I've changed a lot this year. I'm realizing that. I pray in a new way. I have an accent a lot of the time, and it's not on purpose. I wear different clothes. I ride my horse faster. I have my own house. I was underneath my house yesterday with a thread and a blow dryer, trying to thaw out my pipes. Welcome to home-owning.

But some things don't change. I drive the same truck. I have a mom and dad and sister and grandma ... plus more grandmas and more sisters and some brothers, too. I still like chocolate cake with white icing.

I wonder if this is how life goes. I'm reading this book, this story of this guy's life, and watching it just roll by like a river ... it's interesting. We change so much, sometimes fast, sometimes over a long, long stretch of flatwater and rapids and bends in the road.

Who are we, then? Are we the one we were at the beginning, or the one we are at the end? Or are we like the water in the river, never the same but always simply the same river, coming down from mountains and ending in a sunset across the Pacific or the Caribbean?

Where does Jesus fit into all this?

I guess He's the One Who keeps the water moving, who gives it a purpose, who puts the heartbeat in our steps. Hmm.

I wonder what the river looks like just around this turn. I'm glad He knows. :)