Looking For The Long Ride

My old friend Robert stopped by yesterday. He has just finished writing a book and wanted me to have a copy of the rough draft. I haven’t begun to read it yet as I will have to print it out, but I am looking forward to the opportunity.

Robert has just recently started reading my blog wanderings and made an interesting comment during his visit. Having read some of my musings about my life in Ashe County in the early 80’s, his comment was that it seemed I had “Idealized” that time. Leave it to a good friend to let you know what is really happening.

However, his observation left room for the fact that this might be a poetic vehicle that enables me to begin the life/exploration process and therefore I might not be stuck somewhere I don’t really want to be.

Let’s get that one out of the way: life is so much better today than my memory of those simple times in the wilderness of Ashe County, North Carolina. Yet at the same time, they were very special times—a period of young love, becoming a Christian, Sandi having babies and all the other adventures associated with that life process.

I think my friends’ point is this: don’t hold up the past—which we tend to see with rose colored glasses—and fail to see what is happening around us today.

Our kids are mostly grown up—I am blogging and learning to do internet stuff—he’s writing a book.

Sandi and I are beginning to feel ourselves again—having left a church that we attended for 22 years. I take that back— we are beginning to feel that our lives really do mean something in the overall sceme of things.

Sandi and I had dinner with some other friends that we haven’t socialized with (house to house) for about ten years. They were a couple that we were especially close to. When they left the churh we had attended for years together, something happened to our relationship which none of us liked but seemingly were powerless to overcome at that time.

That’s another story and one that is being worked out in the heavenly realms that we inhabit. Suffice it to say, our dinner was wonderful—it was almost as if we hadn’t missed a beat—although ten years had passed in the meantime.

Yes…we talked about the past—just a little bit—that part is almost unavoidable. But more so we talked about today and tomorrow. Parts of our journey have been similar and could have been written by any of us. Other parts are unique and only similar in the fact that we have had kids and jobs and up and downs.

And I guess that is where I am going with today’s journal—trying to get to the point where I once again find the poetry in what is happening around me and what hasn’t even taken place yet. That we have a future—no matter how long—is a reality that needs to be embraced. We cannnot live on yesterday’s manna—on yesterday’s revelation—but must endevour to gather fresh bread from God’s breadbasket.

As Sandi and I left the town where my mom lives—which we visited a week ago—we stopped at an Italian bakery that was about 40 years old. It was Sunday and they opened for business at 9:30 am. There was one guy ahead of us and he knew what he wanted and was instructing the guy behind the counter how to package it and so forth. Once he was taken care of—it was our turn. While we ordered, about ten different people entered the bakery to buy whatever it was they bought. These were people who visited this place every week—it was a part of their routine.

We bought some danish and a big loaf of bread and went our way—headed back to Boone, North Carolina. We arrived home at about 6 or 7 that evening and one of the first things I did was open the loaf of bread and get out the electric knife and cut us some pieces to eat. We warmed up the butter and spread some over the doughy surface and ate. At that first bite I wished I had bought 2 or 3 loaves. It was that good.

There is a bakery out there for each of us if we take the time to look—keeping our eyes and ears open to the possibilities that arrive with each new day.

Here’s to good eating. Enjoy your ride!

One of the aspects of living in the mountains of North Carolina that you learn to live with is the wind. We are at an elevation of about 3,000 feet above sea level here and when the wind blows, as it seems to after every shift in the wheather, it can really chill the air around you.

My biker friends will tell you that if you can’t deal with a little wind (and sometimes a lot) you’ll never make it as a biker in the mountains.

It is also very hard to keep your house warm when the wind is really kicking it up outside. Though I can’t feel a breeze in our house, the temperature always drops when the wind blows for hours on end. It also seems like every leaf in our county finds its way to my back door and piles itself upon all the other leaves that the wind deposits there. It is quite a chore to even close the door without getting a pile of them into the basement.

Speaking of real wind is like speaking of that imaginary wind that blows us into cleaning up our office spaces from time to time. I don’t know what comes over me, but ocassionally I decide that I can’t really get any work done until the space around me is tidied up. And when I clean out my office drawers I always run into something interesting.

The other day I found several father’s day cards that I must have stashed away lo those many years ago when I was, dare I say, cleaning up my office. I found pictures of my kids at young ages and pictures that they had made me to hang on my walls when I had space on my walls to hand stuff. That’s been years ago.

In one of the drawers I emptied the other day I found a little piece of paper obviously cut from a magazine of some kind. On it was written this statement: “To be succcessful, the scenes from your imagination must be convincing enough for a viewer to willingly suspend his disbelief.”

My job background for the past several years has been catalog production, marketing and ad design. So it figures I cut this out of some business type publication and thought it valuable enough to not throw away. It was nicely trimed and had holes in the corners as if I had at one point pinned it to a bulletin board of some kind.

What I first read into it as I read it again after finding it in one of my drawers was that a good writer must be able to take his reader into his imagination and not get him or her lost in the process. A writer must create clear paths from one place to the next in order that the reader can follow the thought process.

I remember as a kid reading the tales of Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle was such a good writer that I could almost picture myself walking beside him (Holmes) as he traveled about London solvling mysteries. No detail was to small for Doyle to write about what Holmes observed. I guess that was the whole point—Holmes saw many different levels of reality during a single glance at glass that had been broken during a robbery or murder or whatever case he was asked to solve.

When I got older I even remember walking into a pipe shop and asking the man behind the counter to sell me some of the tobcacco that Sherlock Holmes must have smoked. It was a very strong blend with lots of dark tobacco that burned with a very pungent smell. He was amused at my request but took care of me as he would any other customer with an unusual request—those certainly were the days.

Back to the piece of paper I found in my desk drawer. I am almost certain it came from a marketing magazine—and centered around writing copy for products on sale in a catalog or other mailing piece. To this end, we can all see where advertising has taken us.

Advertising has evolved to the point where we now have the Geico ad with the cavemen who get offended at the statement that something is so easy that “…even a caveman could do it.”

It certainly got my attention and I guess that is the whole point. We are constantly being bombarded with ads asking us to try this product or that—and when they all begin to run together, someone has to come up with something different enough to capture our gaze—if even for a moment.

I will have to admit I was much more comfortable with the car commercials that had beautiful women hanging off them. I fully understood how absurb they were—equating a car purchase with success and virility. I can honestly say that I never bought a car after seeing one of those ads—but you can’t deny the cultural importance attached to the make and model of the car you choose to drive.

As a Christian, we are asked to go a little deeper into what motivates us to purchase and participate in the world’s system. Not that we always do things for all the right reasons or never buy something we could more than likely live without. Saint Paul told us that there are pressures from within and pressures from without.

Have I lost my way here? Maybe not.

I guess one of the thoughts stirred up when reading that little piece of paper found in my desk drawer was not about writing at all but about imagination.

Scripture tells us that as a man thinks in his heart so he is. And that our God is able to do things even more miraculous than we can imagine. That there is a purpose to our lives and that His purpose towards us is to prosper us and make our paths straight in a world prone to crookedness.

Before an inventor can create something out of nothing, he has to see it in his mind’s eye. Before God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing, He must have had something in mind for us as well.

Did He know that I would grow up and play the guitar and have acceptance issues—that I would have a great family and enjoy gardening and poetry amonst all the other ten thousand parts and pieces that make up my life from birth until now. At some level I believe He did. He said He knew the plans that He had for me—but that is a hard one to get your head around.

What I am currently seeing about imagination is this: when we see the potential for something greater, to live at a higher level than where we are at—a light comes on and a part of the pathway to that place is illuminated. On the way there, we will fail to live up to the very ideal or goal that has sparked our imagination.

If the goal was to bless with our words, we will fail the very next day to be encourageing just when it counts the most—with someone you love. This doesn’t mean the path was wrong or that we failed—it just means that we need to press on toward the goal of what we first saw—bearing in mind that the enemy of our souls doesn’t want us to be successful in our journey.

My prayer today is that our imaginations would explode with all the God ideas that we have hidden in us—the ones we have glimpsed in the past and the ones that are slowly beginning to materialize. And that we would not let the enemies tricks keep us from eating from the tree of life.

We are ministers of reconciliation between God and a fallen world. Lets be about that business today in ways that excite and energize—ways that encourgage and build up. That sounds to me like a ride worth taking.

Sandi and I have arrived in Maryland, where my sister lives with her
husband in an old historic town. The houses are from that era when
builders left about three feet in between each house and the sidewalks
are still mostly large red clay brick. Most were built before the
impact of automobiles and therefore don’t have driveways either. As a
result the streets are lined on both sides with cars, vans and SUV’s.

When we left Boone early morning Friday, the temperature was around 34.
By the time we arrived in Northern Maryland it was 12 degrees out. It
was a seven hour drive and we occupied our time in the car with several
teachings that I had downloaded onto my Ipod from a site called the
Elijah List. It is a great way to pass the time and learn a thing or
two at the same time.

The reason for our quick trip: to visit my sister and my mother who
recently fell and broke her hip and is now in a nursing home. My mother
has lived with my sister the past several years (as many as 15) and has
been in declining heath for the past three or four. Her fall was the
most recent health challenge and one that she most likely will not
recover from.

As the title implies, this was not a trip that I looked forward to making. I guess we are never really fully prepared to face the declining health of a loved one—especially a mother.

But it was trip that we (Sandi and I) needed to make.

As I begin to write this, I remember a friend of mine from many years ago who had been dumped rather rudely by a girl that he thought was the “One”. This was during the Jackson Browne era of “The Pretender” and we were all looking for the meaning of life behind every corner and every life circumstance. My friend thought of himself as a poet/writer and was always looking for things to explore so that he could write about them.

After she left him he told me that it was the hardest thing to go through and that it was ironic that he would have to write about it in order for it to be fully processed and experienced. That we have to make a story or poem or song of the hard stuff in order to get past it and deal with it is a mixed blessing and as he put it, not a very fun thing when you really think about it. We hope for things to write about and then find that some of the stuff we are given is not that easy to process.

So, my mother is currently in an extended care facility and not doing very well. She is almost 80 and as we never know when things will change, this weekend sounded like a good time to make what could well be the last visit.

I recall talking with a wise person several years ago before my dad passed away. I was trying to decide whether to visit him or not after he told us that he had been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. He lived on the west coast and I was self-employed at the time and didn’t have a whole lot of money for plane tickets and so forth. All those little things that come to mind when you think about doing anything out of the ordinary.

This person told me that the hardest thing he had ever had to live with was not having visited soon enough when one of his parents had taken ill. Knowing this helped me make my decision in that case (I took the trip to the coast) and to some degree to visit to my mother this weekend.

In one sense, everytime we leave someone after a visit, having traveled any distance at all, we are saying goodbye for the last time. But in the case of sickness or disease, we never really know which good bye could be the last. See you later is no longer an option—it really becomes now or never.

There are a lot of thoughts swirling through my head at this point.

I know that what I have just written is the skeleton of what is really going on in my life. I am hesitant about going into that place of digging around my feelings surrounding death and dying.

I will most likely leave that for my private journal. But I do know I need to get this out and then allow myself to go on with what is going on in my life.

My youngest is growing like a weed. My son is getting married this summer and maybe one of my daughters as well. As my wife says there are dinners and receptions and things that cost money that we need to think about.

We need to get rid of lots of stuff in our basement—stuff that is taking up too much space in our house and our minds as well.

In all this, I am glad that I had this past weekend with my mother and my sister—that’s what started this whole thought process. Things went well—I was able to say goodbye to my mother and let her know how much she means to me. That I will not remember her as she looked lying in that nursing home bed—but as she looked during much of my youth—a time when things were much simpler and a long way from the pain and sickness she has experienced the past several years.

I told her that I wlll remember the good times—and in that I thanked her for yelling at the bullies that had followed me home from school that one time. After they heard my mom they didn’t want to mess with me anymore. I told her once again how I forgave her for the mistakes that she made and asked her once again to forgive me for the hurt or pain that I had ever caused her.

It is all a part of the process of making sure that she is ready to face eternity and that we have done all that we can to help in this endevour. At some point, after we have done what we can, we must leave her in the hands of a merciful heavenly Father, who only has her best interests at heart.

(During the weekend, I was also able to spend some quality time with my sister and her husband. This time with them made the journey much more meaningful and enjoyable. I also got to see my youngest brother whom I hadn’t seen in some time.)

Have I done enough? I am not sure. Have I done what I felt I could at the time—yes!

Will there be any regrets—maybe—but not about not going to see her during this painful time.

It was trip I didn’t want to make—but I am glad that I did.

Monday evening as I drove my daughter to the local shopping mall, I turned my Ipod to a Bruce Cockburn album that I had downloaded several weeks ago as I prepared to go on a business trip. I think I had loaded several days worth of music. The idea was to update my playlist and begin to listen to some songs and albums that have been collecting dust. A friend of mine, Steve Griffith, told me that he works through his collection of CD’s every year in somewhat of an alphabetical order.

I tend to listen to music in streaks or phases. Their was the Joni Mitchell phase and the Bob Dylan phase and the Miles Davis phase. On the other side, there has been and continues to be the contemporary Christian phase. People like Margaret Becker, Rich Mullins, and Shawn McDonald come readily to mind. Surrounding all of this is Vineyard Worship stuff and new songs from the Integrity Music stream and Morningstar Worship.

Music in my life seems to come when I need it. There have been times when I listen to a certain song and it seems to describe where I am better than I can myself.

So it was with Bruce Cockburn.

Now when I listen to some of these songs from several years ago, the memories and emotions associated with those times are still rumbling around somehwere in my data banks. The song I transcribed by Cockburn the other day fell on one side of the emotional scale—the melancholy side—the slightly jaundiced side. In other words, though poetic, it was a little dark.

Another day passes and I flip on the old Ipod and begin to listen to another oldie goldie from an artist named Beth Nielson Chapman. The album is entitled Sand and Water and was recorded shortly after her husband died from cancer.

Her voice is angelic and if you haven’t heard of her she is real find. The song that touched me that day is one called The Color Of The Roses. I think it describes some of the feelings that she dealt with surrounding the loss of her husband. Unlike the Cockburn song, it is positive and upbeat, while dealing with a challenging subject.

I held you close to me
Once in a distant dream
Far from the shores of my fear
I sailed on this ocean
Where all I imagined could happen
And now you are here
It’s so hard to touch what is out of our hands
To know and to trust what the heart understands

Life gives us magic
And life brings us tragedy
Everyone suffers some loss
Still we have faith in it
Childlike hope
There’s a reason that outweighs the cost
And gravity throws all these rules in our way
And sometimes the spirit refuses to play

Chorus

Oh Love
Turn me around in your arms
And in this dream we share
Let us not miss one kiss
And add my regrets to the tears in the rain
That’s what the color of roses contain

Chorus

The part that I honed in on was the:

Only the ones who believe
Ever see what they dream
Ever dream what comes true

I don’t know whether or not Chapman is a Christian. But it seems like she is speaking to a lot of us who are currently working on the dreams that we have held onto lo these many years. Through thick and thin—through church splits and friendships that have faded.

We are told in scripture that as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. And that if we say to that mountain, be removed and cast into the sea, and believe, it will be. That if two of us agree on anything touching, it will be done for us. To seek and find; ask and it will be given. And many more verses just like these that have influenced us over the years.

I guess what I am saying is that in this process of self-discovery, it is time to bring some of the dreams that we have held onto and not seen fullfilled, back onto the front burner and see what happens to them—what God will accomplish with them and us.

And remember it is the little things that often matter most—a kind word and a helpful hand—are often more powerful than an army full of tanks and weapons.

Tonight I played an old song by Bruce Cockburn which continues to intrigue me with a relevance to my life which I don’t totally understand.

After reading these words you might ask yourself where this fits into a Christian’s life. I don’t know—I ask myself that same question. It’s all about the war. The old man and the new one. The one that likes wine a little too much and the one that would give it all up and become a missionary in Africa. I am two people—maybe more.

Enjoy yours today.

As I begin writing this it is Thursday evening and I am waiting for the wood stove fire to catch on and warm the house after not having a fire all day. Thursday is Sandi’s day to teach art and the fire that I start in the morning is but a memory by the time I get home in the evening.

By this time of year, the woodpile is looking a little thin and I begin to wonder whether we will make it through the cold season on what little wood is left. There are a few big logs left from last year that I never cut up into stove length—but who wants to go through all that. I have a new chain for my saw that is still in the package—and some chain oil—but the where-with-all is missing.

Since I began writting , I have checked the fire and eaten dinner. I told my wife, who called twice for dinner and I didn’t hear her, that I was updating my blog. Sounds like some kind of ailment.

I told her that I was writting about stuff and she said that she was looking forward to reading about my spiritual journey. I answered her with a…”everything is spiritual” kind of answer. This is both true and not true at the same time.

My writtings are not necessarily what you would call being overtly spiritual or Christian. But they are a description of part of the process of my life which—truth be known—is hidden in Christ.

There is the past, the present and the future. My mind is filled up with what I have lived and experienced. I don’t really know how full the hard drive of my mind is—but sometimes some of that stuff wants out.

Today is sometimes beyond my understanding—it is off the charts—and it is a wonder that I make it to the other side.

Like I have said before—some of what I feel comes out to make room for what is happening and some of it is released for what is to come.  Thoughts build up and want expression—to bad they don’t become a TV show and make us all a lot of money.

Sandi is a “…lets make a list and check things off as we go” kind of person. I am a “…lets make a pile and look at it for a time while I decide what to do with it” kind. Not incompatible—but challenged—in a good sort of way. She loves me because of and in spite of my flaws—and for me—it is the very same thing towards her. We are what we are—you can’t take one part and love that and somehow ignore the other parts of a person’s personality.

It’s a package deal. And that is really who we are—not the pluses entirely or the minuses—but a collection of both. We have matured into who we are as a mix of wheat and tares—to somewhat force a bible analogy. We are the sum of the parts as a mathematician would put it. An energy force that has negative and positive charges—all whirling around the atomic structure of who we are—who we exist as this very moment.

Culture has chosen to objectifly us and separate us from our source—to make it seem that we are random acts of inventon or better yet—molecular structures that have evolved into rational beings.

I am still amazed that I haven’t arrived yet—I thought that was the whole point of life—to get to where we are headed/to where we are going. Now I learn that it is the “journey” that is the most important focus. That we never really arrive or are arriving moment by moment—in a continuing cycle—that never ends. Death is a process that changes where we live or the body that we inhabit—but life goes on and on and on. For some, after death, we will inhabit a place called heaven for all enternity—that’s a long time. For others, who are not part of the Christ redeemed, they will reside in a place of torment and trial called Hades.

I have totally gotten off the track of waiting for the wood stove to kick in and make warmth. But I guess that is also the point—our lives are our lives—each piece is a part of the whole. Even though I keep track of my ups and downs—my ons and offs—God—the creator of the universe—sees me complete—one piece—a whole man. And as I have accepted Christ, He has accepted me—in the Beloved—from my beginning until my very end.

He is on the ride with me. Until immoratlity swallows up mortality.

But for now, the stove is pumping out the heat—spring is really not that far away. I am out of words and patience.

Enjoy the ride!

The atomic clock display reads 12 degrees farenheit outside our humble abode in Boone, North Carolina. It is that time of year when no matter how much wood you throw at the stove, it’s hard to keep it above 70 degrees inside the house.

When the wind blows it is even harder.

But we have come a long way.

During the time we lived in Ashe County (1978-1985) in an old house that had been built before they discovered insulation, when the wind blew we could see a candle wick in the middle of our living room move. We had a big stove in the living room that was attached to the chimney and a wood cook stove in the kitchen that had its own flue.

There were times when we had to close every door to the living room and bring a table into the middle of the room in order to have dinner and not freeze. Every nook and cranny let the air from the outside in and since we didn’t own the home, we choose to put up with it and wait it out. Insulation was an expensive proposition.

For the first five years we lived in our “dream house” rent was free. All I had to do was get the place back into the shape it had been in before it had been abandoned. That meant putting glass in the windows, getting running water, re-building the porch, restoring the electcric service and so forth.

After two years we had our first child and it was hard during the winter keeping everything warm.

I remember a Christmas when the electricity went out about 10 am in the morning. It got to 25 below zero that day. We were supposed to prepare the turkey for the Christmas dinner that was planned for later in the day. We put the bird in the pot and put the pot on the wood stove and let it cook. We didn’t have any lights, but we did have a way to cook the food that we would take to our inlaws later in the day. It was a challenge, but we persevered and everything turned out alright. The lights came back on at about eight o’clock that evening. It was just another day in Ashe County history.

One of my memories from this time is a very cold winter day when the wind had all but quit blowing and there was about 6 inches of fluffy white snow on the ground. We lived on 100 acres of land which in turn was surrounded by several hundred acres of property that was wooded and hilly. There had been logging trails cut through the hills in years past and Sandi and I would take long walks all year round on them.

After a big snow, it was always fun to explore this “Snow White” world—which in reality had become much different than its non-snow apperance. Most of these trails were protected from the wind which in turn created an eerie quality as we explored them. Sometimes it was almost like a snow tunnel had been cut through the forest for us—leading us into another place in time—a place long before electricity and other modern conveniences. Of course, we could always go back to our house and stand around the wood stove. I even had several Aladdin lamps that we occasionally had to bring out when the power would go off.

The time I am refering to is the late seventies and early eighties. If you have been around this long, you will know that these really were kinder-gentler times. Not that there weren’t stresses and stuff to put up with—there were plenty. Maybe it was the fact of being younger with a lot of years ahead of us that made the difference. Of course, living in Ashe County, North Carolina was a big factor—it being the one county in NC that had the most unpaved roads and was considered by many to be the most rural county in the state. Not that there weren’t “rural” areas in Watauga, and Alleghany counties as well. But most Ashe Countians said that when God created North Carolina he started in Ashe county and what he had left over he used to create the other 99 counties in the state.

And Sandi and I believed them. We spent many happy hours and days roaming around places that we discovered. The times we canoed the New River are some of the best times I can remember.

We still take our walks, but they are most likely on paved roads these days. We have been known to venture out on a 20 degree day but not all that often.

I still like the seasons—all four of them. If I had my way, winter would last about a month and I would add a month or two to both spring and fall. That way the skiers could do their thing and the economy would flourish and we’d all have more time outdoors to enjoy this great area we live in.

Enjoy the ride!

One of the good things associated with blogging or journaling is that the process allows one to download impressions and information that have reached critical mass (to loosely use a scientific term). Critical mass means to me that a buildup has occured and an explosion or meltdown is inevitable unless something is done to alleviate the energy that is being created in a closed container—in this case—the brain. Releasing these thoughts onto a page in a booklet or cyber-space is one way to avoid this kind of result.

Many thoughts we have are benign, which in a pathological sense means that they are not malignant. They come and go and are self-limiting—in other words they are like the wind—some are fast and furious and some are like a slow breeze coming in off the atlantic ocean.

Some of us are comfortable with our thoughts and some of us are not. Sometimes our thoughts seem to take on a life of their own. They cast some people as bad guys, others as good—they create heroes and heroines and fashion a world where we are either at home or feel like we have landed in a foreign land.

I have recently been told—and I tend to beleive it—that people respond to who we project. In other words, if I beleive that I am worthless then you will begin to believe that as well. If my perseption of myself is as a successful person, then you will likely think that as well.

There is cocky and there is self-assured—lets not mix up the two. If there is no real substance behind what I beleive that I am, then I am playing a game with your head and you need to beleive what it is you really see.

My mind is somehow linking what I just said to the Declaration of Independance. How I got there I don’t know, but here is the link.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.”

Number one I guess is that these men believed we were created. Secondly that there was an equality among this creation.

So here we are—all starting out in the same position in relation to God. This is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Jehovah. I know this because many years ago I did the research that revealed to me that the signers of the Declaration were of the Judeo-Christian persuasion. Many were what we would call Deists: they beleived in the creator God but not the redeemer Jesus—but that is another story.

What is the story anyway?

The story is about a man who wakes up one day and finds himself not in the position or place in life that he thought he would be at the age that he sees in the face looking back at himself in the morning mirror.

The story is about a person once again believing that dreams do come true: not just on that TV show where some family gets a new house in a week and a half.

A song comes to me from the vault.

1. We are on the sea of life
   Sailing to a better home
   Where the saved of all the earth shall abide
   Leaving all our trials here
   Many pleasures wait us there
   When we cross the foam and reach the other side

I remember singing this song in a group I used to play with. A lot of old timey Chrisitan songs don’t so much deal with life here and now as they do with the final destination of the believer. And this has its place. But to focus on the afterlife to the neglect of this present hour is a mistake.

As Sunday morning has rolled around—I am still trying to get a bead on the purpose of this particular entry into the blog-line of my life.

Maybe I don’t have the next verse yet to the song that I have just begun and it is time to let it rest and move on—trusting that when the time comes, I will get the piece I need to finish what I began in ernest yesterday.

What I do know is this: just thinking about taking that bike ride or going to the wellness center to workout is just the beginning. The next step is actually doing it. Sometimes we have to focus really hard and not let the distractions of life keep us from getting to where we know we need to go.