Halloween

The trouble with starting a blog is that everyday seems to begin with this quest for inspiration. And, the harder you look for it, the more you ask your brain for it, the more it turns around and hides behind a corner. So, the whole live long day you run around searching for it and it keeps hiding.

So, here I am at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and my most precious inspirational times are gone, baby, gone. It doesn't seem like anything earth moving is going to come my way into my thoughts...but Ha! here it was all the time, right in front of my nose. Today...is Halloween.

Halloween is soooo complex for me. It symbolizes a lot of why I chose the poem, "two roads diverged" and the title "pilgrim" for my blog. I am in totally foreign territory when it comes to Halloween.

Talk about complicated...As a devoted Christian, I hate Halloween. As a seamstress & inventor, I love costumes. As a Mom, I approach Halloween with great trepidation (my daughter just came home with an article from school called "the candy hangover"). As a Mom, I eagerly jump at the chance to celebrate a fall season with our girls & surprise them with special candy. As a neighbor, I love seeing my neighbors on Halloween. As a neighbor, I get angry that I only see these people on Halloween.

You can see, at every turn, my mind is busy asking...where do I draw the line? WHERE DO I DRAW THE LINE? Wow, I wish more people would ask themselves that question in thier approaches to living. Worldview...that will have to be a seperate post. We are bombarded at almost every moment of the day with ideas, opinions, fads and trends, peer pressures etc.. We are not encouraged to turn on our brains. We are encouraged to open our mouths and let the world shove anything they want to down our throats - we are supposed to drink it all - eat it all. But, we need to ask the question...where do I draw the line? We need to ask ourselves, why - why am I doing this? why do I believe that? As a devoted Christian, I am very thankful that I have the Bible to lean on. The Holy Spirit to guide me. Without those things I would be LOST. 

For some it is simple, just say no. Say No to anything Halloween. We tried that one year and it was very depressing. So, at Halloween...I have a peace about needing to make a lot of don't cross this line decisions...Costumes; nothing dead, nothing scary, nothing dark. Share the light...that is our motto. Decorations; pumpkins are great fun in our family, that is about it. I love to decorate for fall, but don't do much for Halloween. I have told the girls, "you just need to get a grip on that fact that Mom will never put skeletons in the windows".  Candy; I don't draw too many lines there - except for the "don't read the candy hangover article" line.  Also, we pretty regularily share the history stories of halloween and how it came about. We don't walk into it blindly not knowing it's foundation.

Our chief aim needs to be, Glorify God. How do our Halloween traditions glorify God?  Ohhh, that is touchy territory, but it can be done! We get out and see our neighbors. This is a big thing in our neighborhood. We are already labeled as the "religious family" b/c we homeschool our kids and go to church instead of cut the grass on Sundays...so they are ready for us to turn out the lights on Halloween and let them have fun. No, we are going to be having "fun" too. We are going to smile and enjoy seeing thier faces. We are not going to meet them with religious condemnation and divide us even further. Are kids don't wear scary costumes and we don't have skeletons in the windows and we don't "celebrate" halloween, but can come to our house for fun and candy.  We carve pumpkins as a family and share love. Family times glorify God.

Wow, that was a ramble. Maybe for some of you it is much more easy.  But, as a pilgrim, as a pioneer parent...my memories of Halloween are great and that makes this time - Halloween - even more complex.  As a kid, my Dad got so into the "holiday". I can't just erase those memories. One year he bought a real looking gorilla costume to wear. One year he and my brother built a casket for the front yard. I mean, my dad really got into it. He loved any reason to celebrate.

As my dad lies in a nursing home and we count the days/weeks/months down to his death...it is a way to honor him too. That glorifies God.

I think I have that gorilla costume in my storeroom and I think I might wear it tonight.

The first day.

Hello. After what seems like a very long time, I finally came upon a name that sums up what I hope to blog/write about. Slightly funny, perhaps too much inspired by this fallish time of year, but nonetheless indicitive of this journey that I seem to find myself on ... almost daily. Well, of course I am there daily but, what I mean is, that daily, at least weekly, I find myself deep in thought about the journey and the ways that it has ended up so differently! In a beautiful way.

I have taken a different path, as many of us have. A different path from my parents & siblings, a different path for my family, certainly a different path than many of my peers. A different path than myself ever thought I would take. I continue to be surprised with the joy I find in things I never thought would be mine to experience.

I have been inspired by, in several seasons of my life,  the wonderful Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken.  I want to reflect on those seasons and as I ready to enter a new one, share the journey...get it out of my head and onto something...electronic paper? I have no delusions that people will find any of this interesting. The thought terrifies me. But here it is...for better or worse. I am a pilgrim, a soujourner.

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.	20