The Giant Who Crushed My Spirit With Big Fancy Shoes

I'm sure every modern person with any kind of social network has taken that trip down memory lane, purposefully or not so much.  Today a friend of a friend commented on something and it took me down a bitter road of memories.  Nowadays everyone is offendable, deletable, expendable.  We can toss someone like an old hat on a whim or a grimace.  I'm not discounting your feelings...but before the internet was an every-day appliance it was a lot harder to read between the lines when you met someone.  People in authority stayed in authority and you could rarely get a glimpse behind the curtain.  (Especially people with something to hide!)  There wasn't a button you could click to see more about their hidden agendas, opinions or accomplishments.  This by no means infers you should trust someone because of what it says on their profile!  It's just that the mystery of who a person was made you a little more slow to approach.  Maybe a little more quick to assume their position in life was what it was.  I don't know why I spent time today thinking about some of these people who had a negative impact on my life.  Some people I unconsciously got away from before getting away from someone was a popular modern internet, relationship and self-help phenomenon.  

Thanks to modern technology one of those beyond-difficult people showed up in my living room today.  Sitting on my couch, minding my own business, someone who deeply hurt me with their callous personality and dastardly people skills was all of a sudden on my screen.  This was a person who I was supposed to show respect and allegiance to.  Ironically that person was friends with some of the other people I really had no interest in ever seeing again.  And guess what?  Those scary far-off (in memory and geography) places looked a lot smaller than they use to.  Those people looked a lot less exciting and important than they use to.  I don't see any reason to please them or impress them or be anything like them.  I'm not impressed with who they are and, from this distance of time, I can see who they truly are.  For maybe the first time that felt good.  Instead of feeling helpless or downtrodden...I felt a little bad for them.  I know, totally cliche', right?!  But true.  I could go down the next road...the one where they are totally lame and I am not.  ;)  But I'll just chalk it up to...God tells me to forgive and love them, anyway.  And I never have to go back to that place (or page!) again.

Renovate

Last year I had a word of the year. I didn't know it was a real thing...I just keep getting this one word in my head...I don't remember what the word was but I think it was something along the lines of "contentment" I refuse to look it up because I know I didn't follow the advice all year.  I know know if I'd considered that word something from God that would help me all year, it would have!  

So it's probably a beginning of the year thing, but sometime in February (it took all of January for me to realize I should have listened to last years' word).  Note that last year, we were trying to get an 1880's nearly 3,000 sq ft house which would have helped fulfill our dreams of growing our family and also doing foster care.  But it all fell through (super long story) and so we just unlisted our house last week or so because our future we were certain of (apparently forgetting we are humans) is a little fuzzy now.  Anyway, the new word that's been on my mind is Renovate.  When I say on my mind, I don't think it's random, I think it's something positive that God sends me way.  (Sorry, I'm one of those.)  Soooooooo - renovate took me a while to swallow.  But it's a positive moving forward and taking what you have and making it new and different.  It's exciting and a grand alternative to sitting in our possible misery while we wait for the next, literal, move.  Which is what we already started doing in January without planning it!  We pretty much changed most of what we were doing, rather how we were doing it...and started over.

We're at our third "at bat" with the Dave Ramsey snowball plan (www.daveramsey.com).  Another thing we are excited about.  I keep trying to justify a vacation...but we're not there.  We have so much, stuff.  If we renovate...it means appreciating what we have, getting rid of what doesn't work, and only adding what makes things better.

Oh, and I'm liking the complete bareness of this white blog.  But maybe, by the time 2016 rolls around...I'll be ready to renovate that too.