Off to a wedding this weekend. Back to the small town where I spent most of my formative years developing. I can't wait to be flying around the same old streets that used to take me to school and the beach.

New beginnings. I was thinking about this in regards to my friend getting married. And another getting engaged. Each new phase of life presents challenges that we seem to sidestep or take head on. Why is it that I so often refrain from the challenges when they are of a more spiritual nature?

Change in behavior for the sake of the King. I can state it. Can I live it?

My experience this weekend will most likely bring nostalgic feelings of things come and gone. Paths chosen and others left untrodden. But I must set my sights ahead.

I cannot look back.

"Out on the road today, saw a black flag sticker on a cadillac. A little voice inside my head said, 'Don't look back, you can never look back.' Thought I knew what love was, what did I know? Those days are gone forever, I should've just let 'em go, but..."

"Don't you turn around... Don't you look back now... Whose gonna ride your wild horses? Whose gonna drown in your blue sea?"

"Look at you now, walking on clouds. Lining up stars from medicine jars, you are the life of the crowd. You had to rise above, what bad things are made of. All the hearbreak, you didn't break, you went through more than I could take... and look at you now."

Many people from my past will be at the wedding, and have no context of my spiritual development or "what happened to Kelly." I've just recently reached the point where I don't have to tell everybody. People know the present-day person standing in front of them.

Aren't we always a culmination of all of our experiences? At each moment we are everything that we have been through and everything that we are to become.

What I want at each moment is to be inhabiting the presence of God. So I'll pray that it is so.

posted by Kelly @ 5:11:00 PM