Liz Rasley

Hi There-

So glad you are reading.  Just wanted to drop a little note–tonight I have 2 posts that I’ve written that I am fighting off the fear and going ahead and hitting the ‘publish’ button.

Of course, that’s not how the proper, professional bloggers do it, it would be a bit more balanced.  Not two posts in one night about more or less the same subject, but then again, I never fancied myself to be a professional blogger.  Nor do I have the consistency they do either.  I roll with what little time (or energy) I’ve got.

The point of these posts is just to say what I’ve been longing to say, it’s to somehow try and express the feelings that are so mixed and confused and hurt, just heart-heavy hurt over the news from Cleveland last week.

I’d love to say that I’m one of those that is strong in my faith (maybe-almost-there, someday soon, kind of strong) and I’d love to say I don’t struggle or grapple with faith, hope, trusting that everything will be alright in the end, but that would be a lie.  I struggle, I wrestle with this, even though I’ve read the end of the story, and everything turns out ok, better than we could have ever imagined.

So, here in two posts–is real and true grappling with my faith, with God.  Trying to hold water in my hands, trying to struggle to understand and hang onto hope.

Hope my expressing this, helps you in someway too-that’s always the aim of my writing.

Waiting on Heaven

 

 

Some days I think it would be some much easier to live, to just live day-to-day if I lived elsewhere.

Maybe in Australia, where the president had enough of  people killing people that he banned all guns.

Maybe in Canada where there is better health care, and better maternity benefits.

Maybe in some other foreign country, like France, where the eating disorder rates and the obesity rates aren’t through the roof and sky-high like they are here.

Maybe somewhere even in this country, like Portland, where the big, open green spaces are protected, and every time I turn around I don’t see a huge plot of land being ground up, churned, mutilated for new development, or for a more convenient location to a Wal-Mart or CVS.

I just want to live in a place where my heart doesn’t constantly hurt.  Where it isn’t constantly broken by people or problems or things.

I just want to live in a place where human and animal rights are protected, not abused. Where people can be people and co-exist with their neighbors and not worry about being tormented or used or abused or tortured in new and unusual ways.  And ditto for the animals-that they can co-exist and trust all of us, instead of having to suffer through life abused, used, broken or tortured.  And a world where they get to actually keep their habitat instead of having to constantly find a new home, re-adjust to a world that is constantly changing and trees and habitat that just keep being cut down.

I just want to live in a place where each person knows the value or his or her own life, where they don’t have to play ghost, play dead or play invisible by starving or stuffing themselves to death.

I just want harmony.  I just want us to appreciate (and love) the life we are given and the animals and environment around us.

It’s clear: I just want heaven, redemption.  And it can’t get here soon enough.