When Your Platform Finds You

I don't like to recycle stuff, but what follows is an exception, a comment I wrote for a post written by Dan Balow for the Steve Laube Agency blog, Personal vs. Professional Social Media.

My personal and professional lives are, of necessity, thoroughly blended; my life has become my product.

Not something I wanted; all I really aimed at was being a Paperback Writer, but it seemed that God had other plans. No one in his right mind would choose an extended bout with pancreatic cancer, but I accept it without demur, because to do otherwise would be to question God’s mercy and goodness. “Not my will, but Thine” is what it comes down to, but it can be really hard to do.

And from that acceptance arises a calling and ministry, that life goes on and that there is a way to fully live, even when the experience becomes crushingly hopeless (like, say, right now, as I write this).

Though living in public, so to speak, can attract oddballs, I haven’t run across any, ’cause I can pretty much out-weird anyone.

It’s not something to despise,

but can be hard to understand,

and I wish that it were otherwise,

but my life has become my brand,

days passed to be an example

of how to reinvent a life

when it has been sorely trampled

and rearranged by cancer’s knife,

and it’s a legend I must live,

a full-time job and ministry

in which I am compelled to give

all the very best of me,

optimistic, laughing, light,

and more become that which I write.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is HAVE. Have I got what it takes? Guess we'll see.

They say you've got to have a platform,

all the agents say it's true.

Some are made and some are born,

and sometimes platform will find you

if you keep unfettered mind,

and heart open to God's breeze,

and beyond that don't be blind

to some time spent on your knees

asking for the Lord's direction

(getting that is really nice),

and when you get it, no reflection!,

just take that Divine advice

and let your newly burnished soul

achieve your brightest platform goal.

Four and a half minutes, with Strawberry the Mastiff barking in my ear.

Music (opening in a new window) from the score to Kenneth Brannagh's Henry V by Patrick Doyle, Non Nobis, Domine.

Sylvia thinks another kind of brand may be applied shortly, if I'm slow with the ice cream.