The essential "me"

Full disclosure. Neither of the images in the photo are me. I started this post on Dec 15 2024. I started it in a bar at LAX on the occasion of journeying alone to my friend's celebration of the life of his life partner. Memorials, funerals, and celebrations of life are important passages. Over half of the important lessons I've learned in 61 years have been learned through those passages.

My thoughts here today have for sure grown and morphed over my life, but the object of the thoughts has not morphed. He is my rock, my salvation, my source, my water, my bread, and my destination.

---

As I picked up the thread of those first 2 paragraphs several months later, I needed to relive that journey. It was a quick trip from North Texas to Southern California. I was there less than 2 days. I spent the time, first with former tennis girlfriends and wandering around the college town where I got my MBA, and then with my friend going through the difficult passage.

My friend delivered his partner's eulogy. Her name was Laura. Laura "came alive" again in his speech. I remembered her as she was. Beautiful, delivering zingers in social situations with just the right mix of sarcasm, irony, and self-deprecating humor, and - most important to me - doting on my friend while seeing his quirks and faults and loving him anyway.

That was the essential Laura. My friend captured her in his speech.

I came away with a need to capture my essential self!

Since that time, I've come a long way toward that capture. Mind you, the capturing - in and of itself - changes me, too. Even as I capture myself, I grow and change!

Those of you who caught the objective of my post in paragraph 2 are probably wondering by now, "what in the world is she talking about? She's talking about herself and the language she used in paragraph 2 would seem to imply she wanted to talk about Jesus Christ (given the clues in her other blog posts.)"

And, you are wise to ask that question. See the epiphany that happened to me in that bar at LAX is that "yes, even when I'm participating in rites of passage with my friends of other faiths and friends of no faith. Even then, I am honoring both their spirituality and my own. Even then, I am growing in my own relationship with the God of the universe. Especially then!"

---

I shared this post with my friend. We parlayed a bit as is our wont. Here is how I summed up my feelings from the memorial and the intervening months:

"Well, it was beautiful. You captured LAURA. I got to know LAURA all over that day. I wanted to capture myself in that same way. I've been able to do that - capture my essential self. I'm a better "me" because of it. I wanted you to know that.

"It will be up to someone else someday to capture me for others...that's not my problem. It's someone else's problem. And that's OK with me."