I just spent the last couple of days in San Antonio, Texas with my older sister, Kim, who made the 400 mile trek from Lubbock to come see me while I was in town for a convention. I was touch that she would make that drive for me. It's funny, I am closest to my sister Kellie, but my sister Kim and I are most alike. One thing my 3 sisters and I have in common is our love of laughter. It's a gift our parents gave us. Sometimes our laughter may seem inappropriate to others, like playing an April Fools joke on your sister calling in the middle of the night to tell her our grandmother was sleeping peacefully (we chickened out of saying she died) while our grandmother lay close to death. Humor is our coping mechanism. We learned to never take ourselves so seriously that we can't find the poetic humor in just about every situation. This humor came in handy as we found ourselves walking through San Antonio trying to follow the map (which you think a chief of police would know how to read) and finding ourselves lost in sticky humid weather. Actually, to tell you the truth, one time we we were looking for this restaurant called "Howl at the Moon" and after going blocks, stopping to read our map again every 50 feet or so, we stopped to reexamine our map and after 5 minutes of debate on a street corner, I looked at Kim and said, "Wouldn't it be funny if the restaurant was right in front of us?" Then we crossed the street and what do you know, it WAS right in front of us! We were literally 15 feet away.

Having one on one time with Kim allowed us to open up about all kinds of "life" stuff. I think anyone who knows our family intimately, wonders how we all turned out as good as we have. We are each grounded in strength and have found our way through life quite well. I'm really proud of who we have become. If you would have asked me 30 years ago what I thought our lives would look like today, I would have given you a completely different prediction. Never in my wildest imagination would I have conjoured up Kellie taking care of premature babies, Kim the Chief of Police, myself vested over 20 years in the same company leading large health care programs, and Kathy doing accouting for other people. We've each experienced detours along our way as we traveled our individual roads, but I think those detours and roadblocks are Gods way of helping us discover Him and who He wanted us to be. There is still a lot of road ahead of us and I'm sure there will be sharp curves and speed bumps that knock us off balance but I feel pretty confident that we will be able to stay on course, with echoes of laughter instead of conmplaints.