I Am A Survivor!

It has been a few weeks since I checked in. I’ve been hanging out over at my other blog http://kerisjournal.wordpress.com/

and trying to work on my book. But never want to be away so long that you think that I don’t care about you guys here! I thought I’d come here to touch base and share something that was on my mind…

I work with people who are my kid’s age (funny how that happens, the older we get!)  Sometimes it’s just the two of us working. Most days, it’s hopping and there’s not a lot of down time. But on those rare occasions when the phone’s stopped ringing and clients don’t need to be checked in or out or  shown here or there, we’ve  had some pretty heavy talks. After we lost our business (gift store in the 2003 earthquake read my ABOUT page for more info on that) both my husband and I have  had the opportunity to work with the youth in our community. Funny because, my husband actually wanted to be a Youth Pastor in his younger years and worked for about eight years as the General Manager at our small town’s theater before going back into business with his dad doing what he did before we opened the store. During those years, he employed a lot of our community’s youth and was able to counsel several of them over the years and invite them to our church.

The other night I worked with a sweet girl who shared this heartbreaking story with me about her break up with an ex-boyfriend.  Which also involved some mean girl antics which all seemed very dramatic. As I listened, my heart-felt for her. Especially since I am writing my story about that time in my own life. Another girl around the same age, also began talking with us and I told them how everything seems so important right now but in about ten years they will look back and have families and different perspectives and priorities and lives and everything that seems so important now will all seem silly someday. They both looked at me with blank looks on their faces and it made me realize that of course I could see from where I was standing but they had not made that journey yet. And so they had no idea what I was talking about.

Do you think  perhaps that God might look at us a little like that? Wanting to help us see the BIGGER picture while we are lost in the chaos of our smaller worlds? He knows that we need to take the steps on our journey to be able to look back and see what was important and what really just wasn’t.

As I write my other blog, I have traveled back a few decades. And it has been a bit exhausting. But I know that I have learned one thing. In all the years since I have cried all those tears. I am a survivor.