Instant Heirloom
I pulled a magazine out of my mailbox yesterday (yes, I still get some the old-fashioned way), and it boasted of an entire article featuring items that would immediately give your home that lived-in, collected-over-the-years, look. Apparently, to achieve this style, all you had to do was buy some of these new items-turned-instant heirlooms. Instant heirlooms. Those two words together sound like an oxymoron to me. One speaks of immediacy, while the other speaks of an expanse of time and sacrifice and care. But, together? Can there be anything instant about an heirloom? My family is big on heirlooms. In fact, my dad just brought over an old croquet set that had been in my great...
Power of the People
You might be thinking that the title of this post is wrong. After all, it's more often that you hear "Power TO the People," isn't it? But it's not wrong. It's the truth that's washing over me as I try to process all that the last couple of weeks on the Great Girlfriend Adventure has meant to me. It was over-the-top fun, which you knew it would be. Mary and I have been compared to the likes of Lucy and Ethel, and Thelma and Louise, after all. There were dead batteries and tickets from unimpressed state troopers. There was off-roading in the Jetta on an unpaved portion of Old Route 66, Mexican food OVER AND OVER AND OVER, and sleeping in a tipi, caboose, and classic motor court. There...
Vast
Sometimes there are issues that crop up in my life that seem so huge. They are all I can see, and no matter where I look, they seem to be there, looming over me, like a seemingly infinite storm-filled sky. From horizon to horizon they fill my world, and although I'm ashamed to admit it, in times like these, the problems and I become my primary focus. They seem to make everything and everyone else fall to the bottom of the ladder of priority. They seem, in a word: vast. Before I left on this road trip, I had been schlepping along in such a gloomy place. It had enveloped me for some time, and had taken over my thought life and effected my spiritual life. It had made itself the axis on...
Underneath the Layers
We spent an incredibly fun time at Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, enjoying the always-delightful sensation of meeting online friends, face-to-face, for the first time. We went with the intent of painting scripture references on the cars, and that's exactly what we did! After we had them all painted, and took a zillion pictures, one of our friends' daughters who had joined us to paint, handed me what looked like a colorful stone. I quickly realized I was wrong, when she told me that it was layers of paint from one of the cars. I've been thinking and thinking about it, since, those years upon decades of different layers of color, all representing whatever truth the painter decided to share....
Scenic Detour
I'm tucked in with my laptop, comfy in my bed at our hotel in Amarillo. It's been a day of driving through high winds, trying to stay clear of the "biggest in history" storms that threatened Oklahoma, as we headed west out of that state. It's also been a day that has run the gamut between meeting some fabulous women on the road, and meeting a state trooper on the road, who, I'm sure, is also a fabulous woman, but seemed a lot less excited about our Great Girlfriend Adventure than anyone else we've met thus far. When we were driving down the mountain from the beautiful camp grounds that hosted our first stop, I saw a sign that read "Scenic Detour." It surprised me, not because it wasn't...