I love to write and I am challenged to write. I love getting the thoughts in my head “on paper” and I struggle with how to say what I want to say. I’ve been gone for awhile for many reasons. Time. Passion. Frustration. Do my thoughts matter?

One of my 2018 challenges to myself is to be bolder, to speak and live with less fear of what others think.  I am a pleaser.  I want to make people comfortable.  I want to make them happy.  I like to make people laugh.  I think I have used my wit and sarcasm over the years to deflect from tough issues, tough thoughts, tough comments and make people laugh or wish I would shut up instead of saying something that may put them off, or worse, make them not like me.

I am at a point in my life that I am not sure being liked is important.  The world is a hard place and going out as someone who was “liked” is not a high bar for making a difference.  I would rather make a difference for someone.  So, I am challenging myself to get out of my box and to say what is on my mind.  I know some of my thoughts will challenge my Christian friends.  They may well be off-putting to my Republican friends.  I am quite sure there will be family members who think I have lost my mind.

Through years and thousands of dollars of conflict resoltuion training I have learned that there are many, many people around us each day who feel alone, left out, scared, overlooked, disenfranchised.  I have also come to see politics very differently than where I was 10 years ago.  It seems to be a battle of pendulum extremes, a challenge to please the 20% who may go vote instead of the 80% who have no faith in politicians.

Well, here I go.

Grace and peace.

#time4change