When Life Catches Up to You

     There I was.... a good idea, a blank page and a (really) bad mood.
(Editor's note: if this ever gets published you know it is an act of Divine Providence.  Look what's sitting on my keyboard. Don't believe the guilty look on her face, she loves messing with me.  Meet Joy, the cat who owns the house we live in.  Hopefully with a bit of attention and appeasement I'll get the keyboard back.  Back to our originally scheduled programming.)
     I just wasn't willing to wait for the inner sunshine to break out, so I prayed for things to go well (the prayer on the inner cover) and dove into the Bible.  Where better to get life advice?
        In browsing through the psalms, number 99 struck me.  It just seemed right.  As I was copying it, I kept second guessing myself.  I made enough errors that I had to rip out the first page of my project.  Who came up with this psalm anyway?  I persevered, copied the darn thing, and put the book away for a week.
      When I came back to it later it seemed to fit my son perfectly.  It feels right again.

       Filling the blank space at the bottom was quite a task.   I knew what I wanted but have absolutely no drawing skills.  That is one of the purposes of this book. After all how do you get to Carnegie Hall?   Practice!
       The idea came from a blank day.  How often does that happen? The calendar was completely blank.  No husband, no kids, only the cat.  I had no idea what to do with myself.
As I meditated on this feeling of rootlessness I realized that the feeling was based on imbalance, both in my past and my present.
        I always used how I was serving others to order my day.  Running the boys to and from school, going to speech meets, making dinner, shopping, errands- these things do not a life make.  They are clutter.  Important clutter if you like to eat dinner and have a family, but they distracted me from the inner balance needed to set order to a day completely alone.
        If imbalance in life hurts, what does that look like?  I drew up several scientific balances, three chain configurations (and three types of chains).  The break in the word was obvious (im-balance, I mean, how imbalanced is that, right?)  The little crushed guy was my favorite part.  He just looks so surprised that life caught up with him.
       What did I do with my blank day?  Spent some time in Kindergarten, taking my crayons back.  It was great fun.  Go get some of your own and restore a bit of balance.

(Editors final note (I promise!)  Now we know God is real. Joy moved to her bed and is continuing to sleep even as I write this.  And there was great rejoicing...)