Everyday steps and Bipolar musings

My goal for this Lenten season has been to listen more and simplify my life whenever possible, so that I have more room in my life for family, church and the sound of God's voice.  One of many things I've done has been to take a good, hard look at my Face Book account.  I started my Face Book account a long time ago.  At first I was amazed that I could reconnect with the lives of old friends, people I hadn't seen since as far back as grade school.  Up until then, I could only summon up old memories and speculate about where they were now and down what roads their lives had taken them. I remembered the sweet boy in fourth grade who jumped in to save me when I got my first pair of glasses in fourth grade.  I remember the first person I ever knew whose parents got a divorce.  After that, I was deathly afraid to be away from my parents for even five minutes, because I thought that when they got home they would be divorced.  Having gone to an almost complet...

Up until I turned 40, I don't think I ever stood up for anything important.  When I was young, I stood up for rock bands, my right to stay out past midnight, my right to not believe in God (this, thankfully, was a quickly passing phase), my right to dress and say what I wanted, the right to get my hair cut in a way I knew my parents despised, my right to drink and smoke as much as I wanted and the right to be very (sometimes inappropriately) politically outspoken.  At the time, "standing up" for those things made me feel powerful, as if I was in control and not just a kid living at home mooching off my parents.  My friends encouraged me in these things.  I was the "rebel," choosing a different way of acting, dressing, and speaking than most of the kids in my high school.  I was certainly different from everyone in the big fancy Methodist Church downtown where my family had attended since I was three.  Looking back, I can only imagine how embarrassed my pare...