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Is good. No, it’s great. I am having a lovely summer — a little travel, to different places, in new ways, with new people. I am America-bound and have no international travel opps on the horizon. And you know what? I’m okay with that. I think it’s a sign of a new contentment in me. Perhaps a new perspective that the grass up under my own two feet is as green as it gets. I have learned so much about myself in the past year or so. I have figured out an awful lot about what motivates me, what drives me. I have learned that I cannot function optimally without some powerful, upward, edifying spiritual activity in my life. Stagnation comes quickly, and it becomes all-consuming. But the good news is that the pot is easy to stir up, and whatever it is in me that God moves is bubbling very gently just below the surface if I get too far out of fellowship.

I have a new thought on contentment. Sometimes, it frightens us. It makes us question and wonder. Is it real? Why have I avoided it for all these years? Am I my own worst enemy? Why must I always look for something that’s not quite right? Do I not believe I deserve this contentment? Is that why I question my way right out of it back into that all-too-comfortable quagmire of discontent?

Where did I learn that I did not have a right to be at peace? Did someone, somewhere, teach me that I could not be at my creative best if I was a happy person, surrounded by supportive people? Did I fall to that myth? Did I let it become my truth? It’s not like it’s easier or more fun to be in a constant state of unease, querying, doubting. Absolutely not. It’s like a cancer . . . it eats away at my self-confidence . . . it gnaws at my belief in the usefulness of my gifts and abilities . . . it sends me into a state of reclusiveness . . . why? It convinces me that rebelling against the norm makes me better or stronger or more likely to succeed. But does it? Or does it just catapult me back into another quicksand of questioning? Some time ago, I wrote that I was entering a phase of my life where I wanted fewer question marks and more exclamation points. And I got them! Does that make me apathetic? Inert? Sheeplike? No. It makes me assertive. And in charge. Of my own choices, both good and bad for me. And it makes me responsible. For my own life. And the results those choices yield for me.

I am important to me, and I know that I am important to my friends and family who love me. They tell me so. Sometimes, they don’t, actually, but they show me so. And that is how they love me. They affirm me. And they support me. And encourage me. And remind me that I love them, too, in the process.

Thank you, friends and family, for reading this, because even if you never tell me that you did, I will benefit someday from the beauty of who you are.