Advice from Me to Myself

Dear Self:

Great Salt Lake (July 2009)

Have you read your own most recent pastor article?  Why, look, it arrived at the post office just yesterday.  How timely!  Take another look at what you wrote.  Remind yourself, again, how very tempting it is to think that *everyone else* could use a holy attitude adjustment and how "helpful" you are with always-just-right advice for other people.

So, now you have stumbled -- yea, fallen flat! -- again.   And somehow it always seems so unexpected!  Do you really need yet another reminder that ordination did not inoculate the Rev from looking for love in all the wrong places, or from forgetting to look for love at all?  Your well can dry up, too, you know.  It's better to notice when the level reaches "low" before it's all the way to "empty."

"Hindsight is 20/20," of course, and so are all the other cliches that involve "a new leaf" and "heal thyself" and, most definitely, "eating humble pie."  Here, have some.  Yours is gluten-free, of course!

These things you know; these things you preach; these things you write.  So, here it is, your most recent newsletter article, appropriately entitled "Good News is for Sharing."  You wrote it.  Now live it.  Today.

Love you still,
Me

GOOD NEWS IS FOR SHARING

August 2010

Grandmother -- Me!

Daniel holding onto his momma

On May 31, I became a grandmother when Daniel was brought into the world.

I wonder if there is anything else I can say that will can anything more to that sentence or that picture.

Today, I think not.

A Year of Silence

Three days shy of a year of silence on this blog ...

Funny how it's easy to say "Yea, God!" when things seemed to be going peacefully and sensibly. The last year has been neither peaceful nor sensible in many ways.

Still, I wish I had been more vocal, even here, about the many "Yea, God!" moments:

The UCC National Youth Event -- bus ride and all the great, great kids!

I became a mother-in-law when Amy & Jaymz got married

Enjoying son & daughters, mom & sisters, nieces and nephew -- missing my brother and his family

Making plans for next year's cruise with the WHOLE family!

God still speaking and still leading ...

I am in transition --giving thanks for the Dille Parish UCC and saying heart-felt, sometimes heart-wrenching, good-byes -- and giving thanks for a new (to me) congregation and moving toward a new ministry setting at Jerusalem UCC.

I am at peace.
And I am back ... smiling ...

YEA GOD!