Tuesday, July 14, 2009



A Time to Embrace


I want to get back to blogging, but I am mired in being overly self-conscious about my post topics, inertia, time constraints etc. Facebook is a bit too superficial and its tentacles spread too far and doesn't seem to be the place for real thoughts...I could be wrong.

I have sort of been re inspired to blog by an unlikely source....I barely know the person. I really enjoy her ease at the blog. No torment, not too opinionated and yet so thoughtful. Maybe I could re-dip my toe.

What to post is the question as my last one considered a heavy passage in my life. Though I still wrestle with all the issues of that blog, I am looking at it from another perspective...... no less challenging. So where do I start? Well, I think I will start with an inspiration which comes with a little irony.

A Facebook friend was participating in one of those chain type things which I should probably have resisted -------but I didnt. The post directed that you pick up a random book nearest to you, choose a particular page and sentence and then post it----seemed fun. Well, my sentence came from a book titled, The Heart of Henri Nouwen and the random sentence was: Today I can no longer say that, and my question has become: "How am I going to use the few years left to me? Wow!

Still being in the raw times of cancer-survival- world, those words fall heavy on me. Not to mention the ouji board temptation to succumb to the prophecy of their message. But really, who knows how long anyone has to live?

According to Henri Nouwen, time is not a measure of the years we have and anxiously cling to, but an opportunity to embrace ( or not embrace) God's love offered to us from eternity to eternity. I am drawn to this and it settles on my soul pretty well. How does that work though--- especially in the light of how hard it is too embrace God when it feels like He is not hugging back? What does it look like? Instead of seeing my life as time--- (this by the way becomes a huge thing when you have been doing the cancer dance)---see it as the opportunity to embrace that which is greater than myself.

Yes, that is a good thing....except for the fact that I'm a terrible hugger. This I have been told. My anemic hug has been labeled the "Heidi" hug. That bothers me. Perhaps I have embraced God the way I have embraced people. Who knows. Whether I get a few or many I don't know, but I guess this is the time to begin embracing......... darn that Facebook....

2 comments:

Kristine Jannel said...

I did this too and it said...

"She particularly didn't want to appear as a failure in the eyes of her friends and family."

Sheesh.

hisheidi said...

What the hell?????!!