My friend Kris has described her husband as the kind of pastor who on Sunday mornings doesn't pass out bowls to for the parishoners' pablum. He would rather encourage thinking by placing a small pebble in their shoes. She and I have discussed how very much her husband and I are alike and how very similar her personality is to my husband. It helps us reconcile annoyances and minor grievances. I know that I can count on her to point out, with the proper measure of humility and humor, how wonderful R is and to perhaps encourage me to extend him the benefit of charity. It is a wonderful and blessed friendship.

I am like Travis. When I write, I don't necessarily give the reader a point-by-point post. I do occasionally have an agenda, but more often than not, I want to gently take the reader down the path I am describing, and hope that they will recognize similarities or differences and be prompted to share them. It is through this process that I feel I can know myself and the very reason that I started this blog. I seem to have a resounding need to know that others have and/or are enduring and prospering in this life; that they are both loathe to embrace it's enigmatic charm and weakened to love of it's charismatic draw.

I recall thinking that my in-laws weren't very mature Christians. This conclusion was justified to me because, while they attended church, prayed, participated in communion and ministering to their families and the other saints, they rarely mentioned "God" or "Jesus" in conversations. I had grown-up in a fundamentalist faith where the mark of your sincerity was how often you said those names. I now am humbled by my incorrect judgement of them. Theirs is truly a sustaining and profoundly deep faith. I now recognize that the Trinity is so much a part of who they are, there is no need to put on a show of names as proof as such. (Please no reading-between the lines, those who do frequently mention the name of God often aren't lacking, worse, or poseurs). For example, I know my hair is brown. I see it many times a day. I wash it, condition it, weave it, iron it, etc. It is a part of who I am, but I don't need to constantly bring it to the attention of others to make it somehow more real or to validate it's existence in my life. This is how I have come to see my God in my life. He is everywhere and in everypart of me. His Providence moves my heart to beat, my lungs to breathe, my mind to think. His love draws me to forgive and seek forgiveness. While there is place for purposed prayer and I can only affirm it's goodness, I find that my thoughts are prayers to Him; that my plea for help in finding the keys is to the Lord.

I am by no means where I should be, but in all of this I have seen the hope that I will eventually be there. And oh, the Glory of it when it comes.