BEFORE & AFTER

Remember those ads from long ago--the ones with a skinny guy getting sand kicked in his face, and then he uses whatever the ad writer is pushing and becomes a hunk that crushes all opponents?

Or the one that makes me cringe--an overly-endowed female who morphs into a sylph by drinking/eating/imbibing some mysterious chemical substance?

Before - and - After

We're in a season of Before and After right now--I have peony bushes with buds as tight as can be, and behind them, full-out blooms beginning to droop.















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Another part of my life is focused on garage sales--two being held the same weekend--one at my Ohio daughter's house, and one in Fort Wayne to benefit my church's food bank. I've been sorting, searching high and low, and hauling stuff out of closets for possible donation. Some empty spaces are visible now. Who'd'a thought?

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A different kind of Before & After occurs when I start to make a quilt. Fabrics, either yard goods or precut strips and squares, start out looking like--well, fabric. They have no shape or suggestion of what they'll become. Add a pattern, a good pair of shears, a sewing machine, and a little muscle, and you get a quilt.

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Life is full of these transformations--the Before and the After.

People often date their lives by transforming events: "before mom died" or "after I was married." The underlying assumption is that we are changed by an event--the person we were before is different from the one we are afterward.

That notion is evident in our social and political history--after World War II, before the 1960s, before Viet Nam, after 9/11. . . . 

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Have you always been the same person? Or did you, like most of us, have transforming events in your life?

Some people call them defining moments--those times when we recognize who we really are. Not sure I always like the person I've become, but that means there's still something else to work on.

Have a blessed week.

My writing desk, after
an extensive cleaning session.