A Dragonfrye Beginning: I Was Just Thinking

I was just thinking about stuff tonight.

I was thinking about history.

I went into the old cabin in the Historical Society building at the fair this evening. I love that cabin. This year they have the second floor loft open. Cool!!

So I was thinking history.

Then my thoughts turned specifically to my history.

I was thinking about connections, and identity.

My thoughts could have been triggered by a dream I had the other day. In my dream I was talking to my grandpa. I was following him around. I do not know what we were talking about but I woke up with a longing, it was almost a sad emptiness. My grandpa passed away in 1995. I was not super close to him like some kids are with their grandparents. I just liked to be around him.

I think my unsettling feelings when I woke up from the dream were not as much about missing him as missing what was familiar.

My upbringing was not the very worst upbringing around but it was not the most secure, to put it lightly. It was surrounded with addictions, divorce, anger, abuse, mental illness, physical sickness, death, and all the stuff that comes with that. The Lord was not a part of my life until later.

Sometimes, when my life feels unstable, I tend to long for the very life I almost ended mine over because it was so unlivable and lacked hope. Isn't that funny? In a not funny way? Twisted, would be a better description. Sometimes, I feel like I identify more with my broken past than my daily new life with Christ.

I am proud to be a Weiss.

Sometimes I have a harder time knowing how to be a new creation in Christ.

I know how to do the Weiss way of living. The broken way. It comes easy, pretty natural.

I do not always know how to do things this new way.

Anyway, my thoughts are fragmented.

My apologies for that.

A lot of times my thoughts start in the middle and do not end up having an end.

There will be some who get what I am thinking. It is ok if you don't. They are not really earth shattering thoughts. Just thoughts.

Here is a little fun Weiss history.

My Great Grandpa Frank Weiss is the little boy sitting on the pillow bottom left. My Great, Great Grandpa Weiss is the man in the middle with the dark mustache and my great, great grandma is on the right. They had come from Austria/Hungary a few years before this picture was taken.

Here is Great Grandpa Frank Weiss and my Great Grandma on their wedding day. I do not remember my great grandpa but I have lots of fun memories with my great grandma. Picture me at 18 (way back in '86) learning how to drive in my dad's massive 1965 impala convertible with my tiny, tiny 90 year old great grandma next to me. Just me and her. I get stuck in an alleyway in Lake Elmo and could not get out. My grandma's wig kept moving around every time I would jerk the car back and forth. Ha ha. Crazy. She later confided to my dad that I was kind of a wild driver.

Here is my grandpa Weiss in 1950. The grandpa I dreamed about the other day. My dad's dad. He is on the far left. He would bring donuts to my dad's house every Tuesday morning and they would sit, drink coffee, and eat doughnuts.