Clutter is not just physical stuff. It's old ideas, toxic relationships and bad habits.
Clutter is anything that does not support your better self.
Eleanor Brown

People lose their way when they lose their why.
Michael Hyatt — "Living Forward"

True confessions time. I'm an inherently disorganized person. Along with my tendency toward procrastination, it's one of the main things I don't like that about myself. Add that to being a bit of a pack-rat and, well, stuff starts to build up and quickly becomes that horrid thing that is the bane of all you organized types out there — clutter.

And since [……]

I just wanted to take a quick moment to say thank you to you, my dear readers and friends, for your support over the past year. Regular readers of the blog know that this has been a tough year but, through it all, God has been faithful and provided comfort through friends far and near. And in the midst of the darkest times, I've tried to seek Him more — to know more fully what His will is so I can better align my life and my actions with it. It doesn't take long to figure out that it's a [……]

Doubt is an uncomfortable condition,
but certainty is a ridiculous one.
Voltaire

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
believe me, than in half the creeds.
Alfred Lord Tennyson

I heard someone talking about doubt the other day and it set my brain into motion thinking about it. We often think of doubt as a negative thing — revealing our lack of faith, showing a character flaw, or ripping the veil from a deep-seated hopelessness that we tend to hide under a false bravado. And while those things may be true to various extents, they certainly don't tell the whole story.

I believe [……]

You hold my every moment
You calm my raging seas
You walk with me through fire
And heal all my disease
Michael Guglielmucci — "Healer"

We are stretched to make room for wholeness.
Anonymous

Treatments started last week. A week ago today, to be exact. Today marks the beginning of week two. And all in all I can say, so far so good. Obviously I can't make any pronouncements about the entire process at this point. It is, after all, only one week. And the first of several, at that. Everyone involved, including common sense, has said that the first couple weeks [……]

We all have two lives.
The second one begins when you
realize you only have one.
— Confucius

Even if the rain won't stop
Even when I'm falling down, down, down
I'll hold my head up high
Drink the rain and learn to fly away
Lauren Black — "Drink The Rain"

The tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be
Switchfoot — "Dare You To Move"

It's fitting on this Thanksgiving Day that God has been hitting me hard on two things.

The first, as I've mentioned in the past is [……]

All those times we looked up at the sky
Looking out so far, it felt like we could fly
Grace Potter — "Stars"

I was out walking my dog last night and it was so beautiful and clear out that the night sky was just filled with stars. More stars than are usually visible were shining all around and that never fails to make me pause and drink it in. It reminded me of when i used to run back in college. I would take off from in front of my dorm and head through the downtown of the small rural [……]

When did I become an idiot? I didn't use to be an idiot. I used to actually be rather smart (former Mensa member) and I had some real common sense. Now, however, that all seems to have left me to the point that some days it feels like I don't even know how to tie my own shoes. OK, that's hyperbole — but, truthfully, I sometimes find myself face to face with things that seem like they should be so obvious but that I simply haven't been able to get out of my own idiot way enough to see. And [……]

I've been thinking a lot recently about the concept of "they" and this habit we have of lumping people into groups. We're so good at doing that. We automatically separate everyone into various groups and slap labels on them so we can refer to them as some aggregate entity. I get why we do it. It's easier to deal with people that way. We don't get bogged down in all of the details that don't matter to whatever the topic of the day is. It's much easier to say "They said this" and "They want to do that."

It's such a [……]

Every new beginning comes from
some other beginning's end.
Semisonic — "Closing time"

As several people who I care about are going through transitions of some sort right now, I'm reminded that God is a God of new beginnings. Throughout the Bible, we see examples of God bringing people into a fuller knowledge of Him — and using them in powerful new ways — by leading them into a totally different lives that they never imagined. In the cases of Abram, Jacob, Saul and Simon this was marked by a change of name as well to make it even more evident [……]

I once heard someone ask, "If Jesus walked into your church, would he like what he found there?" The speaker was making the point that we tend to place so much meaningless emphasis on things that don't matter a hill of beans in the long run and I can't say that I disagreed with him. But through the years, I have come to believe that if Jesus came to Earth, he wouldn't walk into any church. Based on the examples shown in the Bible, I believe he would probably go hang out where the homeless folks congregate or go talk [……]