Beginnings

Home can be any number of things: Where everybody knows your name, where you rest your bones, where your heart is, where you sit your hat, where you spend your time, or where you are most at ease. Backwards and Forwards or whichever way you choose to look at it, home provides an understanding of self and often times it provides us the courage to begin.

The places I have come to call home have often been surrounded by support, love, happiness, major challenges, leaps of faith, learning curves and my very own brilliant variety of fall on my face moments. Right, I know - brilliant with an Adobo's dash of sarcasm. Now, fall on your face moments are resilient and often provide a greater expansion of knowledge into the stuff that you're made of.

So over the last twenty-something years I have fallen on my face and learned to call a variety of places "home." My perspectives have changed because of those people, places and miscellaneous face plants. Home then became a more than 1 location thing - Hong Kong, China; Northfield, Minnesota; Galway, Ireland; and Ohio - always Ohio - "Like the back of my hand." (Thanks, Over the Rhine.)

The following I have come to know and grow into:

1. If I am going to fall on my face - I best learn to be gracious about it.

2. My perspective is my own quirky, funky, happy, hopeful affect on my present realities that surround me.

3. In turn, my perspective can also have an affect on others - so maybe I should try to make it a good one.

4. "Make Lemonade out of Lemons" - My buddy Dale knows what he's talking about. (How to win friends and influence people, by Dale Carnegie)

5. Say Thank you - and mean it. People know the difference.

6. Challenges make you better - so learn to appreciate them. I know, I suck at this one too. Knowing this does not make them an less painful.

7. Sometimes you need the time away from home to learn exactly what you're made of. But to rip off a little bit of "Sweet Home Alabama" - "you can still have roots and wings." Yes, uber cheesy - but don't we all need a bit of cheesy goodness sometimes?

8. Be open to new things - they might surprise you.

9. Have a little faith. It might just become big faith over time.

10. Love. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

So these are the things I write about. Challenges and change, perspective and perseverance, roots and wings and those things that might provide a little more encouragement to all of us that need it. Sometimes I just need to hear it out loud.