A Time To Remember

Memorial Day has come and gone, but for many the realities of national conflict are a daily fact. Colin Powell encouraged the viewers of the 2007 National Memorial Day Concert to do something to support our troops.

If you need some inspiration, watch this from Mark Schultz.

Being Different

It has taken some time to return here, and in the lapse I have thought frequently about Paul's question "How are you different?".

Hopefully I've learned more about myself and grown through mistakes. I've experienced grace, reconciliation, reunion, breaking away and the bond between parent and child being forced into a new type of relationship.


I've begun a new decade of living, and with it unexpected physical changes and a renewed assessment of who I am apart from my husband and children. My entire adult life has been centered on these relationships and how they define me. "I am a wife. I am a mother." I am also someone besides that.

When my grandmother died, my aunt wrote a poem in her honor. Ruth prefaced it with these words:

"The whole of her (Barbara's) personal writings, however, speaks clearly of her equally real inner conflict which was...deep...namely, her struggle with the other side of the paradox common to every true Christ-follower: fulfillment of self, or, becoming fully the person God created."

That's what I want. I don't want to be 50, 60, or 80 and wonder if I really was embracing the person God created to its fullest.


So who am I? I don't want to be defined by what happens to me, but by the development of the person I was created to become. That is the legacy to leave for the people I love and give it in return.

This is a new place for me to express myself. I'm a different person than when I began my first blog a year ago. Hopefully I've grown for the better. Emma moved back home after 10 months with her father. Katy is about to graduate from high school and go to college. Laura is becoming a young woman with her own teenage experiences. Garland is a grandfather.

I don't feel safe posting to my previous site. Invaded too often by undesirables. My older and wiser aunt has encouraged me to keep posting, however. So here it is...

A new journey to a place of vulnerability with those who might be interested.