Optimistic Fatalist

I read the back of the book.

I don’t know how we get from here to there, but the back of the book isn’t very nice – at least until you get to the very, very end.

So.  I’m a fatalist.   We’re going to get to there, sooner rather than later, it seems to me.

But I’m also an optimist.   God doesn’t waste His children, even in trying times.    And the very end of the book is good stuff.  The best stuff.   And we get there even if this bit of the story is awful – or even if it ends, for us.  Paul will tell you, that’s not a losing proposition.

Dr. Stanley used to sum this way of being up by saying, “Obey God, and leave all the rest to Him”.

I voted.   I thought about my vote, did my research, hit the ballot box.   And… done.

Did I think it was going to change the general course of history?  No.

Do I think, even if the politics shifted for 10 years, that that would stop the course of history?   No.  I figure that would speed the pendulum’s swing, honestly.

I’m not real worried about the world.  I read the back of the book.  I know what happens.

I’m supposed to take care of my peeps.  I’m supposed to obey.  Das is das.

No sense getting worked up about it.  Our citizenship isn’t HERE.

And it will all come out right in the end.

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Secret ballot

One of the ways we push back against people trying to shame us into voting the way they think we should vote, not vote in a way that reflects our consciences, is by opening our big mouths and blabbing about it.

DON’T.

You have a right to a secret ballot.  Without the “secret” part, the ballot loses much of its meaning, because peer pressure is – and has always been – a thing.

They tell me that this increased peer pressure is going to be a big tool next vote, so I made this meme today to help fight back.

Use it if it pleases you.  Make a better one if not.

 

 

Seasons

There are seasons in life – and in individual lives.   I’m ending a season in life, starting another.   I’m ending a season in my individual life, and starting another.   Those overlap – but they’re not the same thing.

The World likes to make you have all this drama about seasons.  Like, just because Autumn is over and Winter is here, suddenly either you hated Autumn or you’re going to cry because it’s gone.   -shakes head and looks annoyed-  Um, no.

I started work last week.   Good place to be.  I could go down the list of how well provided for I am, but as always, it’s a bit embarrassing.   God hooked me UP, people.

I am allowed to say, of the past years at home, “it was good” without wanting to stay in the same space forever.  It’s been good.  Time well spent.  I am grateful for it.

Ten years ago, I went through a season in my private life of severe pruning.   Winter.  It was VERY PAINFUL.   The intervening 10 years have been years of rehabilitation, rest, and fertilizing.   I’ve healed, and more than healed.   I’ve put down roots in the Word.  I’ve been fed, watered, fertilized – again, the ways in which I’ve been provided for are embarrassing.   God is so good to me.

These ten years have been good.   Very quiet, but good.   And all the time, the awareness of how profoundly I have been blessed in my life has never left me.   Spring.   A long, slow, sweet Spring.   Some of the sprouts planted have grown, some of them died.   That’s the way of things in the Springtime.

I have my marching orders.   Summer is here.  Time to grow, time to spread branches.   And someday, Harvest will come.   And then Winter again… because that’s what seasons do.    When?  I don’t know.   The seasons of life come when they come, in God’s time.

I know what I’m called to do now.  It will take me a minute to grow into the person who can do those things, but that’s fine.  I’m a little terrified at all I’m aiming to accomplish – it’s a good thing I’m depending on God and not on me, because there’s no way I could do it.

Spring has been fine.   And Winter, however horrible it was to live through, changed me in ways for which I am incredibly grateful.   But Summer is here.   Summer is here, and it’s time to grow and bear fruit.

Let’s see what God has in store.