Feb 20, 2026 – Start
“Start Your Day Right” – Power – What an interesting phrase to open up to this morning as I sit at my Aunt Libba’s dining room table looking at a lifetime of her writings that we are aiming to gather into a book. I’m due this (loving) task since, I handed off the 9th and final book my father wrote to our most helpful and capable computer friend, Michael. At 98, at the family’s request, Daddy started recording the details about his military medals that were in the frame on his wall. The list turned into pages of stories which turned into a book which he finished, despite illnesses and hospital stays, in his 99th year just six months before he died. If I haven’t mentioned it before, he was a very decorated Colonel, a very driven colonel; and with each project I undertook with him, I lost more rank until I was down to a PFC with no leave privileges. So Michael got promoted – and boy was he a dedicated and honorable soldier in service to my father in getting the book to print.
I can hardly get going in this blog for switching to another document to make notes about what my aunt is discovering in yet another of the many notebooks she has meticulously put together of stories and memories. She tears up one moment (and so do I) when she reads Uncle Mac’s poems that I’d never heard; and, laughs in the next moment, especially reading Edgar Albert Guest’s poems (one of Uncle Mac’s favorite poet). She’s a little flustered (more than a little) with all of this information and how to pull it all together; so, I stopped typing and did what we should have done when we first sat down at the table with our coffee. I prayed, asking God to go before and with us and to help us pull together what He knows needs to be included, and to give her peace and joy each time she starts to lament about the daunting nature of the wealth of information before us.
So…in order to make best use of our time, I’ll start and end with Joyce’s thoughts, “Many times the way your day starts is the way it is going to go all day. [This makes me think of the Guest poem ‘Tomorrow’ that she just read to me.] …But you can make your mind up early in the morning to enjoy each aspect of your day, whether everything goes the way you planned or not. The mind is a battlefield. Start choosing right thoughts early in the morning, and you will begin to walk in victory.” So we are starting our day with these happy memories as we START this book endeavor!
