Plasticity by Patresa Hartman.

Two things are rocking my socks today: 1) The early hint of a new realization; and 2) the plasticity of my brain.

This weekend I learned of a man with a spirit as big as a child's who built a house that's basement was reachable by slide instead of staircase. The father of three and a National Guardsman, he designed and built the house himself, completing all but the final cosmetics before being called to duty. Before he left for Iraq, he told his family that he had built a secret room into the house, and they were to find it. They looked and looked, making game of the search (which distracted them temporarily from their missing), but did not find the secret room until the man returned and unlocked the hidden door.

The weekend proved very educational, because I also learned that a man I have known for thirty-four years was someone completely different. Actually, that's not correct. I learned that I have only known him in one dimension -- one that was cold and concrete, all steel and pathology. But something has shifted.

Either I have evolved, vision sharpened, or he has evolved, sharpness softened. As I am seeing him now, sturdy frame failing and the bulk of his life strung behind him as a wake, he is multi-layered. There is love where I believed there to be none (oddly manifested, nontraditionally directed, but present, nonetheless). And even the concept of love has gone watery and subjective.

I am obsessing over these two stories, which I believe are the same -- the man with the secret room, and the man with the secret self -- and it's exciting. I feel like I am on the verge of understanding something big and important -- something about evolution and self and love and cruelty and the way boundaries are liquid.

And that brings me to the plasticity of my brain. I am so grateful for all the things I do not know or understand, because the discovery (even when it is only an almost-discovery) is exhilarating. I love that my mind maps are still willing to disassemble and reconfigure. I cherish the easy evolution of us, when we are willing to flow.

Celebrating Self by Shellie R. Warren

Isn’t it weird (and a little sad) how you don’t really make the time to think about what you are thankful for or appreciative of until Thanksgiving rolls around or you meet someone like Angie Ledbetter who just flat out asks you?

A couple of days ago, she told me about this wonderful project she was doing with some writer friends, but I must admit, when she offered me the invitation to submit a rant, rave or two, it took me a second to even come up with something type-worthy.

Not that I am spoiled or anything, but to be honest with you, I have spent so much time focusing on “wanting more” that I haven’t really thought about “what I have” in quite some time. The irony of this blog platform is that without my initially realizing it, I’ve discovered that it’s actually an answer to one of my prayer requests and goals for the New Year: to celebrate myself, personally and professionally.

When it comes to writing, I am now celebrating my eighth year as a professional writer. Now, if you have this same claim to fame (being a writer for a living, I mean), then you know it’s not as glamorous as it sounds. Even today---literally today---I’m trying to figure out how to pay my Internet bill so I can send off my invoices to get paid for some of the articles I did months ago; ones that, had the money come in on time, hustling for cash wouldn’t be an issue at this second---literally this second.

But yet, when I think about the years of my life before 2000: years of being in school and not knowing what the heck to do; years of working in Corporate America and hating every minute of it; years of not knowing what my purpose in life was or what my personality and talents were meant to accomplish, these past eight years---house-sitting with cars about as old as I am and all---have been some of the greatest times of my life.

Writing is not paying the bills as much as I would like (yet), but I can say that I am a full-time freelancer, and because I spend a lot of my writing time putting, as my mother would say, “emotional throw-up” on paper, as a survivor of sexual abuse, assault, promiscuity, abortion and just plain ole’ confusion and depression, it has saved me a mint in therapy, and so yes, for that, I am mighty thankful.

But what it has also done is given me a voice in this world---maybe for this time, maybe not. It doesn’t really matter. When it’s right, I will be heard. How do I know? A best-selling author by the name of Alice Randall once told me that we write because we're destined to. It may not be for this generation. Someone may find something you scribbled on a napkin 50 years ago, but when they find it, that’s when it is supposed to be read, processed, heard.

I think that is what I am most thankful for. That of all of the gifts God has to give to his children, he entrusted me with the gift of writing. Even when I doubted, he believed that I had a voice that needed to be heard. Thanks to this blog, now and who knows, maybe even 50 years into my future.

Shellie R. Warren is a full-time writer in Nashville, TN. When she's not writing an assignment or pitching one, she's getting her non-profit, Butterfly Angel (http://www.butterangel.org/) off of the ground or working on her second and third books, "Make Him Weak in the Knees (in Prayer)" and "Dramaholics." Her memoir, "Inside of Me; Lessons of Lust, Love and Redemption" was released in 2004. For more information go to www.myspace.com/missnosipho.