Hi everyone, welcome to at home with Sally. I'm Sally Clarkson and I have the biggest

privilege in the world to be with so many friends from all over the world who join me every

week to listen to my stories, inspiration, biblical encouragement and I am just so glad

that you're here today. Thanks so much for joining me.

Hello my friends, how are you? I am so happy to be with you tonight. I just got back from a long

train ride from St Andrews in Scotland to Oxford. It was quite a day but I had the

most wonderful pleasure in the past few days of being up and the charming historic lovely town

of St Andrews which is north of Edinburgh and celebrating the amazing accomplishment of my

son Joel becoming a PhD doctor. I think there's something that is so sacred about live celebrations.

You could just kind of let things go or say we're too busy or way to go. You finished this or that.

You could let birthdays go. You could forget to come in right weddings or think they're

an important so many different kinds of celebrations and yet I think that to underline and to

commemorate a live accomplishment or a joy in life when you enter a new home that you've

been building or whatever it is it adds importance. Celebrations live in the hearts, in the minds,

in the souls, the imaginations of the ones celebrated for a lifetime and gives hope and courage

for I think when hard times do come. You know when you feel like I don't know if I can make it but

you remember but my family and my friends are behind me they believe in me. When you remember

that a part of the battle of anything great is perseverance. Last weekend our family

spent literally several days watching Joel get it. He wore his beautiful turquoise blue robes that

are the colors of St Andrews academics. To walk the stage should be bopped. There's this particular

hat that for hundreds of years they when a person graduates from St Andrews in either an undergraduate

a master's degree of PhD whatever kind of doctorate you're getting they bop each of the students on

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