Maybe a Butterfly After All: according to my friend . . .

Last night after the worship encounter evening at our church (all music, no sermon) I talked to my friend about my travel plan, and she said I was going to be like a butterfly. She said I came here to North Idaho like a caterpillar, and have been in a cocoon for a long time (my comfy apartment?) and now will be coming out of the cocoon to be like a butterfly in my future travel (and service) life. I thought it was cool synchronicity that she came up with the butterfly analogy right after I'd written a blog post claiming not to be a social butterfly!

#vanlife

Truth is, the van life will put me into much closer contact with other human beings in the future, and maybe that's one of the reasons I must go there. Right now, I spend most of my time in an ivory tower. A nice two-bedroom apartment on the third floor, with a great view. Today my great view started with wet streets, from rain, and now, in the last hour, turned white with big snowflakes. Like I said, snow was on the way.

Gratitudes:

1. So grateful for the worship encounter evenings at my church, once a month. Awesome experience last night! Give it all to Jesus - and trust Him for the right results - in EVERYTHING ...

2. I'm grateful for the discussion I had with my friend (Nita) about prayer . . . about how we need to give every situation to Jesus in prayer. He wants to hear our concerns. He already knows! But He wants us to be able to identify and verbalize our concerns to Him, and trust Him with them. For example - my difficult relationships with siblings and a few other family members. I can't fix a thing and have done plenty to mess things up... so I feel my efforts are hopeless. This morning I was ruminating about my situation again, and realized that this is a situation I need to identify, pray about, and give to the Lord, and He will do His Will... which is the best thing that can be done for all involved. Praise the Lord!

3. I am grateful for Naomi's neglect of me (parental estrangement) because it has taught me to understand what God feels when His children turn away from Him. Ah, the pain of it all . . . but I was one of those children turning away from Him toward false gods and false prophets, and now that I've been welcomed back, like the prodigal son, having spent so much of my life in ignorance (agnosticism, the word, derives from the Greek word for ignorance) I'm finding Jesus still loves me, and shines His light on me, and gives me the full heart I've always yearned for. I know I am loved, and what is better than that?



Plan for the day:

1. Figure out a new budget, heading into 2019, accounting for travel expenses

2. Write a book review for my lindajomartin.com blog . . . I want to review the best books I read during 2018. I'm starting with Blue Highways.

3. Walk 4000 steps and cycle 30 minutes on my exercise bike while listening to an audiobook

Currently reading:

1. The Nightingale, by Kristen Hannah. I passed the half-way point and now I'm headed downhill. That's what the second half of a book feels like to me - the downhill half of a hike.

2. Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young. I've been reading this devotional since last summer, and like it a lot. It always reminds me how much Jesus loves me.

Who You Are is Who I Am

I'm going to use this space to sound off today. Yes, I feel a rant coming on.

First, I want to emphasize that my world is a reflection of what I am.

That guy across the room who I invited into my life space is a part of me.

So if I complain about him, I'm complaining about me.

If I criticize him, I'm criticizing a part of myself because obviously, I wanted him here for some reason. He completed me and I just had to have him.

Why do we do these things to ourselves?

We're here to learn.

It isn't always easy, nor should it be.

We learn more from what pains us than from fun and games.

So, take your pick.

I obviously chose to learn from various types of suffering... but today I'm calling one particular suffering out... and that is abandonment.

Yes, abandonment.

I've been abandoned repeatedly during this lifetime, and it has happened again.

There have been times I was abandoned due to no fault of my own except my own unenlightened non-seeing of reality. There have been other times I was abandoned because I had a meltdown.

Gosh, how imperfect can I get?

But eventually you have to see that the meltdowns, the bad, the negatives, the mistakes you make, the errors, the pathetic imperfections - they are all part of the learning process.

From this you / I / we become the people we were intended to be.

These errors are the food of wisdom.

* * *

I have two predictions today.

(1) During 2013 we will totally recover from our fear of 2012, and

(2) During 2013 we will collectively work much more enthusiastically on creating a better future for the creatures of this planet.

* * *

Abandoned into Abundance
Buy at Amazon

Now we as human beings must remember........... we are not alone.

We are togetherness personified.

We are human beings. A group. You could say, a soul group. A cluster.

Related.

When we get angry at someone else it is the same as getting angry at a part of ourselves.

When a part of ourselves abandons us... it means you can learn more from that pain than from the part that left.

The pain becomes part of you instead.

The loss becomes part of you.

And from that, new wisdom blooms.

Your heart is opened a little wider.

You become the amazing being you were intended to be.

Goodbye old friends. Hello new me.

What an amazing blessing!

Bewilderment Avenue

Remember that road sign... Linda Jo Highway? (See two posts below this one). Well, I think I've already come to Bewilderment Avenue. It happened like this. My daughter finally got a blog going this year. I will not give you the link because its a privacy issue. But I'm happy to say she's been writing extensively and I'm very proud of her somewhat profane efforts.

Anyhow, she managed to get the attention of her father (who hasn't seen her since she was three months old) and her paternal grandmother. So after about a month of visiting her site he finally started emailing and imailing with her. She was happy about that. Then a few days later he started badmouthing me and saying he wanted to sue me because he thought the kids weren't educated well enough. This quick judgment call was based on him quizzing her in imail on what she knew about World War 2 and the Constitution.

My daughter responded by calling me into their imail chat on MSN. This was the first time I'd chatted with him in years. I exchanged a few emails with him a few years back but other than that hadn't talked to him since we separated in 1989. And instead of being friendly he was attacking me and threatening to sue. And he claimed to be paying child support even though we didn't receive it. Hmmm.

Then a few days later I imailed him, we got through some anger and eventually agreed to work together for our kids' best interest and not to fight and sue each other in court. So I went to see a family law attorney in a town two hours distant from our home. Then I wanted to imail him to tell him what I found out, and discovered he's blocked me on MSN.

So this is Bewilderment Avenue. I've got no idea why he's cut off communication but I will guess it has more to do with his own failings that with ours. And by the way, the Family Support department says it hasn't received that child support he claims he sent and they're doing the research to see if it went to a different county or to the state.