Let Your Ripples Sparkle and Dance All the Way to the Shore

My daughter is in the process of making a very important life choice. Will she continue with the military a few more years or will she come home and begin the business of having her life as her own again?

It sounds like it would be an easy decision, but it has caused her a lot of stress. She has had to assess where she is in life as opposed to where she wants to be. She has had to calculate the best path to take, to get where she wants to be. She has had to look at what her hearts desires are and what path to take to see them fulfilled. There are always a multitude of angles that must be considered  when making these decisions. My son is in the process of opening his own business. He has a ton of choices to make, location, promotion, long-term vs. short-term goals. These decisions will not only affect him but those who are in business with him and the future of their families years down the road. Those are not decisions that can or should be taken lightly. He's also had to make the decision to resign from his current position as volunteer coordinator at the shelter where he works. The shelter, the people he has worked with and the clients he has helped has been a big part of his life the last couple of years and although he isn't letting it go completely, he won't be as intimately involved as he has been. There's a little ache there, the pains of letting go.  Life goes on, you make choices when you are young and those choices follow you around one way or another

for the rest of your life. Some choices seem like no big deal, but will they seem that way years down the road? Our choices mold
us into the people we become and the goal is to never stop becoming.... always becoming
more. It may seem that the choices of your
youth are more difficult than the choices you make as you mature, that isn't so.
Everyday I wake up to a multitude of choices that will effect not only me, but my co-workers, family, friends and my future grandchildren.

Most choices are Black/White, Right/Wrong, and I think I'm the one who adds the gray area that tends to cause the problems. Some mornings I wake up and I am raring to make good choices, other mornings I have to make a concentrated effort to be wise, focused and thoughtful with my choices.... To pick up my cross and bear it for the cause of Christ.  I told someone the other day that when Christ said "It is finished", as he died on the cross not only was he talking about the work he came to do, but the fact that the battle against his flesh (because he did battle it) was over. I believe that Christ, being fully human, experienced the draining, exhausting battle

between the Spirit and Flesh. So when I feel like giving up and just flipping a coin for the choice of the day, I have to remember it's not all about me. Like ripples in a pond caused by one drop of water.... Those ripples sparkle and dance all the way to the shore where others are standing, watching the mesmerizing affect one drop of water can make. Not all choices are do or die choices.
Often the most difficult choice of the day is when I get up in the morning and search for the perfect pair of shoes (those are the good days). The first choice of the day can determine the

direction your day takes. Just try wearing an uncomfortable, ugly pair of shoes all day and you will know that first choice can determine the smile or the frown on your face at the end of the day. Go out there today and make the best choices you can and if you remember nothing else, remember this... If you truly want to make an impact, fashion always trumps comfort and immediate gratification can cost you a lifetime of ripples on the pond of life. How are your ripples going to sparkle and dance today? Hopefully in a very good way...

Change Of Focus

I’ve been working the last several months on learning to run. I know that probably seems weird, but I’ve never been much of an athlete (unless you consider shopping a sport, for that I have a gold medal). I’m not one who enjoys suffering by choice much, which makes the whole athletic thing a little more difficult for me. I see these people running in the 102-degree heat, sweat pouring off of them and I think “How Cool”. I’ve always wished I was a little more determined about competition and endurance but that’s just not the way I’m wired. Anywhoo…. A friend asked if I would start running with her a few months ago, so I agreed. The first few weeks we ran on the track at the gym every morning, and for the first few weeks I was literally mad at her by the time our workout had ended. I had almost convinced myself that I had some kind of physical problem that caused me to feel like I was having an out of body experience about 39 seconds into my run. At 42 seconds into it run my thighs felt like they were literally made of steel and my feet felt like concrete blocks. The horrendous gasping noise that bellowed from my lungs pretty much disrupted the friendly basketball game that went on below us. Lucky for me we moved our workouts back to the treadmill and the elliptical machine where they belonged. My inability to gracefully suffer was more controllable on the machine. I didn’t completely give up on running, when on the treadmill I’ve been running a minute walking a few minutes and gradually working my way up to….. This morning. This morning I got in the zone, found my mojo, Stella got her groove! I found a spot on the wall in front of me, I created a visual image of His arms reaching out to catch me and I began to run. I continued to run toward that image and found I didn’t want to stop. I felt like I was flying. My legs didn’t hurt, my lungs weren’t screaming, all I could feel was an energizing light coming from someplace on that wall. When I ran past our scheduled workout time, my friend looked at me in complete amazement, (I have that affect on people sometimes) and asked what on earth had happened. It’s just a matter of changing my focus from being on me to being on Him.