Start small, I guess.

If you haven’t been doing something for a while (oh, like exercising, eating veggies, cleaning your ears, whatever), I guess you should start small.

So here’s a bitty post :)

In fact, it’s a post I started in September, when my mom was still here for our lovely late-summer new habit of a visit for just us girls. When I looked at my blog today and saw this unfinished post from last year, I honestly laughed out loud. I just saw Linda (mentioned below and pictured below from our weekend visit) this past Saturday night for the first time in over two years and one of the first things she asked me was about why was I not blogging / when would I be blogging again. How cute that the last post I was in the midst of references her blog!

Thus, I bring you September 2010:

Well, between adjusting to some new sample contact lenses, ordering my first progressive lenses for a new pair of glasses yesterday, and my mom leaving tomorrow morning, I am a little woozy this morning. Add to that a special morning work perplexity (the kind that's not easily solved and has a critically close deadline ... I don't love those), and my next thought is, "It's only Tuesday?"

My pal Linda has been posting like the maniac for Jesus she is (hope she likes that description; it's a compliment!) and there is something in each share that I appreciate. This morning it was a post from her past weekend. I love how she describes a conversation a friend of hers, who is recovering from a stroke, had with Jesus about what she no longer has as she continues life in what feels like incomplete healing: "I don't have that anymore." God made her laugh and reminded her that there aren't any “its” she needs; she has Him. He is more than enough.

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Back to January 2011:

I think I started writing that post because there are a bunch of things I don’t have anymore, either. I certainly don’t feel like I have the smarts I once did, and my command over words, my one super power, is dribbling away like a melty ice cream cone. I sit there frequently with my mouth gaping, waiting for the right word to pop in so it can leap out to keep my story or my point moving. Mostly, drool just shows up instead.

Oh, and I apparently no longer have control over my facial muscles in my sleep. That drool thing began to kick into high gear on my pillow this year. Ewww! I have learned to scooch to the dry spot and faint away into sleep again.

But there are lots of things I DO have. The love of a faithful God to a frequently faithless girl. Friendships that keep getting better and better. Family that still laughs with me and at me (I need both kinds of chuckles!).

Grace to remember what I have and grace to celebrate what I don’t, please, Jesus! Amen!