Of Primary Importance

I do like being older.

So many things make much more sense, seem much clearer.  Without a sense of the "Why couldn't I have realized this earlier?" that could be such a distraction.  

From my earliest recollection, I was raised - at home, at school, at church - to think of my relationship with the LORD as the most important of all possible relationships, hopefully followed by my relationship to a future husband.  

It took until my 60s to realize that what I'd been raised, by myriad authorities, was simply wrong.  The relationship that is of primary importance is not my relationship to my Creator, or to my husband, but to myself.  

And that relationship had been seriously intensely completely ignored.  Except, perhaps, by John, who has always emphasized - by deed more than word - the crucial importance of knowing respecting honoring my own mind.

How could he love me, how could I ever be in communion with the Great Spirit without first knowing respecting honoring ME?  

An interesting - and challenging, in the best sort of way - realization to come to at the start of my 3rd Act.  Like someone who's been directing the same play for all her life, who suddenly - after decades of performances - sees a different, deeper interpretation of the piece.  What some people realize on their directorial debut or early in their careers, but not many.  Most see it much later, but too often beat themselves up over "lost years" instead of rejoicing at the new insights.  The lucky get to whoop with joy & set to work.  

I will be the latter, drawing on all my earlier years to consciously develop a better stronger richer relationship between my selves - and in so doing draw closer to my husband & my God.