You know that feeling when the weatherman says tonight will be the first frost this fall; Or the yard needs mowing and a storm is brewing, Or you are leaving on vacation in two days; or company is coming and the house is a mess. That’s sort of how it felt today.

Knowing that our usual Sunday will be busy taking care of Suzanne’s dad in St. Joseph; Monday we have to be in Chicago around noon; Tuesday we’ll get home late afternoon; Wednesday we have friends coming over; Thursday a haircut; Friday the dentist; and all that doesn’t even account for the appointments we know are yet to be scheduled next week. Which then, as you all know, ends with our final trip to Chicago to start treatments.

But with all that, today was kind of a normal day for us. Suzanne spent the morning watering the plants at the ‘Bruns Botanical Gardens’ while I finished a new exhibit that I’ve wanted/needed to do for a couple of years Suzanne then helped shovel mulch to finish up. We packed up the pool for the winter knowing we won’t get another chance to swim. Then we picked tomatoes and together canned them up in jars. We picked up some yard ornaments and hauled them off to the barn and shared some time on the front porch swing.

If you noticed above, the word ‘we’ was used a lot, that’s because we are a team. When we said “I DO” we became a team for better or worse, sickness or heath till the day comes we can’t. That’s how it’s been for us since that day she became my wife. Raising kids was tough in a blended marriage and there were many times the team was fractured but it endured. Then we opened a business together and working sided by side put the team to the test many times, but we endured. Parents died, money was tight, pets passed on, friends changed, life happened, but we endured.

Now we face a new test that again jeopardizes the team. One of the team members is facing a huge challenge and it’s up to the other team member to step up and do everything possible to keep the team together.

There is no doubt in both our minds that all the challenges the team has faced this past 31 years has brought the team to this point, and as a team, ‘we got this’.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!
Ecclesiastes 4:9-10