Cheetos, Chickens, and Change

I have a strong aversion for Cheetos. Which is both sad and nice; I used to be a Cheetos addict, but now that I'm older and realize they're not the healthiest food out there, I'm glad that I've broken the habit. Or rather, a 24-hour flu bug ended it for me. One evening, the last thing I had to eat was a snack of Cheetos, and the next day they were the first thing to come back up. And from that moment on, few Cheetos have passed my lips, and those that have just weren't that appealing.

On the other hand, I love chicken. But there were many years when chicken and I were at odds. It took a lot of chicken nuggets, KFC drumsticks (yeah, I was a model of perfect health growing up), and camp food to help me to discover my long lost love for this most delectable of birds.

Life is funny like that sometimes. You find yourself with a set of wings, but do they do anything productive? No. They just flap there and taste good. How embarrassing...wait...

I mean, sometimes a single circumstance can change who you are, whether for a while or for life, and sometimes change can take years of enduring the same lessons over and over until you finally come to understand just why something is good and something else is not. And I'm not just talking about food here. Change can come in any form: behaviors, attitudes, cautionary measures, emotions, hair color, fingernail length, the list goes on.

A few months ago, after feeling restless for long enough, I began to desire change in my life. And not just something small or temporary, but huge, and in every area of my life. Especially in my relationship with God. I've been a Christian since I was about 5 years old, which is about the equivalent of growing up assuming you know how to perform open-heart surgery. I figured I knew everything, but if you'd put me to a real test, I'd have flatlined it in under a minute.

Then 4 years ago, in one really awesome moment, God got through to me in a whole new way and I discovered for the first time just how possible an actual relationship with Him can be. It's a bit of a story, and this is getting long, so I'll spare the details for some other time. But in that one moment, my whole life changed...and yet there are still days when I look back and feel like the real change is happening so gradually, I wonder just how far I've actually come since that night in June of 2004.

Someplace Else Tomorrow is something I've begun out of my desire to see more change come into my life. I don't journal enough, so I'd like to use this as a way to be able to look back one day and see where I used to be and how far I've come. I don't share my faith enough, so I'd like this blog to be a potential source of encouragement to any and all who stop by here; maybe someone will see what God has done for me and will be inspired to believe that He could, in fact, do the same for them.

So welcome, one and all, to Someplace Else Tomorrow, a blog that has nothing to do with traveling (for now, at least, until God decides to call me elsewhere). No, S.E.T. (ha, I hadn't realized the initials spelled "set"...maybe I won't abbreviate it...) is just a place to remind myself that whether quick or slow, whether I can see the difference or not, God is changing me, and I know that, come tomorrow, I'll be somewhere I'm not today.

So here we go :)

And I promise to try and not use too many emoticons. I'm not a huge fan of them, but they do slip in there sometimes...sneaky little grammatical ninjas, aren't they?