Life lately . . . what a trip. Seriously more has happened in the last week of my life than I thought I could handle.

-For the first time I saw my dad as a human being, and not only that, but a human being deserving of great compassion.
-I also called my dad. The day after I wrote my post about understanding and compassion, I called him. I called to see if he had gotten the letter I had sent him the week before and I called to tell him that I loved him, since it had been years since those words had come out of my mouth. The conversation was simple, but really good. I am going to keep writing him and he might even come out and visit after the weather breaks. Who knows what will happen, but it is a start . . . a good start.
-I had a really good conversation with my friend Heather last Wednesday night. I found hope in her exclamation, “You are crazy if you think that’s all there is or is ever going to be”. I am working on not being crazy.
-I had an awesome talk with the Stetler’s on Friday . . . not that all my interactions with them are not pretty fabulous, but this particular conversation was really good, I put good use to my newly acquired communication skills.
-My friend Jen from high school came and spent the weekend here in Columbus. It was good time . . .I had a lot fun and it was simply cool to see her. She got a good glimpse of my life here in Columbus, got to meet some of the awesome people that make up my life and even got to play a round of hide and seek with Riley & Trey.
-The work week has begun and is half way over at this point. And it feels as though I have been dragging all week. The first thing I think about on Monday morning is how long I have to wait till the weekend. I need to work on a better attitude. I suppose I will just add that to my to-do list.
-I spent a good portion of yesterday (well my free time yesterday) reading "Jesus' Plan For A New World" by Richard Rohr. I have really enjoyed reading it thus far and have gotten quite a bit out of it. Thanks for the recommendation Kyle.

And now it is Thursday morning and I am only two eight hour shifts away from the weekend.

I've got a few minutes left to get ready before morning prayers . . .

Peace to you and yours.

A few months ago, heck for all of my life up until this past week, I could have been quoted saying “Screw open and honest communication, it takes too much work and it is just not worth it”. And I really meant it.

But sometime last week that all changed. As I realized that my fear base for life was slowly disappearing the prospect of real, open and honest communication became a reality.

As is this case with most big life lessons or important changes, I needed to arrive at this point on my own. People could have and did talk to me endlessly about the importance of communication, telling me about its great value and what a great thing it would be for my life. And not only that, but that it was neccecsary, as in I could not live, live life to the fullest with out it. I heard them, I listened to what they were saying, but it did not change my disinterest in having “open and honest communication” as a part of my life.

And then sometime last week, in a very anti-climatic moment, as in I did not even realize that my thoughts and perspectives were changing, I just understood the value of communication, the freedom it brought (especially when you remove my ever present fear from the equation) and the beauty it added. I decided it was something that I wanted and needed to be a part of my life and ran with it.

And I haven't found cause to regret it yet.

This quote was brought to my attention (and my inbox) by a really cool person yesterday :

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." - Anais Nen

It is very timely and very true.

Thank you.

No words can do justice to today.

This afternoon I found myself overwhelmed with love. With the desire to love and have compassion on a man named John Leonard. To love him as a human being and not a representative of all the mistakes he has made and all the hurt he has caused me. Today all I wanted to do was call him up and tell him that I loved him, and that my search for understanding, has birthed in me this deep compassion for him.

I received an envelope in the mail today from my mom. She told me she was sending it to me on Saturday, so I knew it was coming, but I had forgotten to expect it. When I brought in the mail this afternoon, I saw it there, and I knew exactly what it was. While looking through her bible she had come upon something my dad had written during one of his many rehab stays. It is entitled "Family" and in the pages he wrote he talks about his childhood and what his family was like as he grew up. Most of the stuff that he wrote, I already had a general idea about.

But when I sat down this afternoon and read his words for myself, something in me broke. I reread them and read them again. And the only conclusion I could come to, the only thing that I kept thinking, was that I simply wanted to love him. To love him as a person, to love the broken man that his life has made him.

I thought about calling him to tell him all this. But then I wondered whether he would care that I had come to this revelation. I wondered whether or not it would matter to him that something pretty huge had changed in me. I wondered how awkward the phone conversation would play out . . . how I would progress from the "Hey, how are you?" which has been the only words we usually exchange to sharing my heart, to telling him that I love him. I wondered why he has not commented at all (not even to my mother) about the letter I sent him last week. Part of me wondered if he even cared about the letter I sent him, or if things (things being our relationship) are just too far gone and lost in the past to be healed.

A big part of me really wants to feel hope about all this . . . but hope and expectations are such delicate things . . . so easily shattered. One can only allow herself to be shattered so many times.

But I do love him . . . I love him more than I am angry at him, I love him more than I feel hurt and abandoned. I love my dad.

Three weeks really isn't really that long of a time period. Not much time at all, yet it feels like an eternity. Like each day that passes, each day that I can add on to the time span is a great victory. It has been three weeks and one day. And like I said, it feels like an eternity. I pretty much think about it every day, telling myself it has been one more day and that I will make it through another.

Relationships are hard. At least they are for me. Anything that seems to matter to me in life comes with a great cost. The relationships that matter take a lot of work. Work that I am sometimes unwilling to do or maybe I am unable. I like to drift off to the place in my head where I allow myself to just exist, no working or trying or pushing forward, just simply being. But that is generally a place of solitude or even lonliness. You can't have people in your life if you don't work at it.

All in all life has been pretty calm lately. Well at least in the day to day movement of it all. Other than being asked some big questions in the last couple of weeks and dealing with effects of their heavy answers, I would say I am doing pretty okay. I actually have not decided yet whether or not I will actual deal with the questions that have been asked of me lately, cause I do have the option to ignore them for the time being. And ignoring them at this particular moment in my life, would actually not be that big of deal, cause only the person that asked them and one other friend knows what they are. It would be perfectly acceptable to not even think about them again, no one would be dissappointed, well maybe they would be a little, but only because they know me to be a person that has not backed down from any challenge of dealing with uncomfortable shit that has come across my path in the last three years. I have always tried to be a person that has moved forward with my life, with the things that need to be dealt with, despite how they make me feel. Being that type of person is the reason I made my way out to Columbus.

I know I have been extremely vague in this post and I don't really care. I needed to write this for myself, to put down in writing some of the intensity that has been happening in my head. And now I think am done.

Peace.

"I want to learn how to live so that to see
someone is to pray for them."
~Frank Laubach

It is raining tonight.

The light at the intersection of Olentangy and King is out.

I am not such a big fan of driving in the rain, or in the dark, or in traffic.

I've never really been a fan of that . . .

The postage rate was raised to thirty nine cents yesterday.

I know this because I needed to buy stamps to mail a birthday card, a few "greeting" cards, a check to my mother and a letter.

This letter that I mailed, well it is hard to believe that I finally wrote it. It has been on my to do list for months now and yesterday, while sitting at the Leen-O coffee shop, I decided to write it. I finished it last night a little after 9 pm. I put it in the envelope, sealed it and this morning I dropped it in the mail box.

I took the first step . . . now it is up to him to take the next.