In Word or Deed

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash I used to think that everyone else was lucky. They all had passions, they all had dreams. In others I saw consuming desires that propelled them into their futures. Some wanted to be doctors others engineers, others soldiers, while I sat to the side and didn't know what I wanted to be. I used to think I was broken, that some crucial part of me was damaged or simply missing or that I'd failed to pick it up along the way. Now that I'm a bit older I've begun to wonder, was I just hoping for something to make the decision for me? Is there any inherent merit in a passion that you did not choose and a life that merely carried you along? I can't help but think that maybe what I saw as a self-propelled desire was really the outworking of a personal decision to pursue a goal. Was I longing for something that nobody actually possessed? I like to write, I love it even. I genuinely enjoy sitting down and putting tho...

Photo by  Felix Russell-Saw   on  Unsplash Today was hard.  It was hard to sit at this computer and stare at a blank page and to watch the hours tick by while that same page stubbornly refused to fill itself with words. Sometimes you don't have much to say.  Sometimes you just don't have anything to say. Nevertheless I moved my fingers across this keyboard, filling up this space with something. I'm writing, even it's nothing, because I made a choice. Sometimes it comes down to pure choice. In life we run into situations where it can be very easy to just, not. Not do this, not do that, not do whatever. What we do in those moments will usually be the result of a choice made long before. We are -in large measure- who we choose to be.  For example, over four years ago I made the choice to be a husband. That choice carried with it myriad other choices that are all interrelated and interconnected and all of them already made. I will lo...