I Read Too Much

This morning, like many others, I awoke to numerous notifications on my phone.  One of which, was for a post made in the Christian Moms Who Write group I am a member of. The post was a simple question, made by the group founder and admin, "What encourages you most about the Easter celebration?" I didn't hesitate in penning (errr...rather swyping) my response. After all, the answer had actually been heavy on my heart since I awoke Friday. Good Friday is many things to many people. I look to it and see the good it holds - perhaps why it was coined as such - the fact my Savior willingly died for me.  However, to look at it in those terms only, in my eyes, is to miss the sorrow and to mourn its occurrence. I woke yesterday with the hymn, How Great Thou Art playing on repeat in my head. (My absolute favorite hymn.) And truly, who could deny His greatness? My verbatim response to her question was: "Easter encourages me on so many levels but before it does that, i...

I am not a very trusting person.  You can blame it on the number of ways and times people, and life in general, have let me down - I do.  I keep people at arms length because I don't inherently trust.  In new environments I rarely talk, and if I do it is about those things I feel are worthy of discussion.  To be honest, even if I know you for a long time, there is still a part of me that doesn't trust you.  Not that you are secretly plotting to do ill towards me, but because I don't even want to give you a chance to.  Call it what you will, I call it self preservation. It's an ugly beast of a thing that lives in my head. It causes me to destroy friendships before they get off the ground and alienate myself in many social settings (my social anxiety does a lot of this too...so it is hard sometimes to tell which beast is gaining ground). I find the older I get, the more introverted I become.  I don't know if it is from my general need to declutter my d...

I'm not a water person. I don't long for beaches and ocean views for as far as the eye can see. I don't plan extravagant tropical vacations and I most certainly don't envy those who do.  Yet, I live in an area surrounded by water.  Lakes.  We are surrounded by lakes. LOTS of them and great big ones too - ahem...as in The Great Lakes . I can literally travel 20 minutes in any direction and be at a lake, river, or stream.  I am also not a fan of boats. They scare me.  It's not that they are inherently bad, but more because their sole purpose is to put me smack dab in the middle of said body of water and well, NO THANK YOU!!! Despite my general dislike for the water, I do appreciate the beauty of it. (I know, I often wonder about myself, too!) In fact, I don't mind looking at pictures of beautiful ocean/beach landscapes, hiking trails along a lake or river, and going to see certain bodies of water - like, say, waterfalls.  In fact, some of my favorite pictur...