unsteady

my balance is off today.

sometimes i feel like i'm walking a tight rope.

like i'm hundreds of feet above the ground,
shakily placing

one

foot

in

front

of the other,

simply hoping that i don't fall to my death. (and that's a metaphoric death).

there are several things that threaten to throw me from my lofty perch and each must be combatted in the same way. the only way that i am able to refrain from the fall is by fixing my eyes on the other side. all of my attention and energy must be focused on the Certainty that lies at the other end of this rope. whether it is a person calling to me from below or my own insecurities calling to me from within, the Voice from the other side must be allowed to drown them all out.

simple choice.

not so simple choosing.

Still got it!

So...I went and played basketball last night with some high school kids. It was me and four high school girls against a much taller, faster group of high school guys. Now granted they were all JV players, but still......they were too much for us to handle. Initially none of the girls wanted to play against them, but I was all for it. I mean, if you want to get better as a female athlete, play against guys. 9 times out of 10 you're gonna get beat, but all you need to do is compete and hold your own. So that's what we did. We won 1 out of the 3 games we played and we did pretty well, under the circumstances. It was a lot of fun. I really miss playing and I really miss that feeling of total exhaustion after you've gone hard for two hours. What I don't miss is getting elbowed in the face by a 6'2" black guy while you're trying to go get a rebound. That part I could do without. But then again.....this swollen part of my head reminds me that I'm not too old. I can still run!

Nuggets of Truth

There's a verse somewhere in the Bible that talks about truth being able to be found anywhere, meaning that truth is not limited to being exposed from behind the pulpit; that God can use anything and anyone to convey truth. Last night, He used a television show on the CW to speak truth right at me. Allow me to explain.

One Tree Hill. To most everyone else who watched that show last night, it was nothing more than an hour-long dramatic television show. I must admit, the new twist on the show since last season has completely sucked me back into watching every week. For those of you that don't watch, last year they had all graduated from high school and were off to college or into the real world. I wondered how they were going to make these "kids" look like they were recent high school graduates when they already looked like they had graduated from college. Then someone had the brilliant idea to simply fast forward all of their lives 4 years. Brilliant! The show is better than ever and full of four years worth of drama, which we've never seen. I love it.

In last nights episode, Peyton Sawyer was professing her love to her best friend and ex-boyfriend, Lucas Scott who had recently proposed to his current girlfriend. Now a little over a year ago Lucas had proposed to Peyton, but she had asked him to wait til both of them had had a little more time to pursue their careers. Last night, she realized how wrong she had been in her response and was feeling unimaginable regret. After she told Lucas how she felt and how wrong she had been, he walked away from her and went back to his then-girlfriend, Lindsay. Obviously Peyton was heartbroken and trying desperately to figure out what to do now. She walks to the cemetary where her mother is buried and sits down in front of the the grave, with tears streaming, and begs her mother to speak to her somehow and tell her what to do. (I teared up at this point) Obviously she gets no audible response, but looks up to see a leaf fall from a nearby tree and drift to the grave of Lucas's Uncle Keith. It's then that she knows exactly what she has to do.

Now, I know the fact that I can recount this whole episode fully opens me to ridicule, but I think I have to paint the picture for everyone else to feel the weight of the truth-speaking moment that follows.

So, Peyton and Lucas. They've been best friends since the day Lucas moved to town eight years ago. They've been together on and off since then, never really getting the timing right, culminating in Lucas's rejected marriage proposal. And now somehow, Peyton has got to let go of the man that she has always loved. (Gah! Doesn't that just make you ache! And yes, I know these are fictional characters!) So, Peyton leaves the cemetary and goes to Lucas and has this one, final conversation about "everything"......

"I love you, Luke! I think I have since the day we met. But today it struck me that the greatest act of love is sacrifice. That's what Keith did for your mom. He denied his feelings for her all those years so that he could be a good friend to her. And as much as it's gonna suck, I'm willing to do that for you. If that will make you truly happy then I'll do it, because I want you to be happy more than anything in the world!"

"the greatest act of love is sacrifice"

It didn't take a television show to show the love of Christ to me, but last night it took a television show to remind me of the love of Christ for me. It also took that same show to reaffirm to me that love is not self-serving. Love is self-sacrificing. Love means giving up what you want and need for someone else, giving up yourself for another. I want to show that kind of love to others and I want to be loved that way in return. After all, we've got the greatest possible example to learn from. Don't we?

Cannonball!

I have been meaning to post for the past several weeks, but had somehow managed to forget my password. It's not like that's that hard to believe since I have close to ten separate usernames and passwords for various things. It would be easier if you could use the same one for everything, but that's neither very smart or allowed. Stupid, really!

With that said......here's what I've got:

I've been told for years about this intimidating and confident aura that I seem to exhude, and for the life of me I'm not sure how I continue to pull that off. Regardless, that's what people see when they look at me. It doesn't matter if I feel anything but confident. We've all got our insecurities and fears. I guess I just do a good job of hiding them. Yay me!

I am a fairly confident person, but there has been one thing for the past several years that has literally scared that crap out of me and that's the idea of owning my own home. I'm not sure why. That's not true. I know exactly why, and despite how invalid my fears are they are very real to me. However, my recent "choice" to start over has prompted a need to conquer all the fears that are encompassed in that decision. So....

I'm buying a house. I'm not sure where, but I've made the first step and am moving forward with an unusual peace that this is the right thing for me to do. I'm tired of moving. I'm tired of feeling displaced. And I'm tired of waiting for my fears to subside. I think it was Julie Andrews, in The Sound of Music, that said, "You can't run from your problems. You've got to jump right in and face them!"

Here goes nothing.......I'm jumpin' in!

Commencement

Starting over is never easy.
It requires you to begin again;
to leave
somewhere/something comfortable and
put yourself
in a place of
uncertainty.

While I am not an avid fan of starting over, I do understand the necessity of it.
There are times when we have no choice in the matter; times when it is decided for us.
There are times when we have no other choice but to start over; times when it is our only option.
And there are times when we simply want to begin again.

I can't say what time this is for me.
Part of me feels like I have no choice; as if someone else is calling the shots.
Part of me feels this is the only possible course of action; like the alternative could destroy me.
And part of me wants so desperately to begin again.

So here I am.
Forced or willing.......here I am, starting over.
The problem lies in those memories... pregnant with hope.

Snow Day

There's snow outside, which is a once-a-year experience here in South Carolina. Having spent the majority of my life in a part of the country that spends all Winter covered in white, I guess you could say I'm pretty cynical about snow. Granted there are worse things to be cynical about, but I've got to say that this time around I've somehow gathered a new-found appreciation for snow. Go figure.I

can remember building snowmen in the front yard for hours, until my gloves were soaked through and my hands had begun to go numb and turn a bright shade of red; or driving to school, after a 2-hour delay, and keeping two wheels in the ditch to keep from sliding all over the place; and those unforgettable treks across the campus at Indiana Wesleyan, where you finally sat down in the classroom only to find that your hair was frozen solid and that the wind had literally cut your face. Those are the memories that I associate with Winter & snow. It's kind of sad, huh?

Then I moved here and everyone has this childlike wonder and infatuation with snow. All it takes is for the local meteorologist to mention the words "snow" or "winter storm" and the entire state goes into panice mode, bombarding every grocery store to stock up on the essentials, which oddly enough always consists of milk & bread. They don't even stop to listen to the remainder of the forcast in which they predict a mere 1 inch of wet snow. They simply grab the keys, hit the local Bi-Lo and hope that schools will be cancelled. I still find this very entertaining.

But this morning as I was driving to work, with the 4 other "brave" souls on the roads, I began to see the beauty in the world of white. There really is something hopeful about a landscape completely covered with snow; everything is clean; everything is new. It hit me today just how exciting that can be. It's almost as if everything starts over, from scratch, with a clean slate. I've chosen to overlook the muddy, slushy mess that inevitabley follows, strictly for selfish reasons.

So today, amidst the whiteness, I choose to see the hope in starting over. I want to begin again, covering everything underneath, to let the newness of today and potential of tomorrow inspire my spirit and encourage my heart. I gotta say, today.....I love snow!