UPDATE: Her husband wrote a tribute to Barbara on her blog and describes her last day.  See here.

* * *

In 2005, Barbara Curtis started her blog, Mommylife.net.  I commented on her very first post here.

Within a couple of weeks, she sent me an email and we began to establish a friendship.  She thought I was funny, encouraged me to write and made me laugh.  I loved her immediately–her honesty, her colorful background, her no-nonsense attitude.  That same year, she mentioned a writer’s conference at Mt. Hermon.

Two years later, I finally made it to that conference and met her.  We hung out and talked and sat side by side, blogging.

She taught me a lot.  (She helped me connect with the editor at Christian Science Monitor who published my article mentioned in the right sidebar).  She knew so much about everything: raising children, writing articles and books, movies, politics, history, music . . .

I never could imagine how she accomplished so much in each day.  She had twelve children, a bunch of grandchildren, a husband she was devoted to, a super-busy (mostly) political blog.  She wrote a stack of books, including one she just finished writing in September. She wrote articles for magazines and just last week went to World Journalism Institute to learn more about writing. Did I mention that  her four youngest sons have Down Syndrome–and three of them were adopted?  Once while channel-surfing, I saw her on a news program, commenting on some political issue.  She was devoted to the pro-life movement and practiced what she preached.

She was my friend, an encourager and an example. She made me laugh and she made me think.  She was a good listener.

On Sunday, she has a fatal stroke.  She died earlier today.

I am so sad.

I will miss her.

We talked about going back to Mt. Hermon last Spring . . . she said this, “I will be there next year and we will visit the ocean again!!!!”

But we never made it.

My heart goes out to her family.

My kitchen knives haven’t been professionally sharpened since I took them to the mall in Bellingham in 1991.  I wish I were kidding.

Sure, I have a home sharpener which I occasionally pull out of its hiding spot, but those knives are dull.

If I need to cut open a lime, for instance, first I have to stab the lime with the point of the knife so I can push the blade through.

One of my 19-year old sons has been begging me to get the knives sharpened.  He looked online and found a shop with raving reviews and sent me the link.  That was several months ago.

Finally yesterday I found myself with a few free hours.  I decided to deliver the knives to the shop so they could be sharpened.

I put the address into my GPS, drove ten minutes and . . . found myself in a residential neighborhood.  Was the knife sharpener guy working out of his garage?  I don’t know but I was not comfortable with the idea of knocking on a stranger’s door with a bag full of knives, asking for help.

So I used my phone and found another knife sharpening shop, entered the address into my GPS, drove ten more minutes and . . . found myself in another residential area.

At that point, I posted on Facebook (from my phone) asking local people if they knew of a place to get knives sharpened.

As it turned out, my next-door neighbor left a Facebook comment and told me that a knife-sharpening guy is at the Farmer’s Market every Saturday.  So I guess that’s where I’ll be on Saturday.

How funny, though, that all this technology–Google, my iPhone, my GPS–led me to my next-door neighbor.  Next time I’ll just go into my backyard and shout over the fence.

A million light years ago when I was twenty, I used to sing a song with these words:

Make me a servant, humble and meek,
Lord, let me lift up those who are weak,
And may the prayer of my heart always be,
Make me a servant, make me a servant, make me a servant today.  

(Song by Kelly Willard)

As it turns out, I had no idea what I was singing.  I meant it, but decades ago, before I had children and a husband and a dog who will tear up three brand new boxes of tissues if you leave them on the kitchen counter after carrying in the bags from Walmart, I had no idea.  What I had, way back in the olden days, was a dorm room and a bunch of classes and a roommate who was so neat and tidy that she kept her hot rollers in the original box when she wasn’t using them.

I volunteered my time, of course, for various charitable causes.  I spent my Spring Breaks riding in vans to work in inner-city churches, helping as much as a middle-class white girl can.  During summers, I stacked chairs and followed orders and one summer, worked as a nanny for a stay-at-home doctor’s wife who had four children.

I thought I had experienced servant-hood and it wasn’t all that hard, so singing that song was a pretty way to express my ardent devotion to God.

But now?

Now I hear myself saying things like, “What am I?  The slave around here?” and “I am not your servant girl!” and “Why am I the ONLY ONE who does ANYTHING AROUND HERE?”

I hear myself.

I know that my life is blessed.  I know that I am among the world’s richest.  I have running water and modern amenities that so many people around the world can’t even imagine.  My kids are healthy.  My husband is funny and calm and an all around awesome guy.  I really have nothing to complain about.

My heart is kind of whiny, though.

My heart is not a servant’s heart.

And I’m afraid to sing that song because what does it really mean for me to be a servant?

I’m tired.

If my life were a treadmill, I would definitely push the button to slow it down.  I would, in fact, abandon the treadmill and find a comfortable couch where I could curl up and read until I fell asleep.  (This also describes why I really need a personal trainer because when the going gets tough, I prefer to get off the treadmill.)

If I were a juggler, this would be the moment when all the balls (or flaming torches) would tumble to the ground (and set me on fire?).  And so on and so forth.

So, yeah.  That’s how things have been around here.

Yesterday, I sat on my bed for ten minutes between soccer practice and an evening meeting.  The rest of the day I was in a frantic whirlwind of obligations.  (Walk the dog. Work.  Soccer practice. Procure dinner. Meeting. Work.)   But when I put it that way, it sounds serene, my day.

I don’t feel serene.

I feel obligated and tense and boring.

Today, I woke up and walked the dog.  Walking the dog for thirty minutes each morning has become essential.  That bit of exercise changes her attitude dramatically and really, unless I want a Tasmanian devil jumping at my throat, I dare not skip the walk.

Then I worked my five-hour shift.

After work, I took the dog and the girl to the pet store to buy a . . . dog birthday cake.  Don’t judge.

Back home, I started cooking dinner.  Finished cooking and eating dinner and only a few minutes later, it was time to deliver my daughter to AWANA at church.  The sky turned all shades of cottony pink as we drove so as soon as I dropped her off, I rushed to the beach and practically ran down the stairs to see the colored sky.

I took dozens of photos with my iPhone until the sky darkened and the moon brightened and then I climbed back into the car and returned home where I watched Survivor and then worked another three hours and wrote this blog post and yawned and yawned and yawned.

As I said, I’m tired.  But the sunset was absolutely glorious and the cold sand beneath my toes and the curling, crashing waves felt like a promise.

I started writing this blog on October 11, 2003.

Nine years later, here were are.

[Insert actual thoughtful blog post here.]

Help yourself to a (pretend) cupcake.  I made them myself.

This weekend, I went to Idyllwild for a retreat.  Several women told me, “I read your blog!”  So, hello to you-know-who-you-are!

I stopped several times on the drive down the mountain to take photos.

As I predicted, the second I got home, I jumped back into the fray.

Despite my fatigue, on Monday I took Grace to Disneyland, mainly so we could experience Halloween time there.

Unfortunately, because it was Columbus Day, it was quite crowded, but we still had fun.  Her new favorite ride is Grizzly River Run, which leads me to the best eight bucks I’ve ever spent at Disneyland . . . I bought a rain poncho and stayed basically dry on all three times we rode the River Run.

We left at about 7:20 PM, and I had time for a twenty minute nap before working at 9 PM.

And that’s why I don’t have time for a real blog post.