Confession Tuesday - Blessings Edition

Dear Reader:

Sometimes I don't quite know where to start on Confession Tuesday. Life can be funny. You can go through a week and think back and nothing or everything jumps out at you. Sometimes you don't know what on earth you are going to confess and sometimes there are so many places you can go you don't know what to whittle it down to. This week is neither of those.

As I look at this past week there are three places that I need to go with this confession. I will work sort of in reverse order of the magnitude of these .

On Saturday I turned  #@. I confess that I always meet my birthdays with a mixtd perspective. I'm not especially enamored by being a year older yet I am happy to be here given the alternative. Age has always been difficult to me.  I did have a wonderful dinner with part of my family that was available. We dined at the Olive Garden. Among those present was Harper. I confess that Harper brings so much joy to life. She is my granddaughter and she is so stinking cute that I'm certain it cannot be legal. She is going to be a talker. At just under three months old she can jabber up a storm. My daughter tagged me with a Happy Birthday video of her on Facebook. I've listened to it so many times It could seem like it went viral. So, altogether my birthday was a plus. I am grateful  to be alive and - life is good!

It would however not be a life without disappointments. They are after all the valley by which we measure the elevation of the mountains. I was disappointed this past week by something related to my writing that did not happen. Details aren't important. What is important is that like everyone else who ever pursues something - you sometimes have hopes that  do not fully address reasonable expectations. I'm accustomed to rejection letters and they rarely phase me. But this was something the left me feeling down on Friday - the day before my birthday. I am reconciled with the matter now. I know more about the situation to understand the long odds of the program.  I view this disappointment and greater understanding as a blessing- something I would never have said on Friday.

The last of this week's confessions is more tricky. It starts at a place unlike the previous with absolutely no expectation. As it turns out I was the beneficiary of very generous gift. It came from a family member who said they were led to do what they did by the Holy Spirit. Again, the details of the gift are not the story here, the story is that this came from out of nowhere. My first reaction was oh hell no, It's not something I feel deserving of. It's a significant sacrifice. But I in no way question that this person prayed about this and feels strongly about being moved by the Holy Spirit in this direction. As uncomfortable as this makes me on one hand, it is undeniably a blessing. How can one argue with the Holy Spirit and the love of the giver.

I have laid out before you three confessions. Through it all this week has been a week of blessings.
I'm thankful for the life I have, the people in it, and these blessings. I look forward to what is ahead...

Amen~

Confession Tuesday & Gratitude Thursday

Dear Reader:

I hope you will pardon me if I attempt to kill two days with one stone.

Yes, I confess that I missed Tuesday's Confession because of the 2014 MLB All-Star Classic. Since baseball is simply poetry in motion, and poetry is so close to Godliness, I am relatively certain that there  exists a special disposition for significant games, those being any game that occurs between opening day and the end of the World Series. 

So much has happened since my last confession. One being a very traumatic start to the weekend when we were arriving at puppy class Saturday morning and newly adopted rescue dog named Silas got free from my wife and leash trailing behind him dissipated into a large wooded area behind our destination. We were in Gladstone, another community miles and miles away from home.  I confess that throughout the some 12 hours that Silas was missing  I vacillated between optimistic and pessimistic.  Actually I was optimistic he would surface, but not so much that he would be back home that night. 

I have to say we were really blessed by a large number of persons most of whom we do not even know that answered a call put out  by my daughters for help in searching. So many people, some we kind of know by name but not well and others who are totally  strangers to us. As I searched the perimeter streets I cam upon car after car with  stickers in the back window that Identified them with KC PET PROJECT. These people turned out in droves to help with the search.  Late afternoon we disbanded and leafleted and headed home. a few hours later  we were called back o the area because Silas had been spotted.   A couple more hours of search, all of us tired and hot, including Silas, we were reunited and went home.

I confess the number of  KC Pet Project people who came to assist  gave me more hope.  Silas is a rescue dog and he still has some anxiety issues. He is not  likely to approach someone he has no knowledge of. But he is dog friendly so many brought their own dogs on leashes.  In the end, it was my son-in-law Brandon who first  spotted him and my  youngest daughter (great with child) who carried him out of the woods. 

On another note, I am counting my blessings that a trip to my physician seems to have largely, for the time being ended what has been a two month period of ongoing and severe headaches. I confess that these headaches were taking a heavy toll on me. 

On the writing side of life, I confess to receiving one rejection letter this past week, but I now figure I'm due for an acceptance any day now. 

I've been able to take a few hours of vacation time. I'm often so close to my maximum that I'm having to take a few hours every week just to keep from being truncated (losing time)... In fact I got off at 3PM today! Yeah!

So this past week has really been a very good week it turns out. Not without stressors, but in the final analysis it has been one to be very thankful form.

Confession Tuesday - Gratitude Edition

Dear Reader:

I’m a day late, but I had a poetry group meeting last night and rather then head to the confessional, I elected to watch some TV with my wife. So I confess that it’s been a week and a day since my last confession. Shall we get started?

 I confess that I have a wonderfully supportive wife when it comes to my writing. I know not all writers have supportive families that encourage or help in other ways. My wife may not always understand my writing but what she understands is that writing is a central tenet to my life. It’s like water. It’s air. It is the lifeblood of my day to day mental health. Okay, no wise cracks…. I’m as normal as any writer.

 Sometimes I will come home from work and there will be an event that evening and it’s been a rough day and I may say, “I just don’t know if I’m up for it tonight.” She will sometimes say something like, Oh go on, and you’ll feel better in the end.” And many times I will buckle up and go. But if I’m really dragging and elect not to go, that’s okay too. She is not going to make me feel bad about my decision.

 A few months ago when we feared the crashing of my 6 year old laptop, she made sure I got out and got a replacement one in time. This weekend I was trying to get set up wirelessly to one of the printers on our network since I've been displaced from my home office and it was not easy for me to get to my old printer, she took time out of her busy day to see that this happened when I had trouble with the network.

 I confess that I could not ask for a more supportive person in my life.

 Amen!