I'm Back!!!

The sun is shining, birds are chirping, and I am smiling.  I have missed writing so much over the past few months.  I visited a new church this weekend and the pastor said, "if you are really good at excuses you are probably not good at anything else."  I am REALLY good at making excuses. 

One of my dreams has been publishing a book.  I have allowed fear and doubt to keep me from at the very least getting "my story" on paper.  I thought it would be appropriate that my first post for 2013 should be an excerpt from my untitled never to be finished book.  Tell me what you think...it starts off sad, but I know there will be a happy ending.

Whether you turn to the right or to the left your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way, walk in it.”     Isaiah 30:21

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I am worn out and tired having been handled far too roughly by this world.  I resemble one of those dirty and torn dollar bills that a clerk slyly passes to you during a transaction.  Sure the money is still useful and has value, but you hide it in the bottom of your wallet ashamed of its ugliness. Who is to blame for my condition?  I have wasted years grieving over painful situations and people I believe failed me.  I am tortured day and night by the fact that this is not how it was supposed to be. Just like that tattered dollar, perhaps I would be more comfortable tucked away and hidden.  The darkness of the pit calls out to me and so I take the slightest movement over the edge.  As I close my eyes and breathe deeply, I hear sweet voices calling out to me.  Should I trust their words of comfort and love, or disappear into oblivion?  Far in the distance, I recognize the familiar steps along the dark roads that I have traveled.  Fearing I would not survive, I have moved through all of my days with a frantic rush anticipating my breakthrough just around the bend.  Now as I stand at the end, I discover that I missed the lessons that were hidden in each experience.  Can I go back and reconnect the dots of my fragmented journey and have it all make sense?   Do I release the past and move forward hoping that I am stronger and wiser simply because I have survived? This is my final goodbye to what might have been as I claim what IS.  The person that I created has been stripped bare of everything. And yet, I have been given a precious gift…a second chance for it all to be different.  This is the beginning of me.