Leaf 5 – Seeking Greater Depth in Relationships

~

Intro:

This was actually the first “Leaf” I thought of writing about, and had been thinking about this topic since November or so. But it isn’t the easiest to just whip up a quick couple of paragraphs about.

I like to think I’m a nice balance of extrovert & introvert, but if I had to pick one, I would undoubtedly have to say that I am truly an extrovert. As much as I relish my “me time,” I definitely draw energy from being with people. I meet new people with relative ease, and tend to be viewed as a well-rounded, fun & amiable young woman. But, that says nothing about my friendships. A person can be generally well-liked by everyone they meet, but not have true, deep, valuable friendships.

One quotation about friendship says,

“A friend is one with whom you are comfortable, to whom you are loyal, throughwhom you are blessed, and for whom you are grateful.” (William Arthur Ward)

It’s a memorable sort of saying that holds truth. But to take it a little further, consider the personal choice and intentional action indicated by this quotation;

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth,and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.” (George Washington)

Finally, to dig a little deeper, the substance and fullness of the relationship is that,

“A true friend unbosoms (confides) freely, advises justly, assists readily,adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.” (William Penn)

These are the kinds of friendships I want to develop & focus on; the kind that take time and effort, but as a result run deep and strong with immeasurable value.

Love is Priority

I truly feel that the relationships we build in this life are more important than any of the jobs we hold, places we go, or accomplishments we attain. Too often, I hear those stories about people who’ve reached the end of their lives with the regret that they didn’t invest more in their meaningful relationships, and I don’t want to be one of them. To add weight to the seriousness with which I regard this, consider the Christian teaching that God is, and is building, a Family (a great commentary of key scriptures is at: http://www.gnmagazine.org/booklets/WG/familyofgod.htm). His goal is the unity and harmony of His creation, and for us to become like Him. 1 John 4:8 says that “God is love,” it’s the first of the fruits of the Spirit listed in Gal 5:22, Christ said His disciples would be known by their love for one another (John 13:35), and Paul spends a whole chapter (1 Cor 13) talking about this “greatest gift.” Love is defined and described in many ways, but the common thread is that it cannot be developed apart from relationships. When we become spirit beings in God’s Family, the two things we carry with us from this life are the character we develop and the relationships we build. True, our character and relationships are affected by the experiences we go through in this life, so our jobs and travels and accomplishments are important, but rather than allowing them to control our lives, we should be using them as tools to develop and enhance the more important aspects of our lives.

“Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.” (Sydney Smith)

All that being said, lately I’ve been feeling like I’ve gotten pretty good at being independent. Too good, actually. The past few years have supposedly been the time for me to “take advantage of opportunities” and “enjoy the freedom to focus on myself” (my education, my personal direction, etc), so ties to other people have been sacrificed. And, since I’ve spent those same years living with people who don’t fit into my closest family & friends circles, I’ve gotten pretty used to sharing living space without sharing life. In fact, sometimes I nearly feel that I’ve forgotten what it’s like being part of a deeply-meaningful unit like family or a close circle of friends. Oh, I have my family, and I have my friends, but they come second to everything else; to work, to school, to me. Taking time to call gets pushed off “until I can get ‘xyz’ done,” but then there’s always another “abc” on its heels that gets in the way. Oh, and that “freedom” thing? Not so cool as it’s cracked up to be. Yes, it’s nice that I don’t have to worry about leaving my responsibilities to a husband & children & pets & house for long periods of time to go on some adventure, but often adventures lack a certain meaningfulness when they’re not shared with friends. It’s so much more fun to have “oh, remember when…” dialogues than to provide monologues on “it was so cool, I guess you had to be there” moments.

“No matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished?” (Elbert Hubbard)

Christian Fellowship

Now, lest you think I’ve gone and fallen into a hole that I’m complaining I can’t get out of, let me reassure you that, in fact, one of the reasons this post has taken me so long to write is that I’ve been taking advantage of the many recent opportunities I’ve had to spend Sabbaths with brethren, both friends and “adopted” families. So, of course I’ve spent that time fellowshipping instead of writing! These visits have been wonderful, and are probably what keep me sane these days.

On the weekend I went north to see Talitha & Andrea, my 2-scriptures-per-week calendar coincidently quoted Mat 18:20,

“For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst.”

Being with people who are brought together by God’s Holy Spirit is a wonderful, beneficial, and important part of a Christian’s life. According to Strong’s, the word used for “fellowship” in the Greek means “partnership, participation, or social intercourse,” and comes from one meaning “a sharer, associate, companion, partaker, or partner.”

For an online sermon about fellowship, listen to: http://members.ucg.org/sermon/why-fellowship
For more reading, see Jeremy’s posts “On Friendship,” & “On Fellowship” found on his “Sabbath Thoughts” Facebook page.

When time is taken for fellowship with brethren and special moments with family & friends, I want that time to be deep, significant, meaningful and edifying. In December I went to both the UCG-sponsored Winter Family Weekend in Louisville,KY and the UCG Challenger II Rock Climbing program at Mt. Lemmon in Arizona. They were back-to-back, and gave me a jam-packed two weeks of fellowship to soak in & process.

At WFW I got to see many people I haven’t seen in a very long time; ABC classmates, camp friends, and brethren from previous congregations I’ve attended. I also met new people; friends of friends, faces I recognized from photos online, names I recall being included in stories, and a few I had talked to without ever previously meeting. It was an invigorating whirlwind of activity and socializing, full of hugs & laughter, smiles & photos, good food & late nights. When it was all over, though, I was a little sad that while trying to make the most of seeing as many people as I could, it also meant that the time I did have with people was short & in some ways superficial. Not “superficial” as in “fake,” but as in “surface-y.” Now, months after WFW, the moments I remember & treasure are those times when I had one-on-one time with dear friends, sharing heart-to-heart conversation.

I flew straight from WFW to CII and jumped into a week of camping & rock climbing with a much smaller group of people. There, everyone spends the entire day together as one group, tasks are accomplished as teams, activities and goals are shared, and evenings are spent sitting around the camp fire talking. The focus of the week is developing ourselves for leadership with an emphasis on “the 3 Cs of Character;” Conviction, Commitment, and Courage. Most of the participants also had deep personal goals. Many of these were shared with each other in a heart-to-heart group discussion, and it opened the door for continued one-on-one & small-group talks.

With all the available fellowship time during the week, one of our discussions was about the difference between frivolous conversation and edifying conversation. So often it’s too easy to allow day-to-day idle chatter to clutter our thoughts & conversation, even amongst brethren. But we’re called to think on virtuous things (see Philippians 4:8) and our speech should be seasoned with grace (Colossians 3:6) and edifying to others (Ephesians 4:29). With that reminder freshly in our minds, I noticed a positive shift in casual “down time” talks.

Authenticity

One of my personal highlights of CII was having incredibly open, honest, & trusting conversations with a brother I’d only just met there. We were genuine with each other, shared struggles we’ve been facing, and were able to just talk things out with someone we quickly identified as worthy of the title “friend.” Sadly, it’s been very difficult to stay in regular contact, but we each know that the other would be there for an ear if needed, our respect for each other means there’s a trust & type of protection, and the camaraderie we’ve established means that whenever the opportunity presents itself, we’d totally be up for hanging out.

These two socially-packed weeks reminded me that regardless of how long I’ve known them, my best friends are the ones I’m open with. I think back over all my closest friends currently & in the past, and the people I’d name first are not necessarily the ones I’ve seen the most, but the ones I’ve shared significant quality time, experiences, and conversation with. Some of those friendships might have taken something difficult to work through before we got to that kind of openness, others might have been like that right from the start, but all of them are dear brothers & sisters, friends with whom I’ve shared my heart & mind, friends who know who I am and what I value.

I work with the general public on a regular basis. I also, as previously mentioned, share living space with people I’m not really deep friends with. I’ve come to see that for many it’s simple to create a public persona; to say what you want to display yourself as the person you want others to think you are. But then you can feel like a fraud if you don’t live up to your proclamations, even if that public claim is that you’re “genuine.” The beauty of the deeply authentic friendships is that those people see through all that. It’s OK for truly trusted friends to see your unedited version, the deeper “you.” You don’t have to fear judgment because there’s a confidence that they know your flaws and love you anyway, and even if you totally mess up, they’ll still love and support you. And if you’re just plain silly, well, chances are they’ll be silly with you.

“It is one of the blessings of old friends is that you can afford to be stupid with them.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

So What This All Means…

1. I want to make sure that my most important relationship, with God, is always top priority. Without it, nothing else will work right, and nothing else is really ultimately worth it.

"You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage - pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically - to say 'no' to other things. And the way to do that is by having a bigger 'yes' burning inside. The enemy of the 'best' is often the 'good.' " (Stephen Covey)

2. I want to put in the effort it takes to stay better connected to my family while I’m physically separated from them, and want reasonably-near-future plans to include being closer again.

“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained” (Winston Churchill)

3. I want to make sure that my current self-preservationist-independence doesn’t prevent me from being involved in my friends’ lives & vice versa. I sense in myself a possibility of becoming so used to operating in an “only the essentials to get to the goal” approach, & so set in my ways & my life that I lose touch with the true compassion for others & healthy willingness to yield to others’ wills that I’ve worked so hard to develop. God designed us to need each other, and I must constantly be aware of how I relate to others. Gotta keep watering those friendship gardens. ;-)

“Love must be learned, and learned again; there is no end to it.” (Katherine Anne Porter)

Wrapping It Up

I think that about covers everything on this topic that I’ve been mulling over for the past, oh, 5 months! Some of the quotations I included came from my thinkexist.com collection and some came from other friends’ collections (with much credit to one brother’s Facebook page). There were a few others that I felt were related & worth sharing but didn’t quite fit into the flow, so for your further pondering, I’ll include them here:

"Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still." (Robert Sternberg)

"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough." (Frank Crane)

"Trouble is part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough." (Dinah Shore)

My apologies for such a long post (this is 4 ½ pages in Word), and for leaving so much time since the last post, but now that this is done, hopefully my future writings will return to the shorter & more frequent schedule. :-)

“May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.” (2Co 13:14)

~Michal Lisa~

Leaf 4 – A Newfound Admiration for Buried Treasure

I’ve missed posting the past two weeks, but I’ve got a great excuse!

I was shopping.

Yeah, right, me? Shopping? And then trying to use it as an excuse for missing two blog posts? But it’s true! See, this wasn’t just a few too many trips to the mall. This was serious business. The company I work for buys a significant amount of gift shop inventory from the Tucson Gem, Mineral & Fossil Showcase, so, being the general manager, I got to go! It meant a lot of preparation beforehand, figuring out how much of which items we needed to get and doing preorders when possible, and then when we got there it meant days of walking up & down rows of tents looking at seemingly endless tables of products & keeping track of everything as we compared prices & discussed trying new items. It was tiring work, but, ok, yes, it was fun, too! I didn’t take any photos that really do any justice to the incredible variety of gems, jewelry, beads, minerals, fossils and other stuff, nor the sheer size of the showcase, but I did try to take a few worth sharing...

I was reading a book about geodes & nodules on my way to Tucson, so then seeing these impressively huge amethyst nodules was even more cool for me because I had just been learning about how they’re formed, where they’re found, the process of extraction, etc. and now I was up close with the real deal.

Looking at all the different minerals and ways things can form, the only articulation I could manage beyond “wow” was “God is so creative.”

This is a feeble attempt at showing how abundant the fossils were. This is a small, small fraction of it, and they’re almost all from Morocco. There were entire tables and water fountains and place settings carved out of rock littered with fossils. There were fossils overlapping other fossils. There were different kinds of fossils in the same piece of rock. They made me want to go to Morocco.

Just one of the many vendors there, this one caught my attention because it reminded me of a dear friend from New Zealand.

At first, I didn’t think this trip was really a “turning a new leaf” kind of blog topic, but upon thinking about it more, I think it works. I climb rocks, I enjoy beading jewelry, I work in a cave, I’ve gone through the standard issue earth science classes, I’ve been to the Grand Canyon countless times; I am exposed to and interact with geology on a somewhat regular basis. But going to the gem show reignited a level of awe & wonder of God’s creation that I had somewhere in the mix started taking for granted.

So, my challenge to you, my friends, is this: Go outside. Find a rock (or several rocks!). Examine it, and if you feel so inclined, try to identify it (rockhounds.com has an easy-to-follow flowchart). Think about how many different minerals compose that rock. If you did identify the rock type & can look up the different minerals, do a Google image search to see photos of the minerals in their raw/rough forms and in their cut/polished forms. If you’re really science-minded, look at the elemental composition of those minerals. If I lost you back at “examine it,” simply look at the texture, color, and perhaps design, considering that this one rock you’re looking at is just one sample of a world of variety. Now, remember that this is just a rock. A non-living rock. How much more wonderful is the miracle of life!

“I will praise You; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are marvelous and my soul knows it very well.”

- Psa 139:14

“What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”

- Albert Einstein

P.S. The toilet is fixed.

Leaf 3 – Refreshed Appreciation of My Surroundings

Part 1:

Before moving to California last year, I came out for a weekend in April. The mountains still had snow on their peaks but beneath them the slopes were full of brilliantly green grass, yellow and white wildflowers, purple tree blossoms, and rock outcroppings that added their own variety of colors to the pallet. It was beautiful & exciting! I had been down the same road in years past when the heat of summer had melted those colors into shades of brown, so I made a conscious effort to imprint the colorful landscape in my mind (and in my camera!) & carry it with me through the summer.

When I moved here in May, things were already starting to fade, and I was glad I had visited in April. As the summer went on I continued to admire and photograph the beauty I discovered as I explored the area, and was happy to find that even as the grasses turned brown and wildflowers withered, the rocks never got boring (have you ever really stopped to look at metamorphic rock?). Then autumn came with its colors and haphazardly scattered leaves on the ground. Finally it started to get cold, and I started to spend more time indoors, and I started to get a mild case of the “stuck-inside blahs.”

Luckily, this was also right around the time I was heading back to Arizona! Amazing what some time away does… having lived in southern AZ for 6 years & northern AZ for 2 years, going “home” was both comfortably familiar and refreshingly new. Pusch Ridge, Mt. Lemmon, Cochise Stronghold, Humphrey’s Peak, the Grand Canyon… all are places I used to see (& photograph, of course) on a very regular basis, but upon returning I found myself admiring them anew.

And when I came back to California a week and a half ago, winter had some surprises for me…

First it was fog: I drove from LA over the Grapevine into the Central Valley on a Sabbath afternoon, and was instantly transplanted from sunny blue skies to a cold dreary world completely socked in under a thick heavy layer of dark fog (it’s hard to imagine this sudden change unless you’ve experienced it, it’s crazy!). Honestly, it was slightly depressing. The next day was still foggy in the Valley, but as I drove up into the foothills I was stricken with the awesomeness of the transition from being under the fog to in it & then above it. The other cool thing was that despite having driven this road countless times before, I now felt like I was somewhere in Europe (those of you who have actually traveled around Europe are welcome to tell me how right/wrong this impression is).

Then it was clear skies: After a week of rainy days I was fully expecting my drive to services the next Sabbath to be much like the one the week before. But it wasn’t. At all. Instead, the air was super-clear & I could see blue sky! If you haven’t been to the Valley, this might be hard to appreciate, but usually there’s so much stuff in the air that on a “normal” day you can only see the Sierra Nevada Mountains distantly through a haze. On this day, however, they were in sharp relief, and what’s better, with snowy-white tops! The one disappointment was that I didn’t have a safe opportunity to pull over & photograph the scene of cows grazing in a green field with the mountains behind & no industrial clutter. Hopefully, I’ll get the chance again…

Finally, it was snow: Wanting to be sure that I took the time to have fun outside so I don’t wear myself out on office-work, my boss decided we were going to take advantage of the break between the storms & check out the snow in Kings Canyon. I had never gone snowshoeing before, so that alone was an entertaining new experience, but a good one. Once I got used to walking with the snowshoes, I turned my attention to the scenery. The road that goes down into the canyon is closed so that they don’t have to plow it, which meant we had an easy “trail” for a short trip (2 hrs). Again, I’ve driven this road countless times, but it’s different when you’re walking & everything’s covered in snow. Pretty soon after we started it began snowing on us, so keeping the camera lens spot-free was a challenge at times, but I still enjoyed playing with it. (If you’re a Facebook friend, you can see two videos on my page.)

Alright, so I didn’t go writing all this just to make you wish you were here (although, if that’s been accomplished, I’m always up for visitors!). The point is that between the changing seasons and my travels I have had opportunities to look at things around me from a fresh perspective. I think this has helped me develop a little more contentment with where I am (I always seem to want to be off somewhere having adventures, but there’s so much opportunity for adventure in my own “backyard”!). It has also reminded me to maintain a continual thankfulness for God’s blessings (including appreciation of His creation). Sometimes when we’re constantly exposed to something, we get so used to it that we forget how we first responded. This can happen with things we see, knowledge we posses, people in our lives… I want to make sure I stop to notice & soak it in.

Part 2:

My sister & brother-in-law had the opportunity to go to Kenya in December on a United Youth Corps trip. When they returned, they shared with us their photos & stories. It brought back some memories of my trip to Ghana several years ago (also with Youth Corps), stirring up thoughts of how that affected my perspective on various issues. We talked about a variety of things, and I left home glad for the time we had together after their trip. When I got back to work here, I was greeted with a humorous inconvenience: there is something wrong with the toilet. Before each flush, the tank has to be refilled. As long as I fill it enough, it flushes fine. Fixing it will be a rather involved project, so while it will eventually get done, in the meantime I’m just putting up with filling the tank every time I need to flush. This inconvenience reminded me of some of the restroom options while I was in Ghana, and you know what? If I had to fill that tank every time for the whole next year, I would quite honestly be ok with that, because at least it still flushes and is clean and in a bathroom with privacy (please don’t think that all of Ghana is lacking such things; I used many fully-functional nice restrooms there, it’s just that I also used restrooms where the odor of clogged toilets made me physically sick and in one case the “restroom” was a roofless concrete room with a trough on one side). Of course, this got me thinking about other things that I have or use and the blessings they are. In a society & generation that values “new” & “impressive” I’ve at times struggled not to look down on something simply because it seemed “old,” and as a perfectionist, tiny flaws can really bug me sometimes. But who am I to be critical of the blessings God has allowed in my life?

So there it is. Refreshed Appreciation of My Surroundings; both my geographic surroundings & the stuff that surrounds me.

I hope this helps to stimulate thought about appreciation, and recognition of the day-to-day things around you that bring a smile to your face.

What do you appreciate?

What brings a smile to your face?

Stop & soak it in.

“If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy,

if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you,

if the simple things in nature have a message you understand,

Rejoice, for your soul is alive.”

- Eleanora Duse -

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.

The winds will blow their own freshness into you,

and the storms their energy,

while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”

- John Muir -

Leaf 2 - Modifications to My Bible Study Approach

One of our friends decided to figure out how much of the Bible is read in one year of sermons. Of course, since he used his own notes to figure this out, his results are specific to his church area & such, but as a case study it’s eye-opening. He found that in 2008, only 6% of the Bible was actually read in church, and 11 books of the Bible weren’t read from at all. The point of this is not to criticize the speakers for being narrow in speaking, but rather to reaffirm just how much we are each responsible for our own Biblical literacy & knowledge. Over the past year I haven’t been good about routine study at all, so I’ve started being more intentional about it. At Challenger II this winter, methods of study came up in one of our campfire conversations, and I thought I’d share some suggestions…

~ A couple of ladies invited me to join them in reading one hymn each day. We don’t physically read together, nor do we follow up with each other on any obligatory basis, but knowing that there are two other women following the same study plan (and knowing that we each think of & pray for each other when we sit down to read through & meditate on a hymn) is a good encouragement & motivation to stick with it. We expect that after studying each of the hymns, we’ll think about them differently when we sing them in church services. I also like the direction it provides, since sometimes the “hmm, what should I read today?” can hamper progress & this answers it with “where did you leave off in the hymnal?”

~ I’m sure you’ve heard of reading the chapter in Proverbs that matches with the number of the day in the month. Some people really enjoy that. I prefer taking more time than that to really draw out the depth & connections, but am still going in order. At Winter Family Weekend this year Mr. Kilough gave a 3-part seminar titled “Gaining, Grasping and Giving Wisdom.” He included some handouts to use as guides for studying Proverbs, and I requested the electronic versions, so if you’re interested, send me an email & I can pass them along.

~ There’s a Facebook group for daily Bible study. I didn’t join (the hymns, Proverbs, & other topics are enough to keep me busy right now), but you could probably find it easily enough. If anyone doing that wants to share their experience with it for others who are considering it, feel free to comment.

~ The Bible Reading Program sometimes gets overlooked. So, here’s a reminder that it’s a resource. :-)

~ Much of the Ambassador Bible Center classes have now been made available. I attended in 2004, and it was an extremely valuable experience, but for those unable to physically go you can still get the instruction online. It’s intense, but that’s why it’s great!

~ Seek out the less-well-known parts of the Bible. At CII, one of the points made was that when you do a topical study, you’re searching for what you want to hear from God, but God wants you to hear everything He wrote.

~ Figure out your learning style & how to make it work for you. For example, I’m a visual learner, so to help me remember where something is, I draw in my margins. I actually developed an entire coding/indexing system with various symbols, & it’ll probably end up super elaborate when it’s all said & done, but it taps into my visual memory. I’ve also come to realize that often if I’m studying a particular passage, I have to read it in three separate sittings – the first time is just to read it & get the general idea of it; the second time is to dig deeper after I’ve had time to let the initial reading roll around in my head; and the third time is to cement the themes & connections and do the indexing. It takes a long time, but that’s what seems to work for actually getting the study to stick, and that’s the point, right? :-)

Psa 143 :6 I stretch forth my hands to You; my soul thirsts after You like a thirsty land. Selah. … :8 Cause me to hear Your loving-kindness in the morning, for I do trust in You; cause me to know the way in which I should walk, for I lift up my soul to You. … :10 Teach me to do Your will; for You are my God; Your Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.

Psa 1:1-3 Blessed is the man who… in His Law he meditates day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its seasons, and its leaf shall not wither, and all which he does shall be blessed.

Leaf 1 - Renewed Desire to Blog

I started this blog a year ago, expecting to use it as a way to document & share the adventures I anticipated encountering in 2009. I had adventures, for sure, but the sharing never happened. Instead, I disappeared into the mountains. I embraced the new challenges before me, and faced a host of joys & difficulties. One of those difficulties was dealing with the isolation that comes with living so deep in the mountains that internet is a 30 minute drive & possibly not reliable, cell phone service is another hour beyond that, my closest friend is an additional 30 minutes (in Fresno, along with all the shopping & services I rely on), and my closest church congregation is yet another hour & a half beyond that. Thankfully, that extreme isolation isn’t year-round; only through the summer. Currently I’m one hour less-isolated. Still difficult, but more manageable, especially since it does mean reliable internet all the time. Now that I’ve gone through 6 months of it already, I know what to expect for the coming year, and that’s half the battle! So, this year I’m going to be much more deliberate about staying connected. I am inspired by Mary’s “Happy Sabbath” emails and Jeremy’s “Sabbath Thoughts” posts, so anticipate following some sort of weekly update routine. Mine, however, are probably more likely to be Saturday evenings or Sundays.

New Year, New Leaves

As I got out of the car to open the gate I paused to admire the simple beauty of the oak leaves now pressed into the dirt-&-grass driveway. Later, I thought of the phrase “turning over a new leaf,” and I think it fits for this time of changes, transitions, modifications, and renewals. Since this theme covers many topics, and by the time I finish writing about them all it would be quite the intimidatingly-long post, I’ll publish them in installments. :-) Hope you enjoy & benefit from them!