Reality
You know, sometimes you don't see sunshine on a cloudy day, even if the Temptations are singing about it. Sometimes, even when you are really looking for it, and glimpse the tiniest ray beginning to emerge, another big, black cloud snuffs it out. Yesterday was such a day for me. This was my Facebook post from when I got home from work: Crummy days serve to make the good days stand out, right? Wonderful! I thought so. After I posted it, and outside of the comments, I got 3 private messages and a text, all concerned that something was really wrong. I realized that what people see, especially in cyberspace, is a pretty sunshiny, glass-half-full kind of girl, who rarely mentions...
Candy Bar of Joy
Over the last few years, we've had a difficult relationship within my husband's business. Certainly, his business is full of challenges, which he always meets, head-on, and takes them all in stride. After all, it's all in a day's work. However, this was different. No matter what he did, this person found fault, using personal attacks. It caused so many challenges that it began to suck the joy out of a decades-old career that my man's always loved. This caused stress to trickle down to me, too, as I watched that joy ebb away, and be replaced by a determined focus on fighting that bone of contention. Bones of contention. According to a quick internet search, that phrase dates back to...
Living Mystery
Getting ready to fly home from our extraordinary weekend in Des Moines, I grabbed my phone to make myself a quick reminder note before I turned it off. When I opened the app, I saw something in my list of notes that I didn't recognize. Typically, I put quotes and things together, on one page, but this turned out to be a quote on a page by itself. I didn't remember reading it, much less writing it down, and since I discovered it yesterday, my mind has been turning it over and over. What is the essence of Christian existence? It is a living mystery...to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist. ~Madeleine L'Engle Wow. Even reading now, as I type it...
Feel the Love
I stood, visually scanning the room and taking in all the faces. People were pouring in, anxious to find the birthday boy, our dear friend, Doug. I recognized family faces in the crowd, and spotted a precious teacher my kids had when they were in school with Doug and Lynne's girls. There were representatives from Doug's work life, those from the dance studio where his girls (and one of mine) logged in a lot of hours. I knew there were people there from their work in the community, and just from being a part of that community for so many years. Old friends, like us, and even further back, rounded out the crowd, every single one of us thrilled to be there. Doug hates to be the center...
Walking a Run
In just a little while, I will be putting on an official "Color Run" t-shirt, pulling my hair back in a ponytail with a matching headband, and attaching a number to my shirt. I will be participating in my first 5K. And I will be walking. Y'all, I am NOT athletic. I was a drill team girl in high school, so I'm not completely inept (at least I wasn't back then!), but I've never been a sports player or a runner. If you witnessed the running you'd say, "God bless her, she wasn't kidding." So, I'm really playing this whole 5K thing up because who knows when it will happen again? We are in Iowa for about 5 minutes, to celebrate our good friend's 60th birthday. (DISCLAIMER: if you live in...