It’s Wednesday, and that means my mind leaks out into the interwebs. These are random thoughts. It’s deep introspective this week, no footnotes.

1. It still boggles my mind that I’ve lived in Palmyra longer than any other place in my life.
2. I’ve said this before but music tends to be what I sing, not what I listen to. I feel music when I sing it.
3. In my denomination, I often find myself a spiritual orphan.
4. By nature, I’m a cautious person with my heart. A bit of this comes from trust issues, but it’s more because loss hits me deep and over-involvement fries my emotions rather fast. As a result, there’s a lot of times when I’m left wondering if I’m making any connections or having any impact on the world around me. But every once in a while I’m able to see through my thought-fog and see just how deep my roots have grown and love I’ve developed for the people around me. And these moments amaze me.
5. I pastor a lot of people who have no connection with Central Baptist. I don’t pray enough for them, but I do try to be Christ in their midst.
6. I had my Pop Pop’s funeral bulletin cover on my computer desktop for almost a decade—on three different computers and two different operating systems.
7. After the past couple years of stress, moments of peace hit me so hard they drive me almost to tears because the dissonance is so great.
8. This INTJ is exhausted from living in a world without empathy.
9. Faith is life’s heart, hope is its feet, and love is its hands. As I watch the convulsions of power, in Christ’s name, those three things mark the hill on which I’ll take my stand.
10. And even acknowledging all this, I still know how much I can be a self-centered creep.