Living Aloud Allowed

I’m reading the book “Half Time” by Bob Buford. Admittedly, as much as I probably need to hear some of this book, I’m lamenting the fact that I just turned 40 and don’t want to. Asking me to take stock and determine what the rest oft his road means to me is all too morbid.

When you combine that with the idea that too many of my friends have cancer, and are being challenged to put their own mirrors up in front of their own mortality way too early, I certainly don’t like “adulting” and being told what to do and when to do it.

40 still seems so young to me. But when I consider I’m already halfway to 80, it already makes me feel like I’m 60 if you can do the math there. I’m strung out in a million directions at the moment – trying to rock my career as a numbers geek, juggling my band directors wife life, wanting to craft and write and super mom my way to an Academy Award made of playdough and paperclips.

So here’s this lovely little space. I’m at least trying to recognize it takes me mere minutes to record some thoughts here from time to time. It doesn’t take me launching a branding campaign – it doesn’t take me trying to boil the ocean. It’s just a blog, like so many of my 90s brethren started just to mark their space on the fancy interwebs.

So let me try it again.

It’s 2019, and I want to write a novel. I want to travel. I want to play the piano for at least one song well. I’d like to lose 30 pounds and I’d like to feel young again. I’d like to conduct at least one of my husband’s concerts in my life time. I still want to leave my mark on the world. I”m in this shell of a human being – I promise. What’s going to get me going again?

Answer back world. xoxo.

At approximately 2:42 a.m. on November 18, 1999, the 59-foot high stack, consisting of about 5000 logs, collapsed during construction. Of the 58 students and former students working on the stack, 12 were killed and 27 were injured. This ended the tradition known as Bonfire on the Texas A&M Campus, and forever changed the face of the university and those who participated in it.

This year’s graduating seniors have lived in a world where Bonfire – at least the student-led campus-housed one – didn’t exist.I let that sink in today – something that happened 18 years ago. I was 20 years old. Man, how life has changed.

To those families of the fallen, every year my heart aches and more over the past few as I have my own child, who’s own life could end at any moment — and that makes every moment a little more precious. Lately I have struggled with looking at the ripe old age of 40 – just a few years more up the hill for me – I keep thinking that life is going to start soon. That I’m going to finally “get the break” “get going” whatever that is…I realize that I’m probably silly for thinking that, that life is what happens when we’re busy making other plans – and my other plan making never quits…

Sometimes I don’t stop and listen to my little dude babble – I think to myself, “I’ll just get this one more thing done and then…”…or “I’ll stay an hour extra during lunch or later after work because I’ll finish this one project and then…” and inevitably, I find that “and then…” never really happens – the moment is gone, missed and written in the history books – and while I was too busy cooking or sweeping, I missed my kid seeing something for the first time, or meeting his need to chat.

All I can imagine now is for the parents of the fallen students of Bonfire, how many times “and then…” may have run through their heads. The Lord’s Prayer, often cited by our pastor at church, says to, “Give us THIS day, our daily bread” – and I’m not doing that enough – being present in THIS day, rather than preparing for the next, and the next.

I need to realize the gifts I have, and stop planning the gifts that my brain has convinced me I need. I have everything right now, I have my daily bread in my hands, and I admit that I am taking it for granted. The here and now is already provided for, I just need to start living it.

It’s been awhile since I visited this space. 70 lbs and 16 inches of hair ago even. My church is in the middle of this wonderful series on “Always Moving” – Serving Greater. Growing Deeper. Giving Bigger…and that last one that rang a little close to home since it’s essentially the name of my little space here on the internet: Living Louder.

I’m a Christian. I’m a Christian Mother & Wife who works in Oil & Gas. Christian is not the noun – it’s the describer of all the other things I am. God owns my soul – and for the longest time in my life, I lived quietly in my faith. I didn’t want to offend others by inviting, and I didn’t want to press people to find my way – but to find their own way.

Nobody is perfect, God knows that and accepts us for who we are, just as we are. But I still struggle with trying to tell people quite blatantly that they need to get a church, get to walking with Jesus. Trust me, in my line of life, there are alot of people I know who definitely need to “get with Jesus and get right”, but in all seriousness, I’m not the type to say “Hey, come on by my church and see the Light”. I know taht perhaps I should be a good fisher of men, and I’ve tried to help a few friends along before when they’ve asked about our church and how much we like it, but overall — I’m not the type who’s having her breakfast in a diner and leans over and asks the stranger next to me: “Is Jesus Christ your Lord & Savior?” – mainly because I’ve had that done to me, and it’s mixed parts creepy and offensive to get up in my personal space.

But, that said, this is MY personal space on the interwebs, and if you choose to read here, then I guess we’re good. I don’t have all the answers, I’m not always completely right with God, I’m human, and my faith is a daily walk – sometimes I trip, sometimes I’m running with Him…but I’m putting this out there, if you have questions on how it all works – I’m here.

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