One Year Ago Today

Congratulations to those of you reading today! This is the anniversary date of my first blog entry. :) Yes, I do realize that compared to most things in life, this is not exactly a monumental occasion, but for me it marks the end of a crazy year that has actually been documented when I need proof it really happened. A year ago I was introducing the idea of us moving to Baltimore and today I have been living here 7 months. Having previously lived in the same area for 47 years and being a first born who wants to know how everything is going to turn out ahead of time, I'm actually kind of impressed I'm typing this in an apartment in a city in the north.

I think I would normally be in a more reflective mood today, but my birthday 3 days ago served that purpose. Instead, I find myself looking ahead to what God has for me and my family. While I never would presume to limit God to human expressions, I think He probably smiles sometimes knowing that we're exactly where we're supposed to be for now. I discovered Ezekiel 40:4 the other day and while the verse is in the middle of a vision that's being described, I still found the words very fitting.

"...see with your eyes, hear with your ears, and give attention to all that I am going to show you; for you have been brought here in order to show it to you."

Life is a story and it's continually being written by the Author of life. That perspective is comforting sometimes and at times it's exasperating. I've always loved stories and words and figuring out how to best express something that matters to me. When someone else has done it well, I figure there's no reason to try and improve it. So we'll let Sam close out today's entry with an excerpt from J.R.R. Tolkein's The Two Towers.


"We shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually — their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on — and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same — like old Mr Bilbo. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we've fallen into?"

What sort of tale, indeed?