I have a friend who feels called to carry God’s message. As I struggle with writing this blog, my book, and public speaking I keep thinking about that. He feels God chose him. He’s accepted the challenge with such grace. I don’t see him arguing, throwing it back to God saying he doesn’t want the job.

 I, too, feel God chose me with and for a purpose. However, I am angry He chose me. Someone else should tell this ugly, nasty tale. After all, I’ve lived it. I survived it.

I’ve cursed Him. Geez God, did you really have to give me a story that includes feeling like I was at the bottom of a river for the last ten years, amidst the murky water, struggling against an anchor-like weight, always trying to rise to the surface for a breath of air before being pulled down again? A story with a chapter of two collapsed lungs, a shattered diaphragm, breathing being a literal stuggle; complete with a fancy starburst wound to my liver including a bullet, complimented by 10 units of Richmond’s bluest blood, and some lovely scars here, there and everywhere as souvenirs?

Shouldn’t that be enough? I mean come on God, give me a break here. Now you are calling me to help other women? Other children? Enough already! Choose someone else.

Really, God, you gave me the wrong story.  I’m saddled with this horrific story, so vastly different than any story I should be in. I’m light hearted and funny, and would just as soon skip merrily through life. I love to laugh and make other people laugh. Shouldn’t I be writing about something fun to match my personality?

Like finally breaking away from that anchor, and floating freely to the surface as if in a time machine that threw me into dating 25 years after my last date?

Goldilocks at the oatmeal bowl, saying this one is too hot, this one is too cold; too short, too tall, too talkative, too quiet.

A Whitman Sampler box of assorted men, most very sweet; pinched and returned to their place in search of the one that is solid.

Shoe in hand, trying it on every man who attended the ball, seeking my prince charming, my Cinderfella.

Flying, on the fringe, refueling mid-air; behind me a vapor trail littered with the remnants of possibilities and impossibilities. Colorful personalities like the hues of a rainbow, abandoned after a few dates whilst I forge ahead boldly going where no (wo)man, at least this one, has gone before.

Scottie, I’ll need warp speed in three minutes or we’re all dead. Oh, wait! That is the other story. That story of that other woman. Surely not mine.