So today was a wash for anything AFL related. Today is my birthday and I had better things to do than dive deep with the reading material... so I will pick it up tomorrow.
Today I was trying to understand myself. I am trying to figure out what is really important in my moments and wondering if I can learn some valuable lessons from the past. I don't want to be that person who needs to burn all their mementos and discard their memories from their Christian past. I have given away a lot of those things I no longer find value in, but I haven't garbaged them. I am taking this journey very differently and I still wonder if I am being true to myself. Can I share space with my family and friends who are still Christian. Can I sit and observe and just release any temptation to judge what I am observing? Can I just be with my Mom in her space? Why not? Mom and Dad were able to be themselves in my space. They came into a very different faith culture back in the day and were able to maintain their own culture. Why can't I do the same for my Mom?
I thought today that maybe I can just let everyone else be who they need to be. I don't need to perform alongside to be alongside. I can be grateful in a different way, and invite my family into those expressions of gratitude, as I discovered today. My family needed to pray before the meal we shared... and that is something I don't do, but I still needed to express some gratitude for the people who provided the meal. So I got a thank you card for the restaurant staff, and had everyone sign it. In my way... that was my prayer. I was saying thank you to those who provided my meal. I didn't explain it that way to my family... but they unknowingly participated and thought that was a beautiful gesture. We got to share space.
Maybe that is all I can do... be myself, let others be themselves and together we can share space.
