I have a confession: I took an entire course titled “Forgiveness” at the graduate level and I still am predominantly unsure about the whole thing.

How am I here? I am learning to live free . . .

The warrior of Hope may be brought to its knees, beat down and battered, but Hope is hard to kill. Hope will grasp for breath and spring back to life, even stronger than before.

This upside down way of being grateful is exactly where I want to live. 

I have a confession: I am not going to move on. 

I have a confession: Surface living is simply not satisfying.

I have a confession: Sometimes my humanity shows. 

As an Enneagram 1, it is an understatement to acknowledge that this is extremely uncomfortable. 

This medley is both an invitation and a reflection on the goodness of this good friend, of this good God. In my own words, I invite you to come as you are, because that is exactly how God wants you to come. I call upon a the words of a song I sang in churches with stained glass windows as a child and the words of a new song that inflated my heart and spirit in a worship gathering today with flashing lights and no windows. Original words, old words, new words . . . And the same good God . . . The same good friend.

I have a confession: I am afraid that God has often been sorely misrepresented and I imagine that I have, at times, been the one misrepresenting.

What I am discovering is that in the absolute upside down way of things, the more I come face to face and heart to heart and soul to soul with the utter complexity of being human, and living in brokenness, the wider my lens becomes to see a vision of simplicity