Leapin' Lizard (my high school nickname)

Today I took a leap into the great unknown and quit all ties to a newspaper, even to a newspaper that wasn’t going to publish me very often but that I thought about a lot.

Today I launch myself completely into the world of blogging. Today I become…not a man obviously, but a person with no direct outlet for what I’m writing except what I can drum up for myself. A little un-nerving, this idea of independence.

It goes along with what I was reading this morning about the loaves and fishes and walking on water. The idea that you should take a leap of faith when that leap stands there in front of you, wagging its tail, saying, “Here I am, come and get me.”

That leap says so much about everything we do in life. It addresses our fears for tomorrow: Will I be forgotten or left behind if I don’t have a job or a title or something I can pin my hat on and have others recognize as me?

A friend of mine was talking about a recent procedure she had to enlarge her throat. Her throat regularly contracts for some weird reason and she has to have it surgically enlarged. She’s had it done three times and it doesn’t hurt afterwards and they just put her to sleep for a minute.

But this last time, she suddenly thought she might not wake up. What if all those other times it had been successful were just lucky spins of the wheel and this time she was going to get what she really deserved, which is misery and pain?

This view of life, which all of us share at some point in our lives if we’re realistic, is like being a rich man and spending all your time and energy worrying about when you’re going to lose your money.

We’re all going to have days when we lose it, and days when it comes back, and ultimately, we’ll succeed on both days.

In other words, if it hurts, we can just eat frosting from a can until it goes away, then pick ourselves up and start all over again.

This may be a frosting day.