Waiting on the Light

I came to a fork in the road. Two remarkably different roads diverged from the fork.  Everything I wanted was down the rough road. Everything I didn’t want was down the easy/smooth road. Every day for decades I chose the easy road. I acquired a life I didn’t recognize, filled with other people’s goals and dreams. And then one day I thought about that fork, and I started to wonder if I could go back and choose the other path. I wondered what my life would be like if I took the hard road. It started in the very edges of my thoughts and then over time it got more and more insistent until no thought, but it, could be held. Could I go back and try the hard road? Would I lose everything I acquired? Would I even care if I lost it? The risk seemed daunting. So I edged back. I didn’t run, I didn’t dive and claw my way back... I edged, looking over my shoulder with every inch. And things started to fall away. Slowly, silently, almost imperceptibly things began to fade as I inched back....

I forgot this existed until today. I'm 35 now. And life has been interesting in the last 10 years. I won't go into the history of things today because I think I'll reminisce and write blogs about specific things as they come up. Maybe. We'll see. I don't have a great track record with transparency. But I have a couple of life changes coming up this year and I'm hoping for some place to write about them for posterity. Josh is in Canada right now for a job interview. I've been wrong often before, but I'd be surprised if he doesn't end up there. Which will be crazy. I had an interview/interrogation last week with a job in Corpus, so we'll be super far away from each other if both scenarios work out. I have another job waiting for me if it doesn't. Praying about it. This is a boring first blog. No salacious reveals or funny anecdotes. Just a starter. The vivid descriptions and tawdry deets will come with time.

I've recently discovered something major. Okay... let me preface this by saying that it's not major, and it's actually really basic, but everyone knows you need a first sentence that's an attention grabber. I've known what I'm about to tell you, on a service level, since I was the age that I grasped such hard concepts as: It's not ever appropriate to do #2 in your pants... and if you accidentally do #1, and you're not already in a pool, find said pool and quickly jump into it so nobody will notice. So, I'm saying that I've known this for at least 3 or 4 years, so don't think that I'm just now thinking of it. But here it is: If I don't do my life the way I want to, or be who I should be, then no one's going to care... no one's going to show up and make me. I used to think my mom would someday magically understand me, and then say that thing that I needed to hear that would make me do the things I needed to do, to be the person ...

Matt Chandler (click on his name to see video)

I love this movie. I watched it again last night and was laughing like it was my birthday (there's always excessive laughing on my birthday) and singing loudly and badly (I recorded myself so I can verify that it was truly terrible) at the top of my lungs to all the songs. When I was in practicum in seminary they did this thing where we would start each new class with a little morsel of humorous or interesting information about ourselves. Our leaders would come up with a question like, what's your favorite song, movie, type of icecream and we'd all shout out our answers...some a little too enthusiastically if you ask me, Butter Pecan is not a flavor to be so proud of. I can't remember the guys name (even though he was too attractive for his own good) so I'll call him Fergus. So one day Fergus asked us all what our favorite movie was and everyone was shouting out their answers and I was relieved because I knew the answer to this one (I was a little shaky with my resp...

Not all the time... like not when they smell bad, or are annoying, or unattractive, or dull, or dumb, or fat, or too skinny, or too pretty, or their skin is bad, or when they don't do what I think they should, or when they laugh too hard, or don't laugh enough, or they dress badly, or dress too trendy, or when they like stupid music, or they take their music tastes too seriously, or when they make dumb jokes, or when they walk too slow, or when they are depressed for too long, or when their problems seem petty and they think they're really important, or when they are needy, desperate, fragile, or stubborn, or when they call when I'm doing something 'important' or when they make fun of me, or when they think I'm lame, or when they don't answer when I call, or when I need them and they aren't available, or when they're mean to me. ...or when they aren't exactly like I think they should be. Is there anyone left? Maybe I don't love people.