Starting Over
As I write this, the clock is just about to strike midnight, closing the last day of my 34th year here on earth. How does time pass by so very slowly yet strikingly fast all at once? I have to say, this past year has been like the biggest “renovation” I’ve ever lived through. Like sandpaper to a painted surface, my final year of the “early thirties” era has revealed my true self. Layers of paint covered up the beauty of that untreated, raw wood. It truly has been like starting over.
Scraping Glass
What if I told you that I used to spend my days scraping a piece of glass repeatedly whilst life spun around me? What if I told you that you likely do it too? What if I challenged you to put your “smart” phone away for 12, 24, 48 hours? Does just reading that make you nervous? Do you feel anxious even thinking about turning that power button off? I get it, I’ve been there. But let’s explore why you may be feeling like that, shall we?
We Broke Up
This year ((2020)), has been one of the best years of my life. Does that sound like a super strange thing to say, given the current “circumstances”? Well let me assure you that January 1st of this ‘strangest year ever’, God had plans for my family’s life that I would have never even fathomed. I started listening to Him. And I don’t mean just what I’d been doing for the other thirty-some years of my life. I surrendered self and truly started following his gentle nudges in humble obedience.
Off to the cupboard with you, Chip
This is for those parents who have ever had to put their child in time-out for a minute just to cool down! I mean for the parent to cool down. Im sure I am not alone in this. Parenting can be downright hard when you have some extraneous stressor in your life. I have been dealing with some things outside of my inner circle lately (my husband and our kids) and it was all getting to the best of my emotions! I would have to put my kids in “time-out” for a few just so I could cry alone a minute or take a few deep breaths. It wasn’t the fact they left their cup on the couch, it was that my mind was really trying to handle things outside of them. Like work, extended family, finances, etc!
Momentum
Everything worthwhile is uphill.
There are a million times in my life that Ive learned this to be true… But one truth that is common among those moments- I never allowed myself to be crushed by the boulder.
When starting something worth having in life, picture a giant boulder. You do everything you can to get that big stone rolling and it does… at first it rolls easily, then more slowly as you approach the incline. You dig your feet in and push with all your might. There’s no movement but the stone hasnt rolled backward.
The Bell
Do you ever have that moment when you look back and wish you could do certain things over again? A second chance to retrace and rewrite your story?
I am going to be bold here and say that every person over the age of eight has had these thoughts. I know I sure have. Last year, I started to lose my singing voice. I would wake up and it would be slightly more difficult to make the notes come out. Then my speaking voice was affected. I knew in my heart that God was telling me to rest and not push it. Knowing and doing; well those are completely different entities.
Details
Details; noun- the small elements that collectively constitute a work of art. These are the tiniest of things that if one isn’t looking, will go unnoticed. From the moment our eyes open every morning,’til we rest our weary heads, so many seemingly subordinate pieces of our lives remain unseen. What do you notice about this picture (courtesy of my friend Maria)? The very first thing I thought was “oh, its an eye.” And that is how our world sees life. Work is work, school is school, home is home, life is life. What if we saw past what things appear to be, or how they are expected to go.
20,000 and One
When did life become so extreme? I wonder what the parents from “Little House on the Prairie” would say if they lived a day in our shoes. I would imagine they would find much of what we “do” with our time meaningless. I can just picture it now. A mother in 2018 meeting a mother from a small town in the 1870s. Can you visualize it? I might say something like “Hi, Im Danielle. And every time I look at my phone, I get stressed out by the 20,000 and one emails I have.” The prairie mom would of course have some questions. What is an email? And if this smart phone you tell me about is so helpful, why does it bring you so much stress? And what else have you been doing to let that many letters stack up? Once I explain how I’ve been busy working outside of the home, starting a home business, taking the kids to and fro, volunteering at church, scrolling through Facebook, posting stories on Instagram, going to the grocery store and ordering take-out, she’d probably raise an eyebrow or two. I’m sure by now you see what I am alluding to. How much unnecessary stress do we bring to ourselves? How different was life 150 years ago? For food, they had to work for it! For health, they had to find natural ways to stay well and homeopathic methods to treat things. They loved deeply, worked hard and were firmly rooted in family. There were no social media notifications tearing their family dinner apart. There were no phone calls from solicitors. They didn’t spend hours on their iPhones watching everyone else’s lives go by, whilst missing out on their own.