This isn’t the column I began with. I wanted to tell a love story. Our kids took my honey and me on a trip down memory lane on our fiftieth anniversary. We toured our early IUP haunts, viewed a memory book, listened to sixties music, enjoyed a festive family dinner, thanked God for family.

Our children surprised us that morning at a coffee shop. I was sipping a mug of peppermint latte, embossed with the words “WRITE YOUR OWN STORY,” when they waltzed in and announced our chariot was waiting.

As I started to write about it just now I paused to ask, “Who am I writing this for?”

That’s pretty important, right?

Suddenly, I knew that column idea would never see the light of day.

Writing is my passion. I’d write for a single reader, or no one at all. For pay or for free. Writing is in my DNA, as surely as I’m designed to be a tall, white, near-sighted female. A day never passes without my jotting a sudden inspiration on an envelope or scrap of paper. If you’re a writer, you understand. If want to be one, start saving envelopes. You’ll need them.

Someone on Facebook kindly said I was born to inspire. Maybe. I think we’re all born for something beyond ourselves. To connect to the Trinity, to people, and the world. Life is too short to worry if there’s a preposition at the end of my sentences. We have this one, solitary moment that passes in the blink of a cat’s eye. When I reach the end of mine, I want to know I did more than dust furniture and pull weeds (neither of which I do well, or often).

My daughter in Philly said she and her husband went for a three-hour bike ride, recently. Jim and I walked our furry dog that January night and I laughed, “Imagine us ever doing that!”

“Well, we raised three kids and that was like a three-hour bike ride, every day . . .”

What I’m formed to be differs from my children, husband, siblings, friends. And our activity, the stuff we do, may not be as as important as our attitude, our being. God cares as much about our mindset as how we spend our nine-to-five.

Remember drawings in schoolbooks of multiple levels of the earth’s crust? They reminded me of a cake from the best bakery, concocted with cherries, walnuts, and chocolate cream, layer upon luscious layer. Life is more like a layer cake than a one-dimensional apple pie.

There’s this earthy world in which we move about as mortals, with a beginning and an end. It takes most all our effort to get through a day, crowded with activities, assignments, anxieties. We know in our heart of hearts there is more to the universe than this walking-around existence that consumes all our energy and oxygen. For me, it makes living with the uncertainties of cancer an easier horse pill to swallow.

Look in the eyes of the next person you encounter and know you’re looking at a creature without permanent tethers to this physical landscape. We each began in the heart of God and go about our days in search of how to return.

This is why I say God may be more interested in our attitude than our daily footsteps, important as they are. God knows we’re both flesh and spirit. Finite, fragile mortals created for immortality. Jesus entered history so we could spend eternity around the table with the Sacred Three.

One of the advantages of being a writer is I can express on paper what until then is floating around like vague blobs of consciousness, without form or substance. That’s why I couldn’t present you with an itinerary of our anniversary celebration and feel it was worth your time. It lacked substance for you, my reader.

I write for my spirit to acknowledge yours, to affirm your personhood and your infinite value as my companion during these few orbits around the sun. Another dear friend passed through the veil last week, making eternity one step closer for those who loved him.

This is why I write. To walk the journey with you. To encourage your passion.

Maybe this is a love story, after all—ultimately, I’m writing a love letter to God.

P.S. If you’d like to know what we did on our anniversary, I’ll gladly tell you over a cuppa tea.

All will be well.