Doin’ Life

Doin’ Life

We rose early yesterday morning to make a trip to Austin to celebrate a very important occasion.  Six years ago LLL arrived in this world and life for all of us has never been the same. The exact thing happened with L1 and L3 and of course KH. Each arriving into the Village with their own special gifts, skills and hearts that seem perfectly aligned to each one of us.   Our day was fun with a lot of outdoor activities and fun just time being together. Yep, it was hot ! The birthday girl and her brother were in their glory with all the attention and we were in our own glory having saved up all the attention for weeks.

On the way home we stopped by the “Bat Tree” off the interstate; so named because we stopped there once and I spooked some bats I had heard in the distance and they flew away in an impressive cloud. “Do it again Grandpa” and I did tree to tree……

So we tried again last night. We got a dozen or so, not the multiple dozens as before. Regardless, it was a success.   Thank goodness for successes.

My “potential” project from last week evaporated as quickly as it arrived. Like fog, it arrived stealthily and hung around for a bit making a bit of muffled noise and then just disappeared without a sound. Humans are such trips. The good news is I was able to update my codes a bit more and fine tune my costing database and learn more about the clients very early in the project;  tasks and insights I would not have done without this “fog”. “Seeing” better in the fog………”hum…interesting”!

I’ve been reading a number of novels about Texas over the past several months as you know and my current read is about the Big Rich. Essentially the big four families that made their money in oil and then parlayed it into disasters and roller coasters of life and wealth. I laughed out loud today at a passage that said that one guy was worth a “unit and a half” ……..(a unit being $100MM……..NOT Big Rich by any stretch) “I’ll bet he’s a unit and a half”, I said to myself as I continued reading. There is a lot of wealth in those 1000 pages but I’m still looking for any evidence of any happiness. So far it’s all been about the chase, chase for more, going bust, starting again, going bust again and then fighting with the next generation over the same rollercoaster. Families are trips and the 1% of the 1% are not immune.

This Sunday’s semi-sermon spoke of “Doin' Life”. The co-pastor used it in the sense of “going out and “Doin’ Life” as a happy human in every way. (I notice every sunday that for those few hours they are tha happiest folks I've ever been around, EVER !) I sat there thinking of folks doing ultimate hard time in the joint,  then turned to times in my life when I felt I was Doin’ Life, in the worst sense of the words.  These times are kept “green” for me via my dream state’s warped sense of humor. When I am even slightly stressed now a re-run of past events will play out in my sleep and I will awake remembering that it actually was THAT bad, in fact worse, with the advantage of hind-sight. But, it was “life” even in that survival form.

The opposite of this is the pure joy of “Doin Life” with kids around. We are so blessed to have them in our lives to do so. I also feel really honored to witness young families work through growth spurts of their own, as couples, individuals and within the various “roles” they have assumed. Doin Life takes faith, commitment, energy and a lot of support.

Although there is a BIG difference between Doin' Life and .........Doin' Life ……they both use the same "switch"..............choice.