I've been writing here for 9 years, recording events and thoughts and memories. Collecting.

This is the only place where I'm the dozen girls all at once - the dozen me's I've been over the past decade, changing and then changing again. Waking up to meet someone new.

I started this blog soon after my first real heart break, a couple years after I got my braces off, during my first year not living at home, the year I graduated high school, months before I started college.  Before marketing at UIE, Starbucks, Linville, Weaver and LMN.  Before any of my classmates and childhood friends married or had kids or had second kids or bought houses.  Before I could buy whiskey. Before I stopped getting french manicures. Before I fell in love with Keats. Before I bought the Toddler. Before I gave Todd a hampster for Christmas because I thought it would be funny. Before I smuggled a book in my dress under my graduation gown. Before I ever went to Vegas.  Before I went to Vegas again. Before I stayed with Kim in Nashville for over a month. Before I applied for the Cambridge Gates Trust.  Before I received the news that I was not awarded the scholarship. Before I was a backup dancer for a tween christian hip hop artist? Before I got a concussion on a sail boat. Before Sparks wrote lame books. Before The Office. Before the Blueberries.  Before Beau. Before moving out on my own. Before I pierced my nose. Before my childhood dog died. Before a dozen other goodbyes.

I think I just knew that paths were parting in my soul and all around me and the only way I'd be able to get back or make sense of it was to start collecting tiny pieces in long run-on sentences. I'd begun to learn the painful lesson that many, many people will be happy to tell you who you are and who you've been - and many of them will not be true - though they don't mean to tell you lies. And more dangerous still, those who knew you may forget you.  And if they can so quickly forget what is true, perhaps a person can as easily forget themself too.






Many things have changed.  And some things have not.

First post in 2005.

A couple hours before getting engaged in 2014

10 Life Lessons From a Navy Seal - Lesson #9

"The ninth week of training is referred to as “Hell Week.” It is six days of no sleep, constant physical and mental harassment and—one special day at the Mud Flats—the Mud Flats are an area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana slue’s—a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.

It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold mud, the howling wind and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors.

As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, my training class, having committed some “egregious infraction of the rules” was ordered into the mud.

The mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit—just five men and we could get out of the oppressive cold.

Looking around the mud flat it was apparent that some students were about to give up. It was still over eight hours till the sun came up—eight more hours of bone chilling cold. The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud it was hard to hear anything and then, one voice began to echo through the night—one voice raised in song.

The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm.

One voice became two and two became three and before long everyone in the class was singing.

We knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well. The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singing—but the singing persisted.

And somehow—the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so far away. 

If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person—Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandela and even a young girl from Pakistan—Malala—one person can change the world by giving people hope.

 #9. So, if you want to change the world, start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud."  


Source: 10 Life Lessons From a Navy SEAL

I just want to come alive.
Explode.
Ignite.
Set something in motion.
Trip a wire.
Light a fire. 

Burn all the crap.
Find the fuse.
And do the thing I think "living" was actually meant to be.

How are those for some verbs? 

.

I think single people fall into thinking that they will suddenly become someone else when they meet the right person.  I've heard it a lot.  Like that person's very presence in your life will suddenly change who you are.  Yes, I am sure they will make you want to be better, they'll inspire you, make you love more and deeper... but you'll still be you.  The you you are today.  There isn't this person you are today and this magical creature you're transformed into when you meet the prince(ss).  If you want to behave a certain way when you meet that person, you'd better start today.  Habits you don't want to have? Start changing them now - because love doesn't magically break habits in seconds.  They are built over years, and they're broken over years. 

Anywho, just a thought.  Stop thinking that when that person walks into your life - they'll somehow change you into who you've been dreaming of being.  They wont.  And there's a good chance, they won't even pay you a second glance - because they aren't looking for the frog that's been dreaming of being turned into a prince.  They're looking for a man (or woman).


You might not think you struggle with this at all - but if you take a better listen into your conversation, you'll probably be surprised to hear hints that it's made its way in to your thinking.  I don't know how or why, but we all seem to be plagued a bit with this concept that somehow when you meet that right person, everything changes - including you.  I'll go ahead and blame it on movies (Hollywood is a great scapegoat) - the bad boy suddenly meeting the right girl and changing his ways in 20 minutes. But, I think it's just as ingrained in some of our church relationship ideas (not as easy of a scapegoat, so I'm not going to sit and widdle through that one) - if you wait for the right person, everything will be perfect, including you.

What if you suddenly don't change?  What if you find yourself with the person of your dreams, and realizing you aren't the man or woman you'd always dreamed you'd be for them?  Instead, you're still a selfish, immature mess with eyes that wander and emotions that drive them?  I think that would be a certain sort of hell - to watch yourself fail the person you want more than anything to serve and love.

Anyways, my morning bus thoughts - dear God, change me now. 

This weekend, I remembered who I am.  It was all quite odd.  And who'd have that it would happen not while away, but while home in unknown places in my own city?  I certainly had not. 

I sat last night in silence, on my knees in a place I'd never been.  And I wanted to grow into that silence. 

How strange the power of silence to make us feel small in its confounds and long to be as big and wise and strong.  As all-encompassing.  To make us wants to spread out our arms and reach wide, and reach further.  To somehow fill that space we know we never could.  For what word could fit in silence?  And what hand touch it? 

How silence made me long to mature as it has in all its ancient years.

My address book is about to get a full on make-over.  It seems most everyone in my life is either getting married (new address and new last name) or moving!  Seriously.  Pretty much everyone.  And then there are all the "maybe" movers too!  I'm holding myself in the posture of 'excited' and fighting the panic, because when I stop to reflect on each of them individually, I am so excited to see the people I love stepping in to the callings on their lives.  They're coming alive.  I think this is why so many of us have had this steady flow in to our minds and hearts that we need courage.... that we need to take risks.  It was so that we'd make these moves, we'd say yes, take chances and fight for the dreams that have been dormant in our hearts.  We're a generation of travelers - of movers - of reconcilers - of bridge-builders.  I can count off people who are deeply grafted in my heart and life all across the country - and some in other countries.  And I'm not unique in that... I think it's part of what our generation is to be about.  We can build deep and still build far.  And we can stay connected and grounded and still spread out. 

That said, when I take a step back and survey this mass movement, I smile.  You know, there's a rumor going 'round.  ;)

“This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there’s a rumor going around the shop that some of us are someday going to come to life.”


― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

How many times have you heard: "There's no such thing as a stupid question"?

We've all heard it countless times from teachers and coaches and generally kind people.  Well, as I've been training for my new job I've had a lot of time to think on this and ponder what questions to ask and which not to ask.  Having just trained someone myself at my last job (rather, feeling I was constantly training someone for the month or two before I left) I am very aware of how distracting and frustrating it can be for the one responsible to train you.  It makes me wary not to ask too many questions.  You see, there are definitely stupid questions - and what defines them is not so much the questions themselves as the process that lead you to them.  In short, was there a process?  At all?  Did you try to find the answer?  Did you use the bit you already know to try to solve it yourself?  What resources have you already been given?  How about prior experience of how similar things work?  If you haven't asked any of those questions to yourself before - then the one coming out of your mouth is a stupid question.

Sound harsh?  Perhaps.  You can say a prayer for my children now, because I will not be telling them that there is no such thing as a stupid question.  There is nothing more embarrassing to me than asking a question, and then finding the answer myself a minute later.  I feel I need to apologize to the people who's life I have just wasted a piece of.  I will hopefully not ever tell my children "That is a stupid question" - but I will interrogate them as to the process that lead to that question and somehow hopefully train them to be problem-solvers and initiators - the kind of people who can find answers to problems rather than always expect that someone else will solve that problem for them and hand-deliver the answer.   Asking questions is a strength - knowing how to ask the right questions is a bigger strength - and knowing which questions to voice and which to ask yourself is an even bigger strength.

That said, it is better to ask questions than to just do things wrong.  But that doesn't change the fact that stupid questions do exist.  And they waste people's lives.

Jon Pinkston taught me more about the power of asking questions than anyone I've known before or since. It was part of our SLT curriculum, but it was his personal skill in it that was most powerful.  We were taught that it is far better to help another discover a solution or answer themself, by guiding them with accurate and intelligent questions than to just hand them the answer.  And I witnessed and experienced that in my own life as every week he would ask each of us questions that sparked new revelations and convictions - that we earned and fought for and weren't just told.  I own those beliefs in a much stronger way.  I think I grew more through those two years of weekly one-hour meetings than I did through the year before in Masters Commission... and that's saying something.  Questions, intelligent, well-thought-out and aptly spoken questions are truly powerful things that can open ourselves and others up to new thoughts, ideas, solutions, answers and convictions.  They can change our perspectives - and that's a much harder thing to do than most of us realize.

So here's to us all growing more in our skills regarding asking questions... wherever we are at today.
And please, don't ask stupid questions.