This is all you get...

Recently I sat in a meeting with my boss. Every year at work we have to fill out a performance review – first we state how much we love (or don’t) our jobs, then we state what we think we are good at and what we feel we need to improve on, and then we have to make a “to-do” list to get ourselves on track for where the company feels we need to be.

The discussion of the hour was around my evaluation of how much I loved my job. On a scale of 1 to 5, I had given it a 2. For various reasons, but mostly because I’d been doing it for 12 years and

The road not taken...

My favorite poem of all time is Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken. Perhaps because my own life has had so many twists and turns. Perhaps because I now weigh every difficult decision (and some not-so-difficult ones as well) with what I think God would have me do. But most often it's because I don't want to relive any mistakes over. And over. And over. Not that I've done that in the past. But life's paths are so numerous - the choices almost limitless.

Sometimes I take the path of adventure, where I would have in the past been a wallflower; for all of life to me now is a bone of which the marrow of life must be sucked dry. Sometimes I take the path of cautiousness. Sometimes I wear my heart on my sleeve, or make new friends where before I would have been happy with a single friend for all of life. I see them now as wildflowers for my friend bouquet. Each one unique, and special, and adding color and variety to the bunch as a whole.

But I have to wonder about old Robert. You see, Robert spends a great amount of time looking forward. Inspecting the path, I suspect weighing the pros and cons of

Give your gift away

Once upon a time (thirty-five years ago) in a land far, far away (Arkansas), a brand new baby girl was brought into the world. Not with a silver spoon mind you, but she did come with a mop of curly strawberry-blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and more “look out world” attitude than one could ever imagine.

Unbeknownst to her, she also came with an assortment of wrapped gifts that would in fact be unwrapped little by little as life itself unfurled. She walked through life, invisible tote full of gifts slung over her shoulder. As she removed each one to give it away, she would find out more about herself in the process, and in fact, receive so much more in return than what she gave.

The first gift to give away would be companionship. The little girl was to be a companion for a woman who had known very little unconditional love and companionship in her life. Through circumstances beyond her control, the little girl would grow up with her disabled grandmother as primary caregiver. In exchange for giving the gift of her time and companionship, the little girl would have an upbringing quite different than her friends. Where her friends were watching Goonies and Molly Ringwald, the little girl would grow to love showtunes, black and white movies, Shirley Temple and Fred Astaire, and inform you that Audrey Hepburn and Katharine Hepburn are neither the same person, nor are they sisters, cousins, or mother and daughter.

The next gift the little girl would discover she had was a love for reading and writing. She would get lost in fairy