When I say the word surrender, what comes to mind? Someone throwing their hands up when they’re caught or threatened? Someone surrendering when they are being over powered - like in a wrestling match, or when they know they’ve been beaten at chess? Or maybe someone surrendering their life to death after a battle with …
This Month I am going to choose and feature a story of Overcoming struggle, and give away a free portrait session to the person whose story I pick. You could be featured on my blog next month!! Send me your stories!! The world needs to hear it. You need to hear it. Ok, I'll admit …
Continue reading "Writing Your Struggle Story and Remembering the Goodness"
I just went down a rabbit hole. I spent the last hour looking through my facebook posts to see what I said last year that would cause friends to "unfriend" me. I mean… I did get a hair political for a moment… before and during the election. Everyone got all sideways. A few friends and …
Continue reading "Our Opinions, Social Media, what 2020 showed us, and an Apology."
Today the light dawns clearly. Yesterday it did not. I think some days are just meant to be set aside for tears. There’s nothing to do about it other than to let yourself cry. It’s exhausting living in a world with unrelenting and powerful input. Yesterday I was tired. And I guess because I was …
Continue reading "Pathways to Beauty – Portrait Session Give Away and Story Contest!!"
Dreamed of Larisa last night. We were sitting side by side on the sand, looking out over the ocean. And I started weeping and begged her please don’t leave me. Please stay with me. And we held one another while I cried. In my dream I wanted her to live with us - she was …
Continue reading "Valentines Day Thoughts on Grief and Devastation. (yay valentines day!)"
So when I last left you, I had just jumped from the greatest, scariest precipice of my life in My Story Part 2 (<— read this first). I had gritted my teeth, and with a wild-eyed determination that things in my life must change or I would die trying, I took a leap after the …
Continue reading "The Treachery of Should (My Story Part 3)"
Why is it so important to know who we were created to be, you ask? When we understand that we were made on purpose, with intentional gifts that we fully embrace and cultivate, we will step boldly into the authority given to us as children of God. No longer looking for approval and permission, we …
Continue reading "Seven Reasons Why We Need to Know Who We Were Created To Be"
The early years of my marriage were a struggle. (i just won the understatement of the year award) I was in my mid 20’s and Elijah was 7 years behind me, and we knew absolutely nothing about how to be married, much less how to merely function as healthy adults in the world. I look …
Continue reading "Everything Is NOT ABOUT YOU, and other true things. (My Story Part 2)"
The first pin-light moment came when I was at my kitchen table in 2009 – fist fulls of hair, tears of frustration and pain streaming down my face. I was telling God that I didn’t know how to do it – I don’t know how to live this life. I don’t know how to be a good enough Christian, friend, daughter, wife, mother, house keeper, sister – you name it, I didn’t know how to do it. I was miserably failing at all the things I tried to do, all the characters I tried to be. Because none of it felt natural to me. I always felt like a fraud, displaced, disconnected from what was around me – Alone. And the relationships I did have, even the ones I had cultivated the best I knew how over the years, kept falling flat and leaving me empty, including my relationship with God. I begged God to tell me how to live like I knew I should. And what He said to me completely changed the trajectory of my life.
We are conditioned to not trust ourselves. We are told - your emotions lie to you, your heart is deceitful, push past those feelings, don’t be so sensitive, what you feel is not reality. My heart rate went up when I typed that last one… what overt gaslighting and absolute bull hockey thing to tell someone - that what they feel is not reality. How on earth are we supposed to trust ourselves when we are told we are out of touch with reality? That we are supposed to accept that there is a separate reality that exists, made of logic and reason that we are not a part of because we have strong feelings? It’s categorically damaging. It is utterly untrue.
