Focusing on Life : Self Portrait + WFTY

Me

January 12, 2012

I'm late to the Focusing on Life party, mainly because I haven't been very focused on my own lately. That is due in part to "Please sir, anything but that.", but also because in recent months I've been reminded that focusing my attention on doing for others makes my own life worth acknowledging.

This cancer scare with my mom brought so much perspective.  I am a firm believer that every thing happens for a reason, and that whether I am in the middle of learning a lesson or reaping the benefit of a blessing what matters most to me in this world is being true to the truth in my soul.  To love, to comfort, to support, to tend, to nurture, to heal that which I can.

Everything else is a stage prop in the playing out of this human journey.

It was with that in mind that I selected my Word For The Year.

God.

I have fallen short many times in my life of acknowledging Him first.  Human nature is one of survival, of bared teeth when threatened with harm to ourselves or those we love, of strongholds on the things we treasure, of stumbling and falling.  But it also one of standing back up.  Of compassion and forgiveness. Of starting over.  Of taking a chance because faith not only makes it okay, but because it insists we embrace the wholeness of both certainty and risk.  Following a calling chances peril, but a life lived ignoring one guarantees it.

Everything that I am, have been, or will become is already known to God.   In spite of that, He is still with me.  Twenty thirteen will find me appreciating that more often and finding as many ways as I can to honor Him with my actions, my words, and my work.

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