Our Hearts Are Home

I have loved him since I was a girl.  Now I have loved him longer than I have not loved him.  He is not perfect, we do not love each other perfectly, but we are doing our best.  Loving him has made my life bigger and more beautiful than I could make it.  His love for me has brought out the best in me, inspired me, and been the fertile ground where I can flourish.  

I am a fiery plant: temperamental, passionate, impatient, insecure, and angry. I remember today, 16 years in, thankful to the mystery that orchestrated this exciting, magical, adventure of love.  I am thankful we can celebrate that our love can overcome the obstacle that is marriage.

Am I Change??

New prophets are rising up who try to change the future, not just predict it. There is a movement bubbling up that goes beyond cynicism and celebrates a new way of living, a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of (The Irresistible Revolution, p. 24).

I want to be the change I want to see in the world. How can I orient my life, so that I am focusing on others. Besides my children, who are easy to focus on, sometimes they are little vacuums and I have to hover over a bit, how can I really focus on treating others as myself. I think that to get around this commandment, I simply isolate myself so that I do not have to actually practice who I say I am. This way, I do not have to participate in the lives of others, because I know it is hard, maybe even too hard. Think about what I love, gardening, reading, solitary athletics, watching movies? How involved in the life of my neighbor are those?

Can I really treat others as I would like to be treated? Am I really saying that I want to be left alone, by isolating myself? I do not. I want to engage in a meaningful way with whoever is in my path. I find myself, lately, closed to those in my path out of frustration. Even blogging about this further insulates me from relationships.