A little insight into my world

It's been way too long since I posted anything here. I've been so wrapped up in reading the wisdom of others I didn't think I had anything to contribute. I still don't, but I felt the desire to write something so here I am.

I'm having an interesting year this year. My only child is 13. I remember when I was 13. It was a pretty traumatic time for me. A lot was going on in my life and in the life of my family. We had moved from Colorado to Arizona when I was 11 and we were moving again to another city in Arizona. I don't like change much. It takes me awhile to adjust. It sends me into fits of wierdness.

In the last 5 1/2 years I've come to embrace change somewhat. I am beginning to see the challenge and the purpose in it. I look back and see where I have grown each time I've had a huge upheaval of change in my life. Lately the changes I've been experiencing are more internal. I'm becoming much more aware of the voice of God in my life and of the way He leads me. It's fascinating. Has He always been here? Why haven't I heard this voice all my life? I think fear has been a factor. I think I have been afraid of the one I should have been embracing. I think I was so afraid of looking like my dad that I wasn't true to myself or my God.

We always thought my dad was strange. He was so different from the rest of us. We were all quiet and reserved, like my mom. And he was boisterous, friendly; a never-met-a-stranger kind of a guy. My dad was the guy everyone knew. We were embarrassed by that. My dad was tortured by his own demons but he also knew that if people were going to know God - we were the ones who would introduce them to Him. And he spent his life trying to do just that. I'm sure that more people saw Jesus in my dad than they saw his demons. Don't get me wrong. I'm not at all justifying him. I'm just saying I want to show Jesus to all those with whom I come in contact just like my dad did when I was a kid. I was always told I was just like my dad and I prayed that wasn't true. Now I want to embrace all the good things my dad embodied. The saying "Take what you like and leave the rest" comes to mind here. Suffice it to say, I love my dad and I understand him more now than I ever have before. And that is change - for the better.