One Is Just A Number

The photo above is what I picture when I think of "Calling", a heavenly inspiration of divine proportions that let's you know what you are supposed to do. I keep searching for that in my life but so far, there have been no burning bushes. The closest I've come is starting my charcoal grill too close to my roses. So for lack of a Moses moment, I have to go with what nags at me - you should be writing on your blog. It's the feeling that hits me when I look at my inbox and see all of the blog posts I've subscribed to. It is confirmed in the joy I feel when I do sit down and write. And it is the ache in me that wishes I could help people heal broken hearts like mine. For the next 31 days, I'm going to do my best to honor that calling and write. Since I haven't come up with something that speaks to me as a theme, I'm going to push myself out of a comfort zone and write on the Five-Minute Free Writes topics. For the past couple of years I've co...

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 Celebrate. Yesterday I posted the photo above for Throwback Thursday, one taken during my college days. I was so shocked when it got over 50 likes. The compliments I received on it made me blush. But there were some responses that made me bristle. I had several people say "I remember her." This happens fairly often, mostly from people I knew in my childhood and youth. I guess in a way, they don't know the me today. When I did the math, I realized that photo was taken 35 years ago. After experiencing a tightness in my chest after that revelation, I decided to celebrate instead of mourn. Yes, that was 35 years ago. It was my freshman year in college, a time when I had my whole life ahead of me. The roads I thought were before me the day that photo was taken are ...

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 Same. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting different result. You can never step into the same river twice. For some reason, those two things contradict each other in my mind. You don't do anything but step into the river, you don't change anything but you are doing the same thing you did five minutes before, stepping into the river. But maybe they are different. Maybe by giving it another try, you are expecting a different result. By giving it another try, you are breaking the cycle of hopelessness and giving hope another chance. I haven't written on my blog since Ash Wednesday. No, I didn't give it up for Lent, I didn't even mean to not write on it. It just happened. And the more I thought about it, the more ...

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...

Five Minute Friday is a writing event that has hundreds of 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 Wait. Wait, oh how I hate that word. I have often said when they were handing out patience, I was holding the door for the others to file in and receive theirs. Just as recently as two weeks ago, I had someone say, "Just wait" in reference to understanding the reasons for the pain caused by my divorce. I responded with, "Damn it!" A more eloquent way of putting it would have been to say, "but I want my answers right now." The photo above is of the clock tower in St. Mark's Square in Venice. Not only does it tell the time, it displays the position of the sun in the zodiac, and it also has an angel that emerges during Epiphany and Easter. It reminds me of waiting. When I pray, I want results right away, in a period of time that can be conv...