Not Normal and Proud

Nearly a year ago...someone who I once admired said.
"Too bad you couldn't be a little more NORMAL."
Yes, Jess, I am going to talk about it again and it DID bother me to the core.
Since childhood I wanted to be liked desperately but never
enough to compromise my integrity.  
Not enough to act meek through life and smash the bigger than life
soul in me. 

It is true,  it would be easier if I could fade into the background.

Years and years ago I read

Having Our Say:

The Delany Sisters' First 100 years

A book about the first 100 years of two black
sisters lives.  Each sister had their own technique for survival.
If I had my copy of this book with all the writing in the margins
I could share specific examples but I don't so here goes.
One sister played dumb.  Caucasians thought she was dumb and
she played dumb to her advantage.  The other sister won't have any of
it...she stood up and gave condescending people a wherefore.

Like Holly would say, "Keep your eyes open and punch them in the face."

I am not normal.  My brother and I were just talking about how
we have learned what most people don't learn in a lifetime,  Mostly
through grace.  We have obtained this grace through our own suffering or the
suffering of our loved ones.

Grace is what you don't deserve and get any way.
It is the way the universe speaks to us.
I get messages all the time.
The miracle is I don't miss the ques of my good fortune.
I pay attention to the universe. Listening to my soul and heart.

Instead of taking the train, I have been driving every day alone back and forth.
Nothing to be proud of, mind you, for a transit person.  
First, I drove because I was fearful I wouldn't be able to walk from the train
to the bus that takes me to work.  Commuters are fast paced and I can't walk fast enough
and I especially didn't want to hold up a bus full of my fellow commuters. 

But now, I simply enjoy my quiet praying time.  The other morning I was riding in the quiet and
my soul starts saying there is a message for you.  So I turn on the radio and they are
talking about letting go.  It was a message I very much needed to hear and even though
I haven't worked all the way to simply letting go...I am working on it.

Then weeks ago I had told Mr. Lee that I would wear a different cross every day.
That  very day the message was if you wear a cross you are saying "Christ in me."
You represent Him through your behavior. 

I wrote about writing in books here.

Then I read

Life is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, 

and Live Intentionally:
"Marginalia, seriously who knew, is away of carrying
on a larger, broader conversation.
It's a physical record of our encounter with a text, scrawled or
jotted in margins and on endpapers and flyleaves."

And

"Taking pen or pencil to our books isn't mutilation,
it is conversation.  As British author Hester Thrale Piozzi put
it in 1790, "I have a Trick of writing in the Margins of my Books,
it is not a good Trick, but one longs to say something.""

No No I could never be normal.
Honestly I am trying to raise exceptional people
not normal people. 

My brain is quiet now...will probably be able to sleep.