Change. To say the least.

Things have changed here.  I'm living with new feelings and have new issues to deal with.

What happens when we face such things like that?  What happens when our world turns upside down and those you thought you could trust become the very ones you have to protect yourself from?

Do we close ourselves off? Do we shut down and push people away?  I've got things like that I've been thinking about.  And I'm sure those who think they are helping with their opinion don't realize the mess they are actually making is worse than if they had just let me deal with these new issues on my own.

I'm just realizing how the things I thought would happen are not going to.  I thought I'd still be at the same church, I thought I'd be neck deep in a ministry.  I thought I'd have another book in the midst.  Instead, everything has changed.  I've had to leave my church home of 14 years and move out of the area my son has grown up in, back to my old stomping grounds.  I cringe thinking about where I am, but what I've realized with this change brings a newness.  I can actually start over.  Maybe right now I'm going to have to stay put, but there's this desire in me to chase a dream I've wanted to live out since I was a teenager...

So when things turn upside down I suggest to look closely, because you will be seeing things from a new point of view.  Things that you thought worked for you, you'll see they were more for comfort than necessity.  I don't suggest staying somewhere just because you don't want to move on.  Because God has plain as day removed me from the things I knew were only in my life for comfort.  Why?  Is God cruel?  No.  It's the same idea as not letting a 14 year old hold on to a safety blanket from when he was a baby, this child needs to learn how to become an adult.  They need to learn to stand up and be who they were meant to be.  And sometimes if the "bird" insists on staying in a nest instead of flying the "momma bird" will take it on herself to push that baby out of the nest.

Today I feel like I've been pushed out of the nest.  And now I have no choice but to fly.  So with a new year already in motion.. and an open opportunity to do whatever I want to do I'm going to start from scratch.  I'm going to do the things I've put off and change the things I should have in the past.

It's not a bucket list.. no it's more like the list from "My name is Earl".  He wrote a list of the things he needed to make up for, to make the wrongs he did right.  Maybe I wasn't a horrible person, but I have a list of things I wished I could have made right.  And first on my list?  My parents.  I live in their basement apartment and it's in need of attention, majorly.  At the moment the bathroom has my attention.  Last night I tore up the floor (that had ginormous holes in it) and today my plan is to fix that.

Wish me luck people... this year has lots of things to make up for, and they aren't going to be easy!

Before...