It’s all a matter of perspective

I have heard people railing on facebook as a time-robber or as giving us the illusion that we are friends with our “friends” or that it’s addictive. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any particular loyalty to facebook, but I’d like to offer a different perspective…it’s my “home-town newspaper”.

When I understand the function something is playing in my life, then I can appreciate it for what it is, and not expect more than it’s able to deliver.

People have been reading daily papers for a long time. Small town papers are great to keep us up on what is going on in the lives of our community, but so many people have moved away from their small towns and made friends in many places that we have to construct our communities in new ways. I love that I can build an online community consisting of people I have known throughout my whole life. I can look at your pictures (how long would it take me to sit in each person’s living room and physically look at your family photos?), find out what you’re doing today, share party invitations, read about the things that are on your mind and hear about concerns for which I can pray. I have become inspired by videos my friends have posted, or I’ve laughed hysterically. I learned that my childhood friend lost her mother, and I could keep her in my prayers. I saw the photos of my long-time-friend’s vacation, so when I saw her in the grocery store, I didn’t have to say “Whatcha been doing lately”, but I could say instead “Looks like you had an amazing time in the Bahamas”.

Like I said, I am not touting facebook because I have any particular affinity toward that social networking site, but I am more suggesting that our perspective influences our attitude. I enjoy looking at the daily news of my friends to keep their lives fresh in my mind. Understanding perspective helps me to hold things “in their proper place”. That sounds like an old-fashioned phrase, but I use it to mean that I recognize the purpose of a thing and I appreciate its usefulness in my life.

Unfortunately, the temptation arises to impose my perspective on others. I am coming to know that what is good for me is good for me. Each one of us has to decide that for ourselves. How we decide what is good for us is another discussion, but we nonetheless must make those choices and give our friends room to do the same.

So, my home-town-newspaper perspective makes me look forward to reading your status updates, looking at your pictures and anticipating your comments to me. If you don’t have the same perspective, then I guess you won’t read the daily paper, but I also hope that you won’t mind that I do.

Grateful

I originally started this blog to take the leap and put my thoughts out for public consumption. My friends and family graciously read my words and gave me enthusiastic feedback on my writings. Yeah, that fear was conquered! Now, I have been dragging my feet for months to write another article, giving myself all sorts of excuses about why I haven’t been writing. It appears that I am a bit of a perfectionist in this area, not wanting to write unless the house is quiet and the circumstances are just right, not willing to put words to paper until they are more coherent in my mind, afraid that my words will not be well-received…and the excuses continue. Well, my dear husband has been telling me that he misses my blog, so I am going to write and publish this without the usual week of editing, trying to get it perfect, because I must get over myself.

I have a wonderful pastor-friend who finishes his weekly lessons to his congregation, and then says, “So, what are you thinking?” Right now, I hear his deep, mellifluous voice in my ear asking that question of me. And I have been thinking how very overwhelmingly grateful I am. I got to be in New York two months ago and saw some beautiful, New England fall color, and for the past two weeks, I have been speechless and breathless and close-to-tears at our stunning fall colors. I take each shot of gold or brilliant vermillion as a gift from my Creator. The deep periwinkle sky in each crisp afternoon makes me lift my hands and say Glory!

I am thinking how extremely grateful I am to have a large, loving family! My husband is enthralled with me. My children appreciate the care and love I give to them. My extended family is warm and gracious. The home I have been given is truly wonderful. It just wraps us all up like a big set of arms and gives us a beautiful and restful place to love each other.

I’m grateful for the delectable food that we get to share as a family. One of the results for our family of “these economic times” is that I have invested more time into doing something that I love to do—cook. I enjoy gathering good ideas and incorporating new tastes and techniques into our food, always looking for the first bite to produce that “Mmmmm”. This year, my favorite flavor to add to soups or Pizza or burritos is the smoky-sweet taste of barbeque. When I have created a yummy and nutritious meal, I truly look forward to sitting down to eat it and I consider the whole experience a gift from God.

I am thankful for the gift of friends. In these busy days when everyone’s time is often scheduled to the hilt, I think of a friend as having an interest in my life, another way to say they care. Care and interest requires mental energy, notice, attention. So, I thank all my friends for their attention, their caring. To be noticed is a gift from God.

I am about to turn 50, and I am thankful for my health. I do creak a bit, ache a bit, move a bit slower, have a thicker waste…hah! I don’t sound thankful, but if that is the worst of it, I truly am thankful. Sometimes being thankful looks like an acknowledgement of the problems, and then the conclusion that it could be much worse. It’s like the ancient saying, “I wept because I had no shoes, until I saw a man who had no feet.”

Don’t think that I am writing about being thankful because it is the week of Thanksgiving. I really do think this way all throughout the year, but there is probably a bit of divine providence playing into the fact that I am finally writing about gratefulness this third week in November. Aaaahhh, a deep breath of thanksgiving escapes me as I conclude this long-overdue note. Thank you, Lord!

The Questions of Life

I was listening to some young women talk recently, and I was struck by how caught up they were with their tales of what he said and what she did. Ashamedly, my first thought was to judge how superficial those types of conversations are. I have lately been getting weary of the pop-culture’s preoccupation with what they are wearing and what we are going to do tonight and what we did last night and what she said to him. Then I had a revelation about how we think in the different stages of life.

From the time we’re born until we are about 22, we are discovering the answers to the question what. We basically want to know what is going on in this world where we live. As children, we must learn what the names of all the objects are in our universe. What does this word say? What is that continent? What is the answer to this math question? What do I want to be when I grow up?

After around age 22, we have a foundation of what, and then we move on to how. How am I going to accomplish my goals? How will I take all the whats and turn them into what is? So we set our hearts and our hands upon the task of accomplishing how the life we want to have will work.

For approximately 20 years, we invest a lot of blood, sweat and tears toiling through our hows; and then we hit around 42 and start asking why. Why did I make this choice? Why did I react that way? Why am I not where I thought I would be? Why are those children so consumed with what she said? Obviously, I am in this stage now. I do believe that this questioning process we go through helps us grow. We learn things about our world, how it works, and about ourselves.

I believe I will find that the prevailing question during the last stage from around 62-82 is when. When will those dreams I had come to pass? When will my children come around? When will my body give out?

I don’t know exactly why I had this revelation (I am definitely in the why stage), but it does help me to realize that these questions are a natural flow of life, and they are useful for us to ask. I must not chagrin the questions of another age. Also, if I feel stuck in any of these stages, unable to move to the next, I can ask myself the questions of the ages: What am I thinking about? How is this working for me? Why am I stalled in this stage when I could be asking new questions? When am I going to make a positive change to be in the place I want to be?

Let us never stop asking questions...of ourselves, of others, and of God. When we stop wondering, we start dying. But as long as we hunger for more, I believe we will be fed!

Life from the Inside Out

Writing helps me unravel the chaos in my head and form it into something discernable. This is a challenging venture, since my mind is like a congested amusement park, crowded with booths of memories and worries and hurts and disappointments and lectures and plans and ideas and dreams. Every booth I pass has a vendor waving and yelling at me to come into this space and spend my time. But when my thoughts get to escape through my fingers, then I can look at them, sort and order them, mold them and redeem them into a space worth dwelling.

Redeeming my thoughts is an issue of survival at this point in my life. All those jokes about women in mid-life were not just made up out of thin air! Every unhealthy thinking-pattern that has steered me thus far is worn out and needs replacing. Baggage that I have carried since childhood has gotten too heavy to lug around anymore. Mirrors through which I have seen myself are cracked. Facts that I “knew” are no longer true. (What do you mean…Pluto is no longer a planet?)

Now I am on a quest, a cleaning-binge of sorts, to dismantle every false notion that I have held, and replace them with authentic, compassionate and life-giving realities. I am hunting down any persona that has built up residence in my soul because someone else planted her there. Me and God are the only ones allowed to define who I am. I am also going after the garbage that I’ve consumed that devalues human beings for any reason, or esteems one person above another. We are ALL beloved screw-ups, so let’s just give everyone some grace!

I think anyone who's walked this earth for a few years has sad stories to tell. It's called the human condition, fallen man (and woman), sinful nature--we've all hurt and been hurt. When I consider that every person is carrying around private pain while trying to make the best out of life, I do wonder why we are so hard on each other. This is a compassionate, life-giving reality that I will remember…we all share the human condition. Let us not think that we have been hurt worse, or we have hurt others less than someone else. This perspective helps me view mankind charitably.

I don’t know why all this pain and suffering has to exist; there is obviously something I have not understood about God. But as a beloved screw-up in this race of humans, I cannot endure the thought of my hurt, both inflicted and received, without believing in the forgiving grace of God. I cannot bear the moments in-between the frenetic pace of life without the knowledge of his presence, which he promises will always be there. I could not go through the mundane tasks of daily life without the hope of an eternal dimension giving meaning to monotony.

When I was young, I didn’t spend as much time thinking about life, but rather reacting to the feeling of the moment. Now I realize the great value in being connected to the divine, living life from the inside out.

Peace in the Light

As I go through the moments of each day, I sometimes think that I am just one step away from insanity. In idle seconds in the midst of little tasks, the sadness or confusion of life feels like a wave that could wash over me and sweep me away. Painful memories flash across my mind of difficult moments I have endured, and I must force myself to turn my gaze to a beautiful memory instead. Fears and uncertainties of tomorrow tangle my thoughts into endless circles, and I quell the terror with assurances that things always end up working out for my best—only because God makes it so.

I find myself longing for the day when all will be at peace and these dark thoughts will no longer crouch in the corners of my mind, waiting to overtake me. I have harbored the notion that at some mysterious point later in life, all conflicts become resolved and complete rest is possible...on this side of heaven.

Apparently, this absolute peace is not a point in time, but a state of being. Christ did say that He came to give us “peace that passes all understanding” and that “the world could not take it away”. Somehow, Lord, somehow we can be on the beach, IN the waves, and the sun (Son) can be so bright, that we do not even notice the waves. Oh God, that is my heart’s cry, that I could live my life so completely aware of your Son shining His love upon me, that I would have NO awareness of the dangers in the wind and the waves. So, I sing this song:

Lord, the light of Your love is shining

In the midst of the darkness shining

Jesus, light of the world, shine upon us

Set us free by the truth You now bring us

Shine on me, shine on me

Shine, Jesus, shine

Respect the Knife

I recently got a new set of knives. They are really sharp, top quality, long-lasting knives designed by a panel of experts. I allowed myself the indulgence of getting these expensive knives because I chop a lot of vegetables and I had been using a sad, mismatched group of hand-me-down knives that all had to be operated like cleavers…you know, pick your arm up and drop it hard.

On the evening we returned home from our vacation, I couldn’t wait to prepare sumptuous enchiladas with my new knives (which would certainly taste better having been cut with excellent tools)! I had music playing from my YouTube playlist and a Corona on the counter to set the mood. The iron skillet was sizzling with oil and the vegetables were on the counter waiting to be chopped. As I was fiercely cutting the onion, the hot oil was giving me a sense of urgency to get the veggies in the pan. I looked away from the cutting board toward the next vegetable to be chopped, and the sharp knife caught the inside of my pinky-finger rather than the onion.

I am sorry to say that I had done a similar thing another time and Tim had to take me to the emergency room, so this time I didn’t want to cry out for help because I was afraid he would confiscate my new knives if he thought they were going to harm me. I bandaged up my finger and finished the meal prep one-handed. When we all sat down for dinner, I light-heartedly explained my gauze-wrapped pinky-finger with a driving analogy: using my old knives was like driving a Ford, and my new knives were like driving a Ferrari…when you step on the gas, they really get up and go!

I must admit that the cut REALLY hurt. I must have cut into a nerve and I did bleed a lot. I had a doctor look at it the next day and tell me I didn’t need stitches, but I have had a bandage on it for two whole weeks. It is certainly healing, but it still hurts.

A few days after this incident, I was pondering the possible spiritual correlation that could be made with this physical experience, and recalled that the Bible is referred to as “sharper than a two-edged sword, able to cut between bone and marrow, judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart”. However, it is only helpful when handled with the proper respect. I have used the Bible to try and judge what is right, but without the focus and care required for such a powerful tool, I am sorry to say that I have inflicted damage to myself and others. Only the Master knows which knife to use for which task, and how much pressure to apply, and how small to chop the pieces. When I take care to tune in to the voice of God within me, I can fully utilize the power and grace and strength of the tool of the Word to nourish my spirit like I nourish my body with delicious food.

So, the knife has taught me a physical lesson and a spiritual lesson, but today I also saw an emotional lesson. Respect the knife applies to relationships, as well. When we disregard how powerfully our words or actions affect each other, we carelessly make cuts in each other’s souls. Fortunately, wounds can heal when given attention and care, but they do sometimes leave a scar. I know I will never be able to stop all harm, all pain or all mistakes, but I am hopeful that as I become more aware of myself, my God and those around me, each day I will experience more grace, more peace, more wisdom, more love, and I will give and receive fewer cuts. My knife should only produce delicious nourishment!

Unearthed Treasures

I must be in the phase of life where one takes inventory of the journey thus far. I have a treasure chest bursting with experiences that I could barely see while they were happening, and now is the time when I get to draw them out for inspection and reflection. This process has led me into my archive of documents, re-reading things I have written. I would like to share one with you today. The following is an exercise in specification (learning to add detail to a description so that the reader can actually imagine themselves in the experience).

A vague, general description:

The room was a mess. There was clutter everywhere. You couldn’t even see the floor.

Specification added:

“Upon entering the room, you find that your steps are cushioned by the discarded clothes rendering the carpet invisible. You see the knit top with the embroidered butterflies and the hand-made skirt adorned with swirling nautilus-shaped blues which their owner rejected for a 10-year-old hand-me-down dress. Encircling the sea of clothes are the desks and dressers which support the treasures of childhood: Cinderella pictures colored with a surrounding array of markers, porcelain-faced Mary and her friends, a baseball card collection without Mickey Mantle and the keychain gift from Mom & Dad’s last trip. Friends and family alike enter this room with disgust or pity, but its inhabitants revel in the feeling of being surrounded by their favorite things.”2003

A vague, general description:

It was a beautiful, spring day. The flowers were blooming and the birds were singing.

Specification added:

“It was three weeks into April and the birds were rejoicing that winter was but a memory. The forsythia had welcomed us with their yellow announcement that the pear trees were soon to be waking up from their frigid slumber. As the ornamental pears burst forth covered with white blooms reminiscent of a snowfall, we were exultant that the balmy temperatures confirmed the whiteness to be flowers and not ice crystals! As we strolled outside in short sleeves, our noses inhaled the aroma of wisteria draping off the high places the vine occupied. The vibrant reminders surrounded us with the message that the dormancy of winter has past and the new life of spring is come!” 2003

Not only is the content from these writings a treasure to discover, but the lesson behind the exercise is valuable and pertinent to me today. The people around me access my inner world as I describe it. If I want to hide my true self, if I think others don’t care or if I am not in tune with my own thoughts, I will be vague in my narratives and walk away feeling hungry for intimacy while others only get to know the outside me. But if I want to open my soul with specific details about the environment in there, I can enrich my relationships with the intimacy I crave.

A vague, general description:

I missed you while you were gone. I had a hard time.

Specification added:

“When you are near me, you fill up all my senses. My whole being is poised to orient itself on your location and your disposition. My greatest joy is to be near you and to see you happy, content, satisfied, at peace. When you are in a place on this planet other than near me, a vacuum is created in my soul. My sight, my touch, my smell and my inner-most being aches with your absence. A cell phone call or email does occupy a fraction of my senses, but the majority of my consciousness longs for all of you to return to all of me.

I live and breathe each moment with a soul wide-open to the stimulus around me, sending out sonar looking for resonance to bounce back to me. Only your soul vibrates with mine and makes me feel at rest. When you are absent, my frequencies warp out-of-phase and my whole being is tilted off-balance.”2010

Does my specification make it easier to empathize with me? Do you feel that you know me better? Of course, the risk in this level of vulnerability is rejection, judgment or exploitation (to name a few), but the treasure of understanding and intimacy is worth the risk!

Questions of a Woman

My mind must have been so crammed with the answers about how life works that have since been de-bunked, that all that’s left is a bunch of questions. Burning in my mind right now is: How does the feminine soul get nurtured? Where on earth does one take their suffering to receive mercy? How can I experience the reality of the feminine side of God…His tenderness…His compassion…His generosity…His romance…on this side of Heaven?

When a child falls off his bike and badly scrapes his knees, he certainly needs his daddy to brush him off and tell him it’ll be okay, and that he should keep his eyes on the road better next time, but he also needs his mama to hold him while he cries, and bandage his wounds.

I must have seen too many romance movies or read too many romance novels, because I had developed the notion that Prince Charming should be both strong and brave, but also gentle and sensitive (remember Kate and Leopold). This has been one of the notions about life that has been dismantled in my mind. It is way too much to put on one person to cover both ends of the masculine/feminine spectrum. However, shattering this notion begs the question: If a woman’s Prince Charming is brave and strong, where does she go for gentle and sensitive? If Prince Charming is the more tender type, where does she go for a warrior?

Since I started asking about tenderness, I obviously have the brave and strong Prince, the warrior. He has protected me and rescued me from the fire-breathing-dragons, but he is at a loss with my “moods”. When I get crazy and just need a hug, what does a warrior do with that? Right now, I am of the opinion that I need to stay connected with the Sisters! If I need compassion, I will run to a woman…but not just any woman, she must be a woman of mercy, of kindness, of wisdom, of love. We women have got to give each other the emotional space to be honest, real and open with our thoughts and feelings. We cannot wear religious masks if we are going to truly support and nurture one another. We cannot be jealous or competitive if we want to experience the full benefit of feminine friendship.

In addition to room in our hearts, we must make space in our lives, our schedules, our time, and our days. The feminine soul loves to nurture…as least this feminine soul does. I receive great joy from taking care of people. One of my favorite sayings is “in the refreshing of others, I myself am refreshed”. However, that can become a martyr complex if I’m not watchful. My life can be so totally consumed with nurturing others that I do not carve out time to nurture myself. A powerful source of feminine energy for this much-needed nurturing is other women whose hearts are yearning for the same thing.

There are a lot of voices telling us that our Prince Charming is/should be our everything (those songs are honestly the ones that make me swoon the most), but let’s give the guys a break—there is no way they can fill all our needs, just like there is no way we can be everything for them. (I don’t know about you, but I would much rather my Prince go to the loud/smelly race track with another guy, and let me make him the candle-lit dinner.) In musing over this question, the answer has apparently presented itself: Women! Let’s always carve space for one another—it’s a matter of health and sanity, even survival!

Boxes

When my children started getting older and were no longer content to live in the G-rated world of Sesame Street, and then they even grew bored with PG Disney and moved on to PG13, I was afraid they would turn into disrespectful, foul-mouthed people like the ones in the movies. I survived many years in the PG13 zone, trying my best to protect my kids from becoming contaminated by bad influences. As they have grown into responsible adults who are free to embrace all that life has to offer, I have seen how small the box of my world was.

I had lived with the notion that in order to be safe, one had to stay away from danger. I should avoid any bad input from entering my mind so that I did not become polluted by garbage or led astray from what is right. I thought that I should spend time with people who believed as I did so that my own beliefs did not crumble. I should only listen to experts who shared my world-view lest I adopt false notions. I thought that I must preserve the boundaries of my life at all costs, or I might “go over to the dark side”.

I was in conversation with a person today who sounded a lot like me 15 years ago, and it was eye-opening to hear myself in her from my liberated perspective. As she described what the world inside her box looked like, a few things became apparent to me.

Life in a box contains a lot of fear; it’s what keeps people staying inside. It is the very fiber of the box itself. The box in which she lives only allows certain experts to deliver the truth as they see it, and this doctrine is fairly apocalyptic in its outlook. And the people allowed to speak into their boxes promote the fear that if you do not stay in your box, the world outside will chew you up and spit you out. People also stay in boxes because they’re afraid that they may wander away from God and He will not want to come and find them if they leave their confines and explore beyond their boundaries.

With all this fear, people who live in boxes for some reason truly think that everyone should live in there with them. They may pay lip-service to your right to choose your own way, but deep in their hearts, they are convinced that their box is the only place to live. Everything has a very tight order in that box. The contents are categorized and quantified. The outcome is prescribed and certain. Of course, we should all want to live in such a managed environment, right?

In that box, there is no breathing room. The atmosphere is dark and stuffy. But germs grow in dim, poor-ventilated areas. When all you know is what you’re told to believe, there is no space for original thought, for open dialog or for asking questions. If the only way you know God or the world around you is through another person’s perspective, then the germs of inconsistency, distortion, legalism or hypocrisy grow in your box.

When I realized my box was suffocating me, I crawled out of it and slowly became adjusted to the fresh air and sunlight of true freedom. I discovered that God is everywhere! I also discovered outside of my little box that precious people are truly suffering, living very hard lives, dealing with lots of anger over their hardships, and desperately trying to be happy in R-rated situations.

Maybe it is a cold, hard world, but I have found compassion for all of us struggling to navigate the complexities of life with as much grace as we can find. I have even heard God speak to me through R-rated movies. I don’t have as many answers as I did when I lived in a box, but I ask a lot more questions. However, I do have more love for people than ever before.

Love Never Fails

Love never fails, but any other motivation eventually will. When I lift back the veil of any good deed and see what the driving force is, then it makes sense why some acts of kindness produce beautiful results and other seemingly good deeds end up causing someone pain.

Looking back over my life, I see the story of a person who did what I thought was right in my own eyes at the time, thinking myself to be a good and loving soul who would never intentionally hurt anyone. But when I think of the many ways that I hurt myself (and subsequently the people who cared about me), I realize that I had a jumble of motivators other than love harbored in my soul which did fail me.

These love-imposters have to pretend to be good, so that we will follow them, but they are always born in dark places conceived in pain. My parents created a family ostensibly out of love, but the underlying reason they came together was to get away from their parents’ homes…pain. I was the happy daughter of a mother who loved her children, my innocent joy the evidence of a mother’s unfailing love. But the pain-motivator reared its ugly head in my father and steered him down a destructive path. He probably thought he was doing the right thing at the time by following the “love” in his heart for another woman, but he fooled himself.

This crushing blow to my child’s heart caused a flood of confusing emotions to rush into my soul, mixing the love with pain and insecurity and mistrust. These were like cancer cells attaching themselves to my good cells, making it hard to even tell them apart. The story after this point is of a good student and church youth leader who lived a responsible life hoping that the healthy cells would outgrow the cancer cells and they would die. But cancer is insidious, and it ran an underground life that masqueraded as love, but was truly self-destructive.

To snuff out the disease in my heart, I thought I was creating love as I joined myself to guy after guy who was just as confused about love as I was. The cancer only grew stronger. More hurt, more pain playing like it was love, failing me.

Deep in the core of my being, God’s love was there. The only true love. Perfect love. Complete love. Healing love. Throughout the seasons of my story, I sensed the warmth and light of His love at different intensities.

After many dark years when true love was hiding behind the clouds of independence, self-sufficiency, fun, recognition and tolerance, God’s love came to me through a man. I knew I felt the warmth of his love connecting with God’s love in me, but it didn’t make much sense. It was irrational, unexpected, unsolicited. After living under the delusion that love had to be earned or stolen, experiencing the dawning of real love was foreign and amazing!

Just as deep calls to deep, the true love in each of us bound us together “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do us part”! Of course, we all have the waters of our souls carrying trash within the pools of love. My trash of insecurity clouded over the light of true love, and I quickly got back to trying to earn love—never quite measuring up, since only love never fails. Of course, since he’s a human being, his trash showed up as well, and we became two people building a home on true love, but with weeds growing as well.

We had many imposters posing as love: sacrificial service, recognition, duty, judgments, self-righteousness, ambition. But these motivators all prove themselves to be the weeds that they are when they grow into resentment, disillusionment, hurt, disappointment and burnout.

I have gotten too old and tired to carry around anymore trash. For the rest of my life, I want only love. I am throwing out all the trash that clouds up love. Only love never fails. May every deed, every word, every thought be born of love. That is true LIFE!

An Introduction

Ever since I saw the movie Julie & Julia, I’ve thought I would like to start a blog, but I couldn’t just write a blog for the sake of doing it—I had to have something to say. Lately, I have found that I had things to say, so I started writing them down each day. After gathering a few of these, I realized I had the starting content for a blog. Things never seem to happen in the order or timing I think they should, but I have found it to be true that “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he”…so here I am with the start of a blog.

I have been a wife for 27 years to the father of our five children. We have also added a son-in-law this year, and another son-in-law-to-be is in the group. I have taught school a little, worked a bunch in retail selling pretty girlie things and baby stuff and done a lot of singing, but mostly I have cared for our family and our home. I love nature and the One who created it. I have been a voracious reader since I was 14, and over the years, there have been many books that I thought that I would write.

I have concluded that the journey of life is rich, and worthy of consideration, of thought, of pondering, of prayer. These musings I write are snapshots of where I am at this point in my life. I don’t think I have life all figured out for me, and I certainly don’t think you have to agree with me. So, if anything I write helps you at all, or resonates with your perspective, then Yahoo! But if you read something you don’t like or cannot relate to, then just roll over it and leave it with me. I will probably change my mind in another ten years, or you may as well.

I have realized that I can only live my life according to the revelation that I have at any one moment. I can’t go back and live yesterday with what I know now. I can’t go forward and say that I will do things a certain way because of how I think today. And I certainly can’t think that I know what you should do because I have life figured out. My loving, merciful, creative and personal God relates to me intimately and uniquely, as He does with each one with whom He is in relationship. It’s quite like a marriage.

Our marriage is dynamic (continuously changing, vigorous, intense) and intimate (we share life on the deepest level), so as “I” write, you are truly hearing my thoughts intricately entwined with those of my heavenly and earthly husbands. I talk over and prayer over everything you will read, so all my postulations are born from a life woven with the threads of my Tim and my Jesus. Now you know that when you see the pronoun “I”, you should insert “we”.

Now you have a glimpse of where I am coming from (I do hate to end a sentence with a dangling participle, but sometimes it makes more sense than “from whence I come”). I am only writing about my experiences and observations and thoughts, not making any statements of doctrine or judgment for you. And all that I am is infused with the life of my Lovers, Tim and Jesus. If you care to continue reading with that understanding, then I look forward to a lovely blog (albeit an odd word) relationship with you.