it isn’t what. it is why.

Today is your birthday. 

With another year of life upon you, I pray all of life’s greatest joys to be yours.

That you would know love deep enough that it would penetrate your soul and allow you the freedom to sing and to dance.

For the hope we share is alive and is extended to you.  May you reach for it and let it transform your life.

So this year, will be like no other.

Happy Birthday Felizardo.  Happy Birthday Pops. 

Your lives have made a significant difference in mine.

I spent some time sitting on the dock with my feet dangling in the water last week.  With my pen and book in hand, I took a deep breath and opened the pages.  I hadn’t really thought about this time in my life this way.  That possibly, this small setback could be the beginning of a greater thing at work in me.

After failing miserably at the small task that was ahead of me two weeks ago, I wondered what I was becoming.  Sure of the disappointment in myself and from others around me, it was evident I was weighed down.  Tired of singing the same song;  intentional change needed to happen, or this current course of setback would easily transform into a course of destruction.

This course has ultimately led me to the fire.  Reminded of a song we used to sing in my youth group days, the pain of refinement was clear.  As gold goes through a purification process, the steady degree of temperature allows not for the damage of the compound, but for it’s perfection.  To the top, rise the impurities, that if they remained, would significantly decrease the worth of that piece of gold.  And so the refinement process creates opportunity for the unclean things to get skimmed off the surface.  Painful.  I saw in myself, those things that make me less than what I want to become.  In fact, I could list them.  Really, it’s disgusting.

But I can’t move forward into something I’ve never been if I’m still the same.  Refinement is required.  I have to be changed from the inside out because a greater work is waiting to happen.  Fighting only works until you’ve lost all your strength.

I’ve decided that each day has the potential to be the very best day of my life.  As I continue to trust and to wait, giving up hope would be silly.  A setback was in store for me to become something I’ve never been.