I just finished writing one of those off the top of my head emails to a friend about choices and consequences. My own words have me thinking now. Just because you're in the middle of a very different situation than what you based your decision on doesn't change your original decision. This haunts me. How many times have I made a choice only to have the situation change or morph into something I never expected? Or berated myself for not being omniscient enough to see the future? Or let someone else make me feel scatterbrained or fickle when I wanted to back out of something I clearly didn't want in the first place? The sad truth is far too many times. We make choices based on the information before us. Sometimes it's factual. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it changes when someone else changes their mind. But that still doesn't change the truth alive in me. That doesn't change the drive I feel in my spirit or the passions in my soul. Learning to see myself...to...

My sister and I were talking last night about moments that changed us. The idea is that we all have experiences that change the core of our beings. We each shared only one last night, partly because we ran out of time as our conversation meandered, but mostly because it's just difficult to sort through our memories for those that really transformed us. Here's my Moment That Changed Me, #1 I grew up in a home with 2 mentally ill parents: a bipolar mother and clinically depressed father. By the time I was a teenager, I was filled with an unexpressed rage at my life's circumstances. I placed all the blame on my mother's shoulders and reached a point where I could barely speak to her. During the last night of a church revival when I was 15, I sat in the choir loft half listening to the sermon and half watching my mother in the congregation. I remember the pure rage boiling within me, questiong just what God had in mind when he placed me in that environment. There was no cho...