, will not solve any problem.

Our lives are what we make them. We are responsible for our own happiness. We can’t change the cards we were dealt but we can play our cards well with God’s grace. Tuning your life over to God is the best way to win at the card game of life.

“Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.” — Voltaire