31

So today is my birthday. 31 years of life. It has been a good year. It has been 31 good ones. But the more I think about it the more I come to see that I do not count my life by years but in many way I count it by moves and transitions. These have been the stages of my life more then years.

I have been reflecting and talking to Carla and we both feel that we are getting more settled even though we are getting ready to move around the world. As she is almost 30 and I am now 31 we now thinking of our selves as adults and no longer young adults. I do not feel old but at the same time I do not feel young any longer. Having kids helps me feel older.

I don't know if I feel like I have grown up yet and I am still seeking to become wise but as I watch the young people I work with every day i know I do not think like they do and my thoughts are on other matters. I know who I am and who I want to spend my life with. I know where my gifts are and where my weaknesses are. I am not trying to figure life out the same way. Not that I have it all together but I have been around the block a time or two.

I am still trying to understand myself and others more but I think I will always be doing that. My most recent thought has been along the lines of what is the hope and purpose I want people to catch from me? It is not a new thought but as I am looking back over this time here in the USA I have been asking myself what is it I have been teaching and as I get ready to move and a whole new group of people get to know me I get the opportunity to shift how I work with people. Most do not know me there and they do not know what I have been. With each new transition I get to both reflect on the good and bad of the past but I also get to decide what I take on. Now having a family that moves on with me does change my ability to change a bit but I still feel that this transition is a time that I want to make some changes and now is the time.

So what have I been in the past that I want to take forward? two things jump to my mind. When I was at Camp Hebron the first time I made the choice to seek wisdom and to be someone who was positive and encouraging of others. I have not always been so positive and I feel like I have slipped more and more in to being hard on people rather then being encouraging them. So as I look at this move, this new challenge and transition in life, I want to again seek wisdom and continue to try to be a positive and encouraging person.

So I am 31 and not yet old but still no longer young. I am me and I choose who that is. I am Micah, a man on a journey after wisdom and to lighten others load. Here's to year 32 and the thoughts that will come this next year.

A story that starts in the middle

Today I was thinking again about trying to unpack my brain and how I work, feel, and act. As I was deep in thought a few quotes and statements in my trauma class stood out to me.

A presenter talked about how writing was his way to unpack his junk box (his brain/thought). He said that if you are just holding it all in one box in your hands and you don't have someplace to lay it all out then it is just a useless and confusing box but through writing it all out it could be made sense of just like having space to unpack that junk box.

Then at another point in class a classmate said,
"There are no facts, there are only stories, your story and my story.
There are no facts, only stories." -Roger

I liked that. Only the stories we have lived and not what REALLY happened but how we interpret it and find meaning in it and that meaning becomes our truth.

So with these two in mind I come here to unpack my brain, my junk box. To tell my story and fine meaning in it and come to understand my life's truths.

Not for anyone else but for me but if others find meaning from this, blessings to them.