One Is Just A Number

I had a hard time deciding how to observe Lent this year. I'm still fairly new to Lent so I'm still trying to grasp the meaning of it. The past two times I observed it, I gave up something. But I wanted to do something different this year, to go deeper spiritually. I wanted to take these 40 days to reshape my life and to strengthen my relationship with God. Right before I went to my church's Ash Wednesday service, I read a post by  A Sacred Journey and these words struck a chord with me: So often Lent is associated with death and with fasting, but that’s not the whole story. It’s about the stripping of the false self in order to call forth the true self—the imago dei . It’s about surrendering the things that don’t give life in order to allow the things that do to flourish. It’s about clearing away the brush of winter and making space in our lives so we can tend to the new growth that comes with spring. But as a sat in my pew, I still didn't know what my ...

Ponte Vecchio in Florence Five Minute Friday is a writing event that has writers spending five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing them at http://katemotaung.com/five-minute-friday/ . This week's word is When. One of my coworkers, Vicky, was placed in hospice care this week. Her doctors ran out of ways to fight the agressive form of cancer attacking her body. I've been trying to think of some way to give a life shortened far to soon some meaning. I don't want to feel the pain of the loss and move on, I want it to alter me in a positive way. One of the last conversations I had with Vicky was about Italy. She visited there several years ago with a friend and I went in the summer of 2013 with my sister. We discussed what we liked about it (this part of the conversation focused a lot on gelato) and what we did not like about it (other than some of the main sites, neither one of us was too fond of Rome) and we discussed what we wanted to see when we wen...

Five Minute Friday is a writing event that has writers spending five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing them at http://katemotaung.com/five-minute-friday/ . This week's word is Keep. "Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold." I am really appreciating this saying these days. I have several distinct groups of friends that I have kept over the years - friends from growing up, friends from college, friends from adulthood, and now friends from church. Facebook has brought me back in touch with people from elementary, junior high, and high school. It has been wonderful to realize that some people have kept me in their hearts all this time. One friend that I went to school and church with teared up when I attended a gathering in her honor. Of all the people that came to see her that evening, it was seeing me that brought her to tears. That was such a moving experience, to realize that I could mean that much to someone. Li...