Stories that connect.

woman on Chain Bridge, Budapest, at night

This is me standing on the Chain Bridge in Budapest, Hungary circa 2015. A few hours before my husband took this photo, I lost my driver’s license. But I didn’t notice until five days later as we drove through Austria. This was a problem, because technically I wasn’t supposed to drive our rental car through SEVEN foreign countries without both my Missouri-issued driver’s license AND my International Driving Permit. Oops!

When we returned home nearly three weeks later, I pulled a small envelope from the U.S. Embassy in Budapest out of our mailbox. I opened it to find my lost driver’s license, no note, no story, just this little piece of plastic that someone so generously returned to me. Someone thought enough of me, a stranger that they didn’t know, to take an extra thirty minutes and walk it over to the Embassy.

This always struck me as proof that we are more connected than divided. It’s just human nature to focus on our divisions, on the negativity, more than what binds us together. I hope that my thoughts on this blog will serve to connect people from all walks of life; pet lovers (there isn’t such a thing as pet haters right?), politicians, democrats and republicans, nature-lovers and capitalists and everyone in between. Because no one is ever fully wrong if you take time to listen to their views. I may seem like some starry-eyed optimist, but I’m not. My only goal is that someone, somewhere, will read one of my posts and say “Hm, I hadn’t thought of it like that before.”

And if we get to know each other better, I’ll tell you about how I’m a Christian (Methodist turned Catholic) who believes it’s possible that Creationism and the Big Bang Theory can exist together. (Wait, did I just hear a mind explosion?)

Please read, comment and most importantly, connect!