It's all good

If we parrot truth does it become real?

Don't worry...God's in control...of what?

in all things God works for the good of all those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose...What's good? Whose called? What purpose?

I have been thinking lately that when we parrot we sound a lot like a flock of irritating sea gulls. I have been seeing sea gulls flock over the newly sprayed hay fields when we are out running Mocha. We don't have screeching parrots here but we do have disgusting sea gulls.

Truth is powerful but not coming from every mouth or beak.

Things have been a bit off lately...but not from the usual sources.

Scott has been layed off for a month now and as finances become a bit tight...I'm good. He is an amazing layed off person, he cooks, cleans, does laundry, makes lunches, goes grocery shopping . I am on vacation while I work.
I am an ESL teacher at LC. I have no training or expertise in this area and next year I will be doing more with the international students. But...I'm good. It isn't what I'd like or even what I am qualified to teach but somehow this new direction will work.
I don't have a community of friends or even family...It's OK. I have no idea what dysfunction my family works in but we don't talk, communicate or seem to matter to each other. As the years go by with promises made and un-kept to keep in touch I wonder what fundamental aspect of family we have lost. There is a big family reunion this summer and though I am looking forward to being there...there is also an unsettled angst. This is discouraging but it is not new.

What is new ... a sense of unraveling. As if what I have always known to be true somehow does not make sense anymore with what I know to be real. My past has had a profound impact on my present and if I don't take the time to figure out when the unraveling began, how will I contain the fray? Maybe it is reaching the middle years when both beginning and end are in perspective. What have I done that matters,what am I doing that matters, and what will I do that matters.
I think this is what is the core of all our questions...Do I matter?

I don't want parroted truth, I want to see it, I want to know it.

...I am loved though, and I love...maybe that is all that matters.

Spring

We have had spring break here in little ole dutch town. We had enough warm weather to encourage the tulips to open up their hearts and I got my hands dirty cleaning up the flower beds. Enough sun to remind this corner of the world that it is time to change seasons and let the flowers out. The darkness of the winter, the unending rain goes quietly into the night and we are reborn in spring.

It isn't hard to wax on and on about spring because the hope is so needed after the gloom of winter. For me ,particularly, who wants to curl up tight in a fetal position when it gets cold, the spring gives me permission to change.

In the tropics there is no season except the dry and wet season. There are no remarkable events to usher one season onto the next and months are only distinguished by holidays. Don't get me wrong... I would live in warm every day if I could but there is something life giving about the change of season.

Spring helps me change, gives me perspective, lets me anticipate, makes me more aware, slows me down, heightens my senses, makes me restless, motivates me to clean house and soul, and wakes me up from my winter slumber.

It is also the season that begins with Easter...how amazingly appropriate. There is nothing as stark as winter or as fresh as Spring. There is nothing more stark as death or as fresh as new birth...both are Easter.

It is time to be reborn this Spring; let the olds things pass away and make a way for the new.

Driving a Hummer

If you could indulge me, I will not be traveling back to my journey of grief just yet. Maybe when all is said and done some things just don't need to be re-lived and re-felt. This does not mean I will never, I just don't feel like it now....

When Scott came back from his trip to help take care of his Dad our little Toyota Echo had a transformation. When I looked outside the window instead of a little bitty car was this HUGE H3 sitting in our driveway. For those of you who are car-illiterate (like me) it is the third in the Hummer line , the smallest version of the vehicles most derided for eating too much fuel, taking up too much room and single handily destroying the planet. It is the most ostentatious car out there in all its brash "I am American and can drive whatever I like" kind of way. It is so cool!
Scott is not working this week and maybe next...so instead of driving my car, I drove the beast. Next to our little Echo...OK, it is a tank. It is so cool!
This made me think about assumption we make about people...people we do not know except for the cars they drive, houses they live in and clothes they wear. Sometimes though all we have to work with is the cars they drive. What would you assume if you saw me drive this car down the road and knew nothing else about me?
I know what I would think...but how far from the truth could we be? This car belongs to my father-in-law who is a 79 years old Marine. Not too long ago as he battles cancer he thought to himself...I want to drive a hummer. If this is the last car I own...why not! He is recuperating from surgery where half his face was taken off to get at a fast growing tumor. He won't be driving for awhile so we are borrowing it for a week or so.
What driving a hummer has taught me this past week...we make unfair assumptions all the time about people, snarky remarks about what people own, drive and wear. I wonder why we do unless we assume to be better than.
Maybe we should let it go and let people be...I know I need too.
Driving a hummer..humbled me.