A new chapter in my life

"God seldom delivers . . . . virtues all wrapped in a package and ready to use. Rather He puts us in situations where by His help we can develop those virtues." C.R. Findley

With faith and hope I can work my way through- one at a time, one day at a time.

Maybe it's my upcoming birthday, my new job, my recent move across the country, my new marriage, my soon-to-be empty nest, or my daily reading which has prompted me to begin this blog today. But more than likely it's a God thing :)

Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake.

June 25, 2011-
It has been exactly one month since I moved across the country from my hometown, Arkansas City, Kansas- where I was born and raised, to Charleston, S. C.

It has been almost nine months since I married "the love of my life", Tony, a high school friend from Arkansas City, Kansas.

It has been almost three years since I got divorced from my second husband, a recovering addict.

It has been almost seven years since I decided to file for a divorce from the father of my children.

When I reflect back on the woman I was seven years ago- I don't recognize much of her. By all outward appearances, she looked like me. She was a mother of four, a professor of early childhood education, but in a dysfuntional relationship and clinically depressed.

In Pedogogy of the Heart, Paulo Freire reflects, as he approaches the final stages of life, that his childhood backyard was a place of great importance; a place, both literally and figuratively that formed who he had become. Freire writes:

My childhood backyard has been unveiling itself to many other spaces- spaces
that are not necessarily other yards. Spaces where this man of today sees the child
of yesterday in himself and learns to see better what he has seen before. To see
again what had already been seen before always implies seeing angles that were
not perceived before. Thus a posterior view of the world can be done in a more
critical, less naïve, and more rigorous way. (Friere, 1997, p. 38)

This blog is a space for me to connect with my childhood backyard as well as my future. My hope is that it will provide a space for me to connect with others who find themselves seeking the courage to change.

Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake.