Applying to Graduate from College is a Great Feeling of Achievement

Last week, I applied to graduate from college with a Master’s degree in Religious Studies in December. I have turned in my final project and have time to exhale. However, I enrolled in Communication and Aging because it will study religion, communication, and aging in ways that I can use as an older minister in the future. It will be an eight-week course over the summer. My husband and I will visit the children and grandchildren in Portugal in September instead of during the summer break. We will also visit Bilbao, Spain, where I have wanted to go for 25 years, and finally decided that I won’t wait any longer.

It feels good to blog again. I’ve been busy writing papers and acclimating to being an associate minister at the new church I joined in December 2023. We recently spent a week in California because the youngest of the eight children we brought into our marriage graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in Material Science and Engineering. I almost didn’t go because I still have digestive issues, but we think we have found some answers. I can’t eat anything with fructose corn syrup and possibly even regular sugar. We have to test that when the nurse practitioner comes on Thursday.

I didn’t eat any sweets at the reception or parties for the graduates. Because I ate cookies nearly every day, mostly graham crackers, nearly three weeks without sweets has me experiencing withdrawal symptoms like I was a drug addict. I had no clue that sugar was so powerful. As a child, we never had sweets because there was money only for the basics. As an adult, I promised to eat sweets whenever I wanted them. When I learned that because of my colon cancer surgery, I couldn’t digest artificial sweeteners, I didn’t consider that regular sugars would be bad. The gastroenterologist placed me on the FODMAP diet that limits sugars, and there are fruits and vegetables, like my beloved Ambrosia apples and broccoli, that I can’t have anymore.

Summer classes begin on June 3, but I will have time to blog on both of my sites. I feel underachieved when I can’t find the time to blog every day, so I look forward to graduating in December. It has been a long three years with all the illnesses and hospitalizations that set me back. But I did not quit. I reminded myself that I didn’t have to be perfect and that I didn’t have to feel ashamed when I was too busy to blog. When new followers signed up for the blog (I have 1642 followers), I felt I needed to write something. However, to write just to be writing is unfair, in my opinion, to your followers.

Here’s to new insights and inspirations. I look forward to returning to the premise of this blog site: to write stories, fictional and nonfictional, that inspire, encourage, and give a smile of possibility to readers who give me the honor of writing for them. Have a great Memorial Day, and stay safe, my friends! To God be the glory!