I feel like I dropped out of my life for a week.

That might sound like a vacation to some people, but for this homeschooling-stay-at-home-writer mom, it’s disorienting at best.

I’ve had the stomach flu. I won’t talk about the diarrhea, vomiting, or nausea. I will tell you that I ran a fever (I never run a fever), and I ached all over, so much that I couldn’t lie still. The part I’m telling you about only lasted for two days (I was in the bed for six), but it was enough.

I recently read a reputable article that said women’s heart-attack symptoms, different than men’s, can include flu-like aches and pains and vomiting. You know what’s coming, right? I thought I was having a heart attack.

I was surprised, in my sickness and my heart-attack thoughts, how calm I was about dying. I wasn’t afraid. At the same time, I told God, “Please, Lord. I know I’m supposed to be excited about the possibility of moving to heaven and spending the rest of eternity with you. But I’m not done here. There’s so much I still need to teach Cami.” That’s when my fever went up and I was pretty sure I had a nasty virus and was not having a heart attack.

I’ve been thinking about that conversation with God. I’ve been asking myself what I still need to teach Cami.

I made a list.

Things I Still Need to Teach Cami
(in no particular order of importance)

• math
• to fry chicken and cubed steak
• to play the piano
• to hear God’s voice
• how to be herself around that special boy (when she meets him)
• how beautiful God says she is
• to worship Jesus from her toes up from the inside out all the time every day
• to study the Bible
• how to shave her legs
• where our family came from
• how her daddy and I met and fell in love
• to make homemade vegetable soup
• to grow things in the garden
• to be fully confident and not afraid to be who God is making her
• how to be an honest and authentic friend
• how to know who to trust her heart with
• to drive defensively

I’m sure I’ll be adding to this list as I think about it. I know I’m not the only one who can teach Cami these things.

But I want to be the one to teach her these things.

Except for maybe math.

What about you? What things do you want to pass on to your loved ones before you move to heaven?

Getting reoriented to my life,

Cassandra