About This Blog

I Loved the show Seinfeld! I still do; so do ALL of my friends. Why?

When Jerry Seinfeld approached the executives at NBC about a new idea for a sitcom, he told them his idea was for a show about nothing.  That wasn’t actually accurate; it was a show about everything.  It was a show about everyday life in New York City among thirty-somethings.  It resonated because everyone could relate to the people, places, ideas, times and events of the storyline.

That is the aim of this blog.  I am as ordinary a human being as you will find, but aren’t all human beings extraordinary?  Wasn’t that the irony of the show?  Wasn’t it actually extraordinary?  The audience loved it because it was about them – ordinary people living ordinary lives.  Yet, it was extraordinary!  We all have within us the extraordinary trying to escape the ordinary. 

I grew up in a middle class family of five.  My parents were Christians.  They would have told you that they didn’t start off that way .  My mother grew up Irish Catholic and my father Methodist, but living on ranches in rural Idaho they rarely attended church.  Yet, God was real. My father left the rural ranch to enlist in the Navy at 17 years old beginning an adventure of seeing the world.  It lasted just one year.  My mother left the farm at 18 to attend university.  They met the first week of school at a fraternity/sorority mixer.  They dove head first into their new social environment.  It wasn’t until they were married with two children that they made a decision for themselves, apart from their upbringing, to pursue a more active and traditional spiritual life of Christianity. But they were anything but traditional, and were greatly influenced by writers like Edgar Casey, Norman Vincent Peale and Alan Watts.

I was the youngest of three children.  I have always been a spiritually sensitive person.  As a young girl I drew elaborate pictures of Jesus’ ascension with crayons; my paternal grandmother hung them on her wall.  We would sing hymns on the piano when I was at her house as she taught me to play.  I still can’t hear, “How Great Thou Art” without thinking of her.  About the same time, I asked my maternal grandmother, “Who are the people that float in the air in my bedroom at night?”  I didn’t appear to be frightened, so she told me they were angels. 

I have never felt alone.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t feel lonely.  My response to my particular life situations was often to feel lonely.  Nevertheless, if I was honest, I always felt the presence of God.  However, as a late teen and early adult I thought of God and all things religious as inconvenient.  Definitely a cramp to my style.  Interestingly, without any prompting or encouragement from me, I would often experience religious people, all types, trying to reach out to me during this period.

In my early twenties, I was unhappy with my life choices, I felt empty and bored with the direction I had vigorously indulged in.  I didn’t even like myself much.  I decided to become more serious about pursing my own spiritual life.  I was introduced to a church that was enthusiastically pursuing living out what they saw Jesus doing with his early followers, and I fell in love with it.  I was spiritually thirsty and I discovered a passion for learning.  I finished my college degree and became a teacher.  I married a man with common beliefs, we served in our community and devoted ourselves to our growing family.  We had four wonderfully unique and extraordinary children.  They taught us both so much.

As time went on, I developed a real trust of the spiritual voice within me, what some might consider intuition.  Nevertheless, this world is messy, we are messy, and my life was no exception.  There are always obstacles to living a spiritual life undistracted by the mess.  Spiritual growth can get side tracked, distracted, even held hostage by the people, places, ideas, and events of ordinary life.  This unavoidable chaos pushed me to really dig into what I believed and what I was building my life on.  It wasn’t always comfortable.  It was often surprising.  I often found my answers in unexpected places, but I have found the extraordinary is waiting for each of us if we will awaken to it.

This blog will be about the continuation of my journey and I hope yours.  I will share my experiences and what i’ve discovered with you here, not because it is uncommon, but because it is common.  Common yet extraordinary.  Your life may be common.  Your experiences common.  But YOU, my friend, are extraordinary.  Awake O Sleeper and join me in this journey of the extraordinary…

 My name is Julie.  I live in Northern Idaho with my husband of more than 35 years and nearby to our four children and grandson.  I have had many life roles: daughter, sister, teacher, school principal, writer, wife, mother, grandmother, friend.  I hope through these messages we may become friends.