STEPS THAT HELPED LIGHT THE WAY

I don't look forward to new issues of The Readers' Digest like I used to. Their articles used to be so much deeper--so much food for thought, that many of them became deeply ingrained in my own personal character and point of view; so much so that my sister Arlene chided me that my entire philosophy of life came straight out of Readers' Digest.
Well, she was probably right. Their articles were short, easy to read, well-written, and many of them stuck with me. Yes, I was very young and impressionable, but I promise, they were really good!
Anyway, the first article that I remember having a definite impact on me (somewhere in my early teens, I think) was a brief little blurb called "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff". The only example I can recall involved some friends, including the author, were dining in an elegant restaurant, when an accident caused a plate full of spaghetti to splat all over one diner's beautiful white linen suit. The author was amazed that the white suit guy didn't get angry, but actually seemed to fairly easily laugh it off! When questioned about it, the man said it just wasn't really important enough to get upset about.
I forget the other examples, but the upshot -- the moral of the story, offered 2 rules: 1) Don't sweat the small stuff, and 2) It's all small stuff.
I would like to invite ya'll to think back about moments/steps/impressions, etc., that were, I don't know, I hate to say "Paradigm shifts", but pieces of light that made a difference--immediate or gradual, but that you can look back and see that your attitude shifted, and you reacted differently to certain situations from that time on because of that happening/person/lesson.
Let's see how it goes. As Madmardigan said right before he fell on his can in the snow, "It'll be fun!"

Why Faith in Baby Steps?

We've come so far in life, and yet it feels like we are just beginning to understand. In another time, maybe I would have taken giant footsteps. In another time, maybe I did take giant footsteps. Now, though, striving more than ever to...to what? Get it right? Understand more deeply? Forgive more completely? Love more purely? My footsteps are much smaller, but more concentrated, moving more certainly, in tiny steps, in the right direction.
We speak of the early pioneers, moving ahead, sometimes shuffling with rags on their feet in the bitter cold, or slogging through sucking mud. They didn't KNOW exactly where and when their trail would end, but they KNEW they were going the right direction. With every single footstep, they bore witness to the Lord that they WOULD follow Him.
Alternately, and on a totally different level, in the movie "What About Bob", Bill Murray's character Bob was terrified of everything, until he was given the key of taking baby steps in every single tiny thing he wanted to do, and thus found victory in each endeavor, and eventually huge victory in his life.
For me, the combination gives me hope.

My first blog post ever!

Well, first off, not a great choice of fonts! Would have preferred something in a script, in order to look, you know, more elegant, eloquent and intelligent. Even alliteration would look sound better written in script.
I hope to include here things that we are learning. You'd think at my age, I'd know a lot, but it honestly seems that the most important things MAY be learned young, but then must also learned again and again, each time on a deeper level, and from a different angle in life.