California for Stefani

Here I sit at work (one of my bookkeeping clients) and I am delaying the number crunching that I will be doing in a bit. I have 3 plastic bags of papers, so something tells me it will be a long file. No biggie, I enjoy rummaging through piles of papers and inputting numbers. It is what I love to do and thankfully I can do a job that I love to do. I wish I had a few more clients, but that will take time and someday I might not even have to leave the house to do this, but do it all at home. Here is hoping!!!

I have been a Christian all my life... from the moment I had thoughts in my head, I remember thinking about Jesus. I have always had a relationship with him which has been great. I have always known that I was protected and had someone by my side all the time. Never once have I ever doubted it. What an amazing feeling that is.

I believe that Jesus is the son of God... and to me that means he is a separate entity of sorts. Do I believe in the Trinity... who knows... I believe that God and Jesus are one, the same way Doug and I are one... so I guess it all depends on your interpretation of that term. Does that make me less of a Christian??? I sure hope not because honestly I have no reason to believe that it makes any difference to my relationship with God/Jesus. Do I care if someone firmly believes in the Trinity??? Nope... they can believe what they believe and I can believe in what I believe... we are all allowed to have our opinions of the interpretation of the bible.

Jesus was put on this earth to show people the way in a human form. How lucky are we to have someone like him to live by example. I try really hard to live by his example and of course, fail at times. He wasn't liked much though and loved to be a rebel. I love that he did things out of the norm... granted he knew he was right, so I guess he had that knowledge. I don't have that knowledge, so sometimes it is hard to walk in his footsteps and know if you are doing it right or not.

I wonder if Jesus felt alone a lot... I think he did. He did things out of the ordinary and that usually means being alone. Heck he even got kicked out of his own home town, so I guess that means something. I love that he said things as he saw it... he had the confidence to do that and not care about the consequences. Unfortunately, I am not like that and when I do try to be a little more like that, we are hated by people even more. So I tend to keep my mouth shut about things now because it just makes people feel better. I wonder what he thought about himself though? I guess he didn't regret anything he said to people, because he was without sin, and I think regret somewhat can stem from sin. I wish I could say things and know with 100% confidence that what I said was how I was supposed to say it. Usually it is about 95% though, but that extra 5% is what gets me thinking.

Jesus is my hero... he is who I look up to and who I want to follow. I know he is my best friend and he doesn't mind if I grumble to him a bit every so often. He puts up with me and loves me just how I am. Granted I try to be who he wants me to be... I don't want this to be a one sided friendship. I don't want him to be the one that does everything for me and I give nothing back. So I work very hard on giving back to him what he deserves. I want our friendship to be 2 way relationship... to be all it can be. I love my friendship with Jesus... I know it is forever and one day I will actually get to see him face to face. Then I can give him a great big hug and thank him for real! Then I won't be alone anymore... what a thought.

Doug and I struggle with the concept of friendship... we believe it is one thing and other's think it is another. I think others must struggle with this too. I think people fill their lives with church, kids and sports so that they can forget how lonely this world can be. We don't have any of those things in our lives and so we notice the emptiness. Honestly though, I would rather be alone then to have friends that never call. It would be like God/Jesus taking care of us ALL the time, but we never pray to him... maybe once a year or so just to make a small connection to make sure God/Jesus is still there. That is a sucky relationship and I want no part of that. The only way we can communicate with God/Jesus is by prayer... which doesn't have to look official, but just the occasional daily hello and how are you. My phone doesn't connect to Heaven so I have to use prayer. Us humans though have phones to talk to each other and we can use them every so often... heck we even have email, which is much easier than a phone LOL. We have used that phone thing a lot but it tends to be fairly once sided... we use the dial pad a lot, but our phone rarely rings... must be something wrong with it HA HA HA.

Again, I have said this before... I would love to move away from all this to start over again. Clean the slate with all new people and see if we can improve our relationship skills with new people who don't have preconceived ideas of us. But... if we are going to stay here, then we will have to figure it out with what we have. We are working on getting into new groups to see if we can find a new circle of friends. If it doesn't work, we are ok with that too. If nothing else, we have the most amazing car to drive in when we feel down. Heck it is still amazing even if we feel up HA HA HA.

Life is about learning and making our light Shine for Jesus. If we have no other purpose than that, I am ok with that. So I need to work on making my light shine. How does this look? We will see. We are open to the possibilities and I think we try very hard to be open to what God/Jesus wants us to be.

"we were meant to shine, not just survive" ... that is our new life motto.

Many years ago (probably about 8ish), I remember telling some friends why we were upset with them... (we should know better, but we don't).

They were new to Canada and when they moved here, we opened up our home to them, including my family parties... we invited them to some family functions (including Christmas) and just tried to make them feel welcome here in Canada. It went great for about a year or so... we would see them often, they would come to our place to visit, and we would go to their place and visit... but soon it slowed down. They became the popular people in the church and preferred to spend time with the movers and shakers of our church. It wasn't long before they were too busy to do stuff with us anymore... and our friendship dwindled.

One day I decided to let them know why we were leaving the church and why we weren't friends with them anymore... and the response to that was...are you ready for this... even though they only see some people once a year, they still consider them great friends. I was floored and honestly, totally stunned. How could I respond to that? I didn't and just left it at that.

Why do I bring this up? Well, it has happened to us again... we have a friend that never calls us, and now has informed us that he considers Doug his good friend... I am totally at a loss about this whole concept. How does one have a great friendship if you never get together? I totally understand being a friend with people long distance... but best friends? Not sure how that is possible. We have some good friends spread through out the US and we truly appreciate who they are and what they mean to us, but they can't be there when we need a shoulder to cry on and when we just need some company in the evening. To me that is where the best of friendships happen... the face to face of everyday of life.

I guess because we don't have kids, or go to church, our life isn't totally occupied by other things, and so a close friendship is important. For us, if distance is an issue, then that is a decent excuse for not phoning to visit, but what is the excuse if you live near by? So, the assumption is that if someone doesn't ever call, then doesn't that mean they don't want to do stuff with us? To me that seems pretty straight forward and honestly, I am ok with that. Good grief, I don't expect people to like us, and if they don't want to do stuff with us, then that is their choice. My issues is if they don't do stuff with us, but still call us friends.

Doug and I are ok with our life. I would prefer to live it in California though... if we are going to be alone, then I would like to be alone in nice weather and surrounded by crazy people just like us. Now this post is not directed to anyone on my facebook friends list, so don't think I am posting this about you. My parents have been our best friends and have been there through our ups and downs. My friend Conny comes out to visit me in White Rock at any given time that I ask... something tells me she gets as lonely as we do. Our friends Kraeg and Anna are just plain busy with starting a new business (but they better start pulling up their friendship boot straps soon HA HA HA... breaky soon???).

Sometimes I wonder what we are supposed to do in this life. I posted a song by Mercy Me on facebook awhile ago called "This Life". It describes our thought process and I think it encourages us on how to live. We aren't going to fit into this world, but we can still Shine... we were meant to shine for God. He created us for a reason, and sitting back and letting the world pass us by is not an option, so we will keep our mind open to all that he wants us to do. We have no idea how that will look, or where it will take us in this life, but I think we are open to all possibilities.

We still feel unsettled here, but something tells me that is just how we are supposed to feel. Keeps us from getting too comfortable I guess (i will just keep saying that to myself). For now we will enjoy living only an hour from my parents so we can visit just about every week. Maybe some day we will live a 2 1/2 hour flight away instead. For now we will enjoy living in the beautiful seaside town of White Rock driving our Mustang Convertible with Mickey Mouse in the back seat. We will enjoy our new pet Minnie and we will take whatever vacation we can grab a hold of. God has been good, and I will never complain about what we have... we are forever grateful for our life no matter how it looks.

So if you see a blondie and a red head walking hand and hand (well... side by side) on the beach, know that we are living the life the best we can and we are happy doing it together with God happily protecting us from all sides.