Headlines in my Heart

Chattanooga, Tennessee: 5th Service Member Dies After Thursday Shooting

Pierce City, Missouri: Police Find Missing Woman After Endangered Person Advisory Issued

Zoey Tur: Transgender Journalist Gets Into Heated Exchange With Breitbart Senior Editor Ben Shapiro

Susan Rice: National Security Adviser Says She Expects Iran to Spend New Money on Military

Wrightwood, California: 100-Acre Wildfire Near Campgrounds Forces Hundreds to Evacuate

Claudia Alexander: NASA Scientist Who Oversaw Galileo Mission, Managed Rosetta Project Dies at 56

Bill Arnsparger: Former Miami Dolphins Assistant Coach Dies at Age 88, Team Says

Oregon State University: Researchers Develop Bacon-Flavored Seaweed

I quickly skimmed my sidebar this morning as I sipped my coffee and it struck me, how, when I read the "news", I read words.  And forget the people involved.  Real people, With skin on.  Like, Susan Rice is a real person, living and breathing right now.  So is Zoey Tur.  The hundreds, nameless and faceless to me, in Wrightwood California are leaving their homes, while I sit in mine comfortable and unaware.  Claudia Alexander dies at 56, it says in black and white, and I move on to bacon flavored seaweed, without much of a thought to how those words hit heavy on someone's heart who loved Claudia, who knew what her favorite flower might have been and long to hear her voice again.

The woman found in Pierce City, Missouri....can you imagine the celebration and collective sigh of deep, indescribable relief her family feels?  No.  I can't either.  But this morning, as we pass over that headline, she is sorting out what happened to her and there are people who keep coming back into the room just to make sure she's really there again.

Bill Arnsparger; he lived a long, good life with experiences most of us don't have.  We all, however, end up human, in the end.  And what we hold in our hearts, it turns out, is what's most important.  The forever things.  The seeds we've sown in our people gardens.

These things.....these are what pass through my mind when I read the news.  I'll carry these in my mind today and offer them up in prayers as I move around in my day.  I'm not educated enough on many matters to "take stands" on social media.  But I do listen, with my heart's ear, and consider deeply.