Milestones

milestonesWhat was the last major milestone experience in your life and when did it happen?  A milestone is a significant event that happens to you, or a loved one, which forever changes your view on life, and can even reset your personal priorities. It can be good or bad, inevitable or sudden, but a milestone creates a permanent change in you.

Marrying Lea thirty-four years ago was my most significant milestone event, and it was inevitable.  God put us together and we never looked back.  Because of the first milestone I was able to have three more; the births of my children.  These four events didn’t just change me and my view of life; they made me, because I would have lived an incomplete existence if not for them.  There are other milestones of course: I quit smoking at age 21, one of the best decisions I have ever made. When I was 50, I returned to school to obtain an MBA, which has become a path altering event. Of course, when I stopped hiding from God, and let him find me in my early twenties, I crossed a milestone that has had eternal consequences for me and my family.

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Take The Next Turn

road-trip1The term “Road Trip” immediately injects a vision of excitement and fun into an undertaking that often morphs into a mundane act of getting from here to there.  When driving, we usually focus on where we were or where we are going.  In the morning while driving to work we think about the challenges of today or about the family we left at home.  When driving to Disneyland, we focus on Mickey Mouse and the Matterhorn; we are concerned with the destination (as we should be), the method to get there is generally unimportant.  Although a road trip must have a starting and ending point (often the same place), the reason we get excited is because of the journey; it is the “getting to” part, not the here or there that produces a broad smile, and unleashes our inner world-explorer self.  A road trip is about having fun with where we are at that moment in time, and less concerned about where we have been and where we will be.  Often on a road trip there is not an established timetable, or schedule; you float from place to place absent the worry of being late.  

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The Apple’s Seed

sprouting-seed-1The apple fell to earth as the couple ran from the garden, landing with a small bounce allowing a lone seed to loosen from its fleshy white home and touch the fertile soil.  Now free, the seed burrowed deep into the earth, past topsoil and roots which might compete for life giving nutrients, toward the safety of rock and clay.  Here, in the moist and cold darkness of life’s foundation, the seed waited for the renewal of light into its world.

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Changes

Dear Journal,

I lived through another night.  Funny, just a few years ago not living for any reason wasn’t something that I considered.  Now, with all that has happened over the last 24 months, just being alive is a miracle.  Although what I am doing isn’t really living…it is existing until I don’t anymore.  If this journal survives, maybe it will help someone smarter than I am understand what has happened.  I am not really sure.

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Once Upon A Time…

    Once upon a time, in a land not very far away there was a small town, nestled in brown rolling hills and oak trees, inhabited with mostly happy people who got along with each other and with neighboring cities.  Gardens were planted, golf was played, churches attended, businesses thrived, and many a feast was eaten; that is until the day of the great let down.  On that day the banks, money changers, manipulators, and Federal Regulators let everyone down: and so the Great Recession began.  Every town had lived through recessions in the past, but nothing had been seen in decades like the Great Recession.  Where once flowers had grown on the land between the lanes of traffic now stood people with cardboard signs asking for work or food.  Stores, restaurants and shops all over the land closed their doors, leaving many people without a way to care for their family.  When people could not pay their mortgage, the same banks from the great let down threw the people to the street.  Families cried, asking their leaders for help. 

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