It's Time...

Today, I took the boys out for a walk. The sun was shinning. The wind was a mere breeze. The snow was melting. The birds were chirping. We spotted school buses. We spotted birdies. We spotted doggies. It was simply divine. And then...

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It grew mischievously overcast. The wind picked up. Cars that drove by had their lights on. I looked ahead. Black cloud. What did Mommy do? We were a half mile away from home. There wasn't a cloud in the sky when we had left! And the sky started spitting. And then spewing. The snow was falling sideways. And we were at the top of a hill, at the town graveyard. There were no trees in sight to block the wind. And I started to panic.

I began to run... with snow boots on. I kept checking on my kids. "It's gonna be okay babies." I would stop and open up my jacket to shield them from the snow and wind and cold. And I ran faster. And faster. I pulled their hats over their faces. The snow was stinging mine. And I kept running.

After about 10 minutes (I think I would have died in just one more) it stopped. The snow stopped. The wind stopped. The cold let up. I was so out of breath my lungs were on fire (dang freaking out-of-shape-body). And I'm not going to clean my ears with q-tips anymore! I had no wax in there for protection and I swear the cold had come right in to my brain!

The birds began to chirp. The sun came out from hiding. The calm breeze ushered out the wind. And I looked down at my little ones... and they were smiling. And I had a thought... It's time. It's time to tell you something about me. Or rather... even if no one cares about it... it's time to write it down for myself.

My journey...

with faith.

For those of you who have read Our Story, you would have caught on to some of my struggles with God and yet my hope filled faith. But it goes far deeper than that. Far deeper. This has been a story that has been unfolding in my life for the past, gee, 15 years. And it is, I would have to say, the most important story. It encompasses all of the other stories of my life. Who I chose to marry. How I live. Why we adopted children. Where I have worked. Why I went back to school. It is my "world view". It is the lens I look through to make sense of this crazy life.

If you have read other "posts" of mine, you will have to admit that I speak of God quite a bit. However, I rarely, if ever, quote Bible verses. And I don't exactly talk with all that "Christian" lingo. But I used to. Oh, how I used to.  And that's part of my story.

And how did I get to thinking that I should write about this while I was caught in a snow storm? I was unprotected, unprepared, and scared. And that's just it.

I am about to open something up that will subject me to... a storm. Maybe a storm of emotion. Maybe a storm of rejection. Disagreement. Maybe people won't understand. Maybe people will talk badly about me (I would have spoken badly about myself 3 years ago).

And yet.

While I ran through the snow, trying to shield my children from the bitter cold, all the more opening myself up to the elements... the sun came out. We ran through the darkness. I didn't know if it would come. But it came. And we looked at eachother with these huge smiles afterwards. Like, "yeah... I know... that was crazy." And most importantly... I think we all thought...

 "We can make it through just about anything, now."

I promise this won't turn into one of those "theological" blogs where they dispute doctrinal stances and they talk about "heretics". My faith has everything to do with the people I've met, life circumstances, my upbringing, the things I've witnessed with my eyes, the things I was taught, the things I've read, the emotions I've felt, and the yearnings of my heart.

I'm letting you in on my quest for Truth. My quest for God. My quest for meaning.

I'm not writing this because I think that I have "the truth" that everyone needs to hear. I don't think I've got it figured out. Not even close. But something inside nudges me to share it. In fact, I think something inside me will shrink if I don't.

So, I'm going to be working on it. It will take me a few weeks I'm sure. And then, I will send it your way. If, for anything else... I will get it out of my head and heart. And the sun will come out. And I'll look at my boys and say, "We can make it through just about anything, now."