Alive-est!

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. If we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

When did you feel most alive recently? Where were you? What did you smell? What sights and sounds did you experience? Capture that moment on paper and recall that feeling. Then, when it’s time to create something, read your own words to reclaim a sense of being to motivate you to complete a task at hand.

(Author: Sam Davidson)

You could say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one!  Those obviously are John Lennon's words, but I think that I feel the most alive when I imagine myself flying up to a high elevation where I can look back into my life and dream into the future.  When I do this I feel delight, it fills me up to the point of feeling giddy.  I feel just plain happy, the world looks good, God looks good, my life looks good, my future looks good.  I think I feel this way, because when I can look at where I have come from, I feel that God exists and that He is good, and that He has blessed me.  Now I know everyone else will not be able to say that.  Not everyone has a wife recover from cancer, but I did.  Not everyone has their business venture succeed, but mine did.  Not everyone has a marriage that delights them still after 29 years, but mine does.  Not everyone has an alcoholic Father and is able to avoid becoming one himself, but I am not an alcoholic. 

And yet I struggle.  I struggle all the time.  I struggle to be productive, I struggle to not sin, I struggle to not fight with my wife, I struggle to be a good Dad to my sons, I struggle to not judge people.  But I have learned that God is OK with me and my struggle, and that he is amazingly kind.  He not only forgives me for the things that I struggle in, he understands me, he knows why I struggle and is patient with me.  I have learned that I am a delight to my God, and he enjoys me as I live this life.  So as I look back upon the redemption that God has wrought in my life I delight in it.

In the song of Solomon it says, I am my beloveds and His desire is for me.  I believe this about God.  And when I start to work on something new, I feel that God is with me and in me and this new creation we are starting on, I am starting on, has all the potential to be really cool!