My plan today was to show you a time-lapse video of me painting an apple.  There is no video.  I’d like to say that the battery died, which it did, right from the start, and I changed it. But I guess in my excitement to start painting again, I forgot to hit the button, and now I have a delightful little apple, but no video.  So today’s offering is not a video, but a painting of an apple.  I like the apple.  I liked painting it.  You didn’t get to see it happen, but it did. And I hope somehow, in knowing the story, you can see the love in that. 

I am not the same person I was when my canvas was blank.  I have worked and blended and stroked and changed, and I have become.  You haven’t seen each step along the way, but I show you now, who I am, who I have become, and I hope you can see the love in that.  Maybe we could all do that for each other — accept  who is here today, right in front of us — and know that it took a million strokes to get here — a million blends to reach these colorful lives.  And if we could see the beauty in these vulnerable presentations of these little apples, these little and beautiful lives, then I guess it would be hard to miss the love in that.