I guess I should go back and explain why I wanted to start this blog in the first place.  It seems as though for the last two years all I have gotten is bad news regarding my health.  All my life I have been super flexible.  I'm talking Gumby, Cirque du Soleil, Elasti-Girl flexible.  Since high school I have dealt with an amount of daily pain in either my neck or my feet.  After 4 years of doing sign language interpreting and transcribing I started to have pain in my wrist.  After a month of doing Jillian Michaels DVDs and now I have a knee cap that won't stay in place.  It ends up that all of the joint issues are caused by a genetic disorder.  So at the time when friend after friend is having a baby I'm struggling to cope with the fact that I will never be having one because I could never chance passing this on.  In the summer of 2011 it was becoming clear that I wasn't going to be able to stay in my career for much longer.  After applying for several jobs I found one that I loved but it sadly was in another city.  After turning it down once and regretting it for half the year I got a second chance at it and ended up moving to Nashville last month.  Right before I moved I decided to make appointments with all my doctors and specialists to get recommendations for who to see in Nashville and to make sure that I was as healthy as I could be, you know, being all elastic-y and all.  Ends up some blood work came back bad and one of my doctors feels pretty confident I have lupus.  At this point I don't know whether to be so incredibly upset over how the crappy news just keeps on coming, scared because both lupus and my joint disorder are horrible and life changing in and of themselves but together I can't imagine what my future is going to look like, resigned that life just wasn't turning out all too swell for me, or hopeful because regardless of what is on my plate I serve a mighty God that can change it all.

Over the last two years I feel like I have been doing everything I can to stay afloat and keep my head above water.  Every day comes with pain in some form- both physically and emotionally.  I'm sick of it.  I'm sick of thinking about me. The fear of the possible future is overwhelming and you know what?!? I'm not a prophet or a psychic or prognosticator and I have no flipping idea of what the future is going to be so why am I acting like I have a death sentence?!?  I refuse to let this be the end of me and the best way of doing that is to stop focusing on myself all the time. So this blog is my chronicle of a journey of not focusing on me and all my hosts of problems.  This will be a time to step out of myself to help show kindness to others in small actions everyday.  I'm not even going to say that I will be 100% consistent with this because, well, I know me and it takes a lot to be consistent with a blog and I have never attempted it before and just the fact that people will read this is a bit scary.  I'm good at putting it all out there and that scares a lot of people away.  Some call it word vomit and they are totally right... but that's me.  I wish I was better at keeping some things in and not over sharing but I believe in being authentic and with me you will get the whole truth- all the ugly, beautiful, tarnished, broken and restored parts of it.

I had been thinking about starting up a blog for some time and now that I'm in a new city, in a new job, at a new church, I figured, what the heck?!  What better time to start a blog?!  Then I was walking through a cute stationary store here in Nashville because who doesn't love cute stationary and I came across my little book of inspiration.

It has some really good ideas for good deeds and some kinda lame ones but I figure when I am feeling lazy I will like that there is a lame one that is as easy as "holding eye contact with the cashier."  There was one that I was a bit nervous about.  Not because it was hard to do but I thought this person would be hard to cross paths with.  I thought this profession was pretty much non-existant but here it is:

So I read that about a week ago when I was reading through the book and I was like, "Where am I ever going to find a meter maid?!?"  Well I was sitting in traffic yesterday morning and look at this car trying to turn onto my lane and wouldn't you know that it was a meter maid... well kinda.  Not only did I smile at them, I let them in my lane and waved at them.  Talk about going above and beyond! Here is the proof:

So there it is.  The first deed is done.  There will be more to come.  I promise you that.  If you have anything specific that you would like to see me do as a good deed then by all means, please share.  I'm excited for this journey. I hope it radically changes me and I invite you to be along for the ride to see it.