Thankful

It's Sunday night. It's the end of a long much needed break.

I'm lying in bed with just a few lights lit that hang on the wall behind my bed. I can hear the trickling of rain drops just outside my window. There are owls hooting. Actually owls hooting outside my window right now. The smell of our newly cut Frazier Fern is already dominating the fragrance of each room in this little home.

As I went through my nightly routine, I already found my mind wandering into all the small crevices in my mind. These little crevices are the dark holes in my life that do not have an answer just yet. Some will have answers eventually, some I may never have the answer. My mind is like a constant game of frogger, just trying to make it to the other side of the road just to try and cross another busy intersection. It's constantly wandering, constantly searching for answers.

My mind wandered back to the holiday weekend. I thought about how everyone was talking about all the things they are thankful for. How it is the one time of year we try to focus on what we have and less about what we want.

I'm beginning to realize how easy it is to say what you're thankful for yet, to feel thankful is another story. Feeling thankful is the hardest in my opinion. It's one thing to say something but it's a whole other thing to say it and mean it.

I receive many compliments about my positive attitude and how I have this ability to put a positive twist to just about anything. It's an ability I have developed due to a few reasons. One reason: I hate how speaking negative makes me feel. Allowing hate and negativity outside of my mouth does absolutely nothing for me. I don't feel better afterwards, I tend to feel worse. Second reason: I speak positive because I don't always feel positive. I found that when I feel negative and speak negatively, well, I usually continue to feel negative. But when I speak positively, I don't always feel positive afterwards, but sometimes I do. Sometimes I feel better when I look at the bright side of a situation.

I find myself more and more focusing on what I don't have rather than what I do have. I get so caught up in my mind sometimes that I forget that I'm right where I need to be at this moment in my life. That good will continue to flow in and all I have to do is wait for it. I DO have much to be thankful for. I DO have a life worth singing praises over, yet my heart just doesn't always want to dance with that tune. It doesn't always want to believe that my life, as of this very moment, is enough.

So I have to continue to find ways to express my gratitude for what is laid before me. I have to find ways to do this daily, not just during Thanksgiving. We are all given one life to live and I don't want to get to the end of it and realize that I spent the majority of my life worrying about what the end would look like.

Brave.

About 2 summers ago, I was going through a really tough phase in my life. I would find myself waking up in the morning not wanting to get out of bed. 

Now, I'm not a morning person so I truly never want to get out of bed in the morning, but this feeling of not wanting to get out of bed was different from my normal "anti-morning" attitude. This feeling was heavy on me and I literally did not want to face the day. Some days I had the privilege of not having to, so I would allow myself in the morning to let the heaviness take over and pray it would pass. It always did within an hour or 2. I would finally find a way to get out of the bed and face the day.

The heaviness (that's the only way I know how to describe it) would sometimes hit me in the middle of the day. I remember one day in particular when I was babysitting that it hit me. The little girl I watch was 4 at the time and despite the joy and energy that rushes out of her constantly, I was struggling to keep my head above water for the day. 

I'll never forget one day in particular. I had taken her to the park or museum that day and she was able to entertain herself for the most part by making friends with other kids. I remember being grateful because I barely had the mental energy to engage her most of the day. We had come back to her house and she wanted to play with my hair. Again, I was thankful for this small act because it gave me a moment of calmness to help give me the strength I needed for the rest of the day.

We sat on her bed and she began to twist my hair, trying to braid it. We sat in silence for a while, I felt the heaviness on my chest. The little 4 year old, randomly, breaks the silence and says, "Be brave. Just like Sara Bareilles says. Say what you want to say and be brave."

She then continued to play with my hair and quickly jumped into the next thing she wanted to do.

It's funny how God can use the innocence of a child's favorite song to tell you exactly what you need to hear.

Be brave.

That little pep talk actually got me through the day. It got me through some dark days, the thought that bravery was needed to overcome the emotional hurdles I was having to face. Bravery was needed to face truths I had buried deep inside of me and to accept them as my life boat, not my demise.

I started reading Elizabeth Gilbert's new book "Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear". I wasn't 10 pages in before she resurfaced the word 'brave' for me. She speaks of a poet by the name of Jack Gilbert and she writes an excerpt of what his students had to say he taught them.

"...he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, he instructed, they would never be able to realize the vaulting scope of their own capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, their lives would remain small- far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be."

It took God and bravery to get me through that summer. I'll never forget the feeling of myself coming back to the surface. I'll never forget the vibrations of the laughs that helped the feelings come back to life. What I felt was only been a small taste of depression but it was enough for me to never want to feel it again, and to empathize more with people who struggle with it.

To be brave is a characteristic we forget to encourage people to be. It often goes under looked and neglected, yet it's the very thing we need to be ourselves. You truly can't live in the skin you're meant to live in without it. You can't live the life you have always longed for without stepping onto the edge of bravery and leaping into the unknown. It takes bravery to change. It takes bravery to walk away. It takes bravery to risk everything to live the life you have always imagined.

I'm already pumped about this book. Creativity lives within me but it's the one thing I'm the most insecure about. 

It takes a mountain of bravery to write these blogs sometimes. It takes a lot of encouragement from multiple people for me to step outside the box as my practice as a counselor. My fear with being creative can paralyze me at times, but it's apart of who I am and it would be a shame to neglect any part of myself.

Bravery resurfaced tonight. It came back, reminding me that I need to to move forward, I need it in order to grow as a person.

So I leave you with the same quote that Jack Gilbert left for one of his students, " Do you have the courage? Do you have the courage to bring forth this work? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say YES."

You Don't Need to Know EVERYTHING

Thoughts are always accumulating in my head. I have a million different streams running all in different directions at different speeds. I really have to make myself focus when it comes to listening to long winded people. If I'm not careful, I'll dive deep into my head, getting lost in the familiar chaos. 

I haven't written a blog in a while due to the fact that my thoughts have been less focused and more chaotic. It's been a struggle to really narrow everything down and really identify what I need to get out. Instead I have been journaling my thoughts, doing a more streaming dialogue where I do not try and pay attention to what exactly I'm writing, I just write. 

Today I had brunch with a friend and something about our honest conversation calmed my chaotic mind and all of the sudden I could think a little clearer. The light that settled the dust was a simple truth stated in the conversation, "You do not have to know everything life has in store for you."

I'm intuitive, constantly plagued with feelings that tend to be extremely accurate. I have the ability to have an idea of what is to come, what the future might hold for me. But when my intuition has quieted down, when the present is not filled with the things that I am sure will come, I find myself getting lost in my head. I get lost trying to figure out what will happen, what will the future bring. 

It creates a massive amount of anxiety in a persons life when they decide to take on the role of determining their future. It takes you away from the present moment, with the present people who do nothing but pour good things onto you. 

After taking in and processing the truth that one does not have to know what their future holds, I began to see a bigger picture. I began to see that when you live your life searching for your future, you end up building this sense of entitlement. You begin to live with the attitude that you are entitled to know your future. You end up taking all the reigns in your life, bundling them up in you arms, and disconnect yourself from trust. Trust and faith slowly begin to fade and you put yourself into a god like position, saying that you are the only one worthy of control in your life. 

I currently have a student that I have been working with this semester. There is something about her that I'm drawn to. Despite the exhaustion she can bring into your day (and she does daily) I can't help but enjoy her. She wears her teachers and other staff members out frequently and this is because she's always working to have control in the situation. It's a constant power play. 

As I sat with the people I work with, discussing new idea's and interventions that would benefit her, I found the real truth behind her behavior falling from my lips. She goes into power play with teachers or other staff members because somewhere along the way, she has already learned that the only person she can trust is herself. She's really not intentionally being difficult. She has just learned at the age of 16 that the only person she can really trust to watch out for her is herself.

She's 16. I know and you probably know that she can't make sound decisions for herself right now. She does not have the wisdom or experience to truly take care of herself yet, she has decided to cut herself off from trust and faith in others. If anyone is going to be in control from now on, it's going to be her.

This girl is setting herself for a life full of trouble, yet I find myself doing the exact same thing with God. I pull the reigns from his hands and say, "You know what, I got this. I'm going to do this from now on. I'll let you know if I need help."

The lesson comes fast as the anxiety rises. I quickly learn that a life planned by me and me alone will not turn out as I had planned. It will not always go the way I want. And as my plans continue to come crashing down in front of me, I slowly begin to find gratitude in my heart. I slowly find that the plans I had laid out for myself were only a false sense of security. What I thought I needed was only a fraction of what I could have. 

You have to find a way to trust that God really does have things in store for you and that he really doesn't have to let you in on the plan. He says he knows what the plan is (Jeremiah 29:11) and promises that what he has in store is good. 

The more plans I make for myself, the more disappointment I'm going to find. The one thing that both my friend and I could agree on this morning is this: the BEST things that happen in life are the very things we did not plan for.

Your timing is perfect. Mine sucks.

There is an episode in the show The Office where Michael Scott has fallen asleep at his desk. While he is asleep, the staff walks to every clock in the office and changes the time to 5:00. They make a loud noise that wakes him from his nap. He walks out of his office and realizes the clock says it's 5:00 and tells everyone they can go home for the day.

It would be so nice to do this at work. Change all the clocks so that you can go home an extra 2 or 3 hours early. It would be nice to not only do this at work but just in life in general.

It's a curse and a blessing to be an intuitive person. To know something is going to happen but know you don't have a hand in the matter. Knowing there is not a digital clock of your life that you could go and change the time so that what you know will happen, happens.

In the office episode, they made it appear that is was 5:00 but the truth is that it wasn't. It wasn't time to go home, it there were still hours in the work day. If this had been a real scenario, they would have come back to work the next day having to stay and endure the real 5:00. The wait for the real 5:00 would have been more painful, slower than normal.

As badly as I want to manipulate real time and speed up certain processes, I have to tell myself to stop. I tell myself to chill and trust in the real timing. I have to tell myself to live in the moments that are placed before me. I have to allow laughter to come from the bottom of my stomach. I have to allow the tears to fall hard. Each moment is a gift and time is going to run out before we know it. Promises will come. Our dreams will come to pass. I just don't want to spend my life wishing for good things and miss all the good that is laid before me each day.

I keep reading metaphors about sowing, plowing, and growing. I've been reading Ralph Waldo Emerson's The Spiritual Emerson. For a man who wrote over a hundred years ago, he gets me. He says this, " There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till."

I was counseling a student today and I found myself telling him something that I needed to hear myself (as a find myself doing many days). I told him that we live in a world where instant gratification is expected. We expect to overcome the biggest hurdles and mountains in our lives over night. We are very slow to give time and energy into things, we want them taken care of immediately. But what we miss with instant gratification is the joy and freedom that comes when you give something time. When you allow time into working a problem, you find that you heal more permanently, you walk away with a purer joy than you would with instant gratification.

I can't play with time. I have to trust that it knows what it's doing and that I do not have a clue. Time will not always be easy to deal with, but I can't help but believe it's worth trusting in.

Healthy Living

At the end of last year I had an unexpected health problem arrive. I had an ovarian cyst on my right side that had grown to about 4 cm causing some damage to my sciatic nerve. For those who do not know, the sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in your body and starts at the lower spine running down to your foot. I do not know the details of how exactly the cyst damaged my nerve, all I know is that I was experiencing the most excruciating pain of my life. I didn't know at the time that what was going on. All I knew is that I had a sharp pain in my right side that literally made me not want to breath in fear that breathing alone would be like someone stabbing a knife in my side.

I went to the ER that night, found out it was a cyst, went home to wait for morning to where I could go see my OBGYN. The next morning the pain was still terrible. My mom had to help me get dressed because I couldn't bend over without having another sharp pain in my side. The cyst thankfully dissipated the next day and I didn't have to have any other major medical procedures.

Even though the cyst had only been large enough to cause damage for a grand total of 15 hours, the damage it left behind was miserable. The inflammation to the nerve made simple everyday task hard such as walking or bending over. It took me about 2 days before I could do simple task without help from others.

Even though the cyst had dissipated, the damage to the nerve was still there. After some research I had learned that the pain I was experiencing from the nerve damage is called sciatica. For those who have had sciatica before know that it's probably one of the most annoying problems to have. It is LITERALLY a "pain in your butt". I was researching sciatica and what all you need to do to help it heal. I was not happy with the results. I found that it takes about 4 weeks for sciatica to completely heal and during that time period you cannot run (being a runner this was not exciting news). You are not to spend long periods of times sitting (which is true because it hurts to sit) and the only thing you can do is take ibuprofen and walk frequently.

This was a hard time for me. It's one thing to choose not to run or exercise (which if I'm being honest I was not doing as much before the cyst) but it's a whole other things to NOT have the choice.

It took exactly as long as everything I had read said it would. I spent 4 weeks with a literal pain in my butt. It hurt to sit, it hurt to walk. I'm pretty sure it hurt just to think some days.

Finally, come mid January, the pain was lessening and I was getting better. Except at this point I had grown use to not making time to exercise throughout the week. I had slowly started slacking off before the cyst with my running and yoga, too. So when the sciatica developed, it just plunged me deeper into the not exercising routine (even though I was still eating like I was running and exercising).

In February, I went snowboarding for the first time with a friend. As I was trying to learn to snowboard, I realized how out of shape I had become. My confidence was no where to be found. I realized how dependent I had become on my bodies ability for me to feel confident enough to try something new. I wasn't as motivated to learn the whole trip.

I've continued to have issues over the year. Cyst still develop though I have not had one to debilitate me again. Even though the sciatica cleared up, I've had issues with inflammation. If a cyst grows enough to shift things just enough to stir up inflammation, I can be thrown into another 4 weeks of sciatic pain.

The snowboarding trip really brought to light how much my confidence is dependent on the physical shape I'm in. The more physically healthy I am the more confident I am to try new physical activities. With the on and off sciatic issues, it's made it a real struggle to stay in physical good health because I can be set back on progress in no time.

I've had to make a few health changes to help prevent more problems. I've stopped drinking soda's as much to keep from my body getting dehydrated. I found myself waking with leg cramps multiple nights one month. After cutting out soda's, I haven't had a leg cramp since. It's been little changes in my diet that has help me get back in shape and has also help with my personal confidence level. I'm not as intimidated to try something new again, my adventurous side is not as hindered.

I've been reading Scary Close by Donald Miller lately. This book talks about his personal journey when it  come to developing relationships with people. It has been an eye opening read for me, I've been drinking in each word he writes. One of the things he talks about is the difference between a healthy person and an unhealthy person. In this discussion of healthy, he's not referring to physical health, he's talking about mental and emotional health.

I'll be honest, it wasn't that hard for me to change into a healthier physical lifestyle. The more water you drink the more that's what you start to crave. The more vegetables and fruits you eat, the more that's what you start wanting. But to change into a lifestyle that helps cultivate a mental and emotional state of health is different. It's one thing to change what you're eating, it's a whole other thing to change your thinking habits or the people you spend time with.

All it takes for you to know where you stand in your level of physical health is whether you can move for long periods of time without losing your breath or by your pant size. These things are more obvious and it takes a deep level of denial for us to truly deny the fact that we are physically out of shape. But to be emotionally and mentally out of shape, it's a little easier to hide from.

We live in a world full of distractions. There is literally something to do at a swipe of a phone or a click of a button. It is so easy to distract yourself each moment of the day in order to keep yourself from knowing the true emotional state you are living in.

For me, I've come to find how emotionally healthy I am with how honest I'm willing to be with myself and others. It's how brave and confident I feel, despite all the fear I experience, when I start walking toward the deep and dark corners of my soul. Just like I'm more confident in trying new physical activities when I'm physically healthy, I'm more confident to adventure into knowing who I am when I'm emotionally and mentally healthy.

I think it's easy to think you are emotionally and mentally healthy if you hardly have problems in relationships with people. It's easy to think that the more healthy you are, the less struggles you have. I personally do not believe this to be true. Hard times and difficulties are going to find you, always. No matter how in shape you are, no matter how well you stay in check with yourself, hard times will come. How you can tell if you are emotionally healthy or not is by the level of confidence you have that you will make it through, that this hard time will pass, and that you will make it out.

I have a terrible history of not being honest with myself. I never wanted to confess where my weak points were out of fear that I would not be loved. I learned how to over emphasize my good so that the bad would seem smaller. But this way of living will not complete you. To hide from the imperfect parts of yourself will only make you feel less whole. It makes love out to be conditional, not unconditional. And if you are only giving yourself conditional love, how can you give anyone else unconditional love?

Over the past year, writing has been my way of learning to be honest with myself again. I always tell people that pen and paper do no judge you. It never tells you what you are feeling is wrong. It's the best listener out there.

Healthy living is so much more than learning to eat right and exercise regularly. It's also about learning to speak truth over your life. It's learning to love imperfection daily and knowing that imperfect is the window you need to allow love, grace, and mercy into you life.

Some Childish Thing Are Not Always Childish

I'll never forget the excitement of being a child at Christmas time. When I was a kid, we would get the JCPenny catalog. The catalog had pictures of clothes, furniture, and toys. I remember my siblings and I going through the magazine and mark all the things we wanted. I can't remember exactly how we did this, whether we had our own colored marker or initialed our names beside the gift. All I remember is doing this for years. As the catalog found it's way into our home, months before the weather was cold enough to even think about Christmas, we would get a turn and go through the magazine with wide eyes and big dreams of marking the things we wanted.

I really don't remember all the things I got for Christmas over the years or if they were from the catalog or not, but I do remember one Christmas really wanting a particular toy. I was probably somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade. At the time they had these stuffed animals that you could draw on. I remember seeing commercials for it and seeing it in the stores. It took two interest of mine at the time and combined them. That was what I really wanted for Christmas. I remember seeing the presents wrapped under the tree and something inside of me told me that the toy I wanted was there, waiting for me. I never once tried to peek (I actually never tried finding Christmas presents as a kid). Everyday I would walk by the tree and even though there were only boxes wrapped in paper, I knew what I wanted was waiting there for me.

Sure enough, Christmas morning rolled around. I woke up and discovered that what I had known all along was there. What I had asked for had been given to me. What I had hoped for had come true.

I feel like adulthood is similar to waiting for Christmas as a child. Many of us have dreams. Many of us desire certain types of relationships, plane tickets, children, a job we love, etc. Whatever it is that you might be waiting for, it probably feels a lot like waiting for Christmas as a child. Even though it came once a year, it felt like decades before it would arrive. Even if the catalog arrived in September, it felt like a whole other year passed before Christmas arrived and you got to see if what you had asked for was waiting for you.

Waiting is hard. I don't believe it's something that gets easier the older you get. We tell children to wait all the time, as if it's something easy to do, but it isn't. Waiting requires patience. Waiting requires that the answer you have been seeking for so long will finally appear. Waiting requires trust.

I've had a few dreams about my own desires lately. The interesting thing about my dreams lately has been that they each serve the same message. They each have said that timing is a thing. That in order for the gift to fully be given, to be fully appreciated, you have to give it time.

I'm learning, slowly but surely, that when you trust that your desire will be given to you, in the right timing, you get to experience that same anticipation as you did as a kid. It's like walking past that Christmas tree with the gift right in front of you all over again. It's that feeling of knowing that what you have asked for is waiting for you. It's knowing that it would spoil Christmas if you are unwilling to wait. The anticipation, the trusting, the believing is what makes the gift so special.

The toy I got that Christmas, God only knows what happened to it. I'm sure the ink dried to the marker and the stuffing came out of the stuffed animal, but in the end it wasn't about the toy. In the end it was about knowing your desires were heard, it's about knowing that someone cared enough to give you what your little heart desired in the moment. It was about waking up Christmas morning to find out that what you had hoped for was true.

LIFE.

It was a Saturday night as we sat curled up on the couch in the dimly lit room. Hashing out life is our favorite thing to do. When you no longer have enough fingers and toes to count the years of friendship, filters in conversations leave and raw truth always pours out.

It doesn’t seem to matter how long we’ve known each other, one of us always finds ourselves obsessing over a boy.

“He does this and says this, does it mean anything?”

“I think he likes me. He talks me often, but I don’t really know.”

These are things you can only be vulnerable about to your closest friend. You know you can express your thoughts and fears without receiving judgment from the other side.

As I sat in the room and listened to the same questions I have heard time and time again, it hit me.

“What if this is only a speck in your life but you’re turning it into a boulder? What if God is trying to show you something that is bigger than this relationship?”

I’m surprised by what comes out of my mouth sometimes. As I listen to friends talk about their lives, I find myself saying something that I need to hear, too. Truth comes pouring out like a waterfall and I can’t help but drink it in as well.

I see articles and post daily about relationships. Articles talking about what men want, others talking about why women are crazy. We live in a relationship-obsessed culture that tries to sell us this idea that the best thing that could ever happen in our lives is for the perfect someone to fall into it.

So in the midst of smoke from all the spinning wheels, I looked my friend in the eye and said, “ We are quick to think that a relationship will be the highlight of our life, but shouldn’t LIFE itself be the highlight?”

Shouldn't our day-to-day lives be filled with wonder, adventure, and curiosity? Shouldn't we find ways to make fear and joy dance in our stomach together? It really is the best feeling in the world.

I’ve bought a plane ticket for one. I’m flying to Portland, OR in October, solo. This is a huge leap for me, to go to a new city alone. To challenge myself to step outside my own comfort zone and to spend a long weekend only thinking about what I want to do, what I want to experience. I told someone over a year ago that one of my favorite things to happen in life is when I meet a boy who I like and they like me back. It really is a rare occurrence. But when it happens, every little detail is exciting. The way they’ll text me in the middle of the day. Getting so lost in conversation that you hardly realize the bar is closing. A little flutter comes into my chest and I just love that little flutter. As much as I love the flutter, I decided that I did not want to be dependent on another to give me that flutter. I wanted to find a way to give it to myself. So I booked a plane ticket. I haven’t left for the airport yet, I have no idea what I will do in this new city but every time I see the reserved ticket, I feel that flutter.

Relationships are beautiful. They are to be cherished and I look forward to having a romantic relationship one day. It can be one of my favorite aspects in life but I can’t help but breathe a little easier knowing that it doesn’t have to complete me, it doesn’t have to be the peak in life you’ve been waiting for.

LIFE IS THE PEAK.

LIFE IS THE HIGHLIGHT.

Go and find your flutter.