Rambling Out Loud

On my commute I have a lot of time to think, and one of the things that I've been pondering in my car is a slower pace of life. I think about when people would sit on their porches with lemonade and just talk to each other. I imagine a game of Scrabble or checkers or chess while watching the world go by.  No phones. No social media. No marathoning Netflix.  Just friends, family, and conversation.  I used to think that quietly sitting on the porch would be the most boring waste of an afternoon, but now I'm beginning to think they were on to something. Our life is so fast-paced now. Work, school, social events, sporting events, church, lessons, grocery shopping, cleaning, and the list goes on... I long to just sit in silence and companionship.  Oh, I'm good at sitting still with my phone. Sometimes I will lounge on my bed and glance up to realize I've sat there for two hours flipping through Facebook and Pinterest. How much of my life am I wasting on this device

Lately I've been thinking about regrets. Maybe it's because I'm halfway to ninety and life is going by quickly. Maybe I'm having a midlife crisis. Or maybe God is just moving. Regardless of the reasons, these are some things from my heart.  Around ten years ago a great friend who had been with me through many years and some tough times got married. We had both been through breakups and supported one another through single parenting. I babysat for her preschoolers. She helped with my anxious teenager. We laughed (a lot) and sometimes cried together.  Eventually she met a man that was perfect for her, and a decade later (give or take) they are still going strong. One of my biggest regrets is not going to their wedding. My excuse was illness, but the truth was more complicated.  I would love to say it was my depression and anxiety, and that may have been a small part of it. However, when you strip it down the truth is ugly. I was jealous. In retrospect, I think she

I've been thinking about writing a book for most of my life. It keeps changing in my head. Sometimes it is fiction. Sometimes it is a children's book. Sometimes it is Christian non-fiction. Sometimes it is so jumbled and strange it doesn't fit into a category...and this explains why I have yet to write a book!  My brain is like a laptop with too many tabs open on the browser. There is so much going on it's hard for the processor to catch up.  However, I think I finally have a direction for the moment. I recently decided that the only way to get there is to focus on one idea and finish it. This is easier said than done, as I am easily distracted. Some days I feel like I have so much to say, but once I sit down at the laptop my mind goes blank. Writer's block? Complete terror? I'm not sure, but it is frustrating.  In an effort to force myself to write no matter what, I am setting a goal to write every day. I am putting it on the blog for my own form of accou