Little Changes - Big Impact

With the stress of the last few weeks - selling our house, starting a new job, the purchase of a new house falling through, and other stuff I don't want to mention - with the stress of it all weighing on my shoulders, I'm feeling a bit run down.

Sleep seems to evade me, and that's without the chickens going berserk at 1:00 a.m. to the point that I get off the couch, put on my blue jeans in the dark, scramble around looking for a flashlight, and go outside to tip toe through the mud with a light in one hand and pistol in the other to sneak up on whatever critter was after them (I didn't see anything, thank goodness. Still don't know why they went nuts!!).

So I have found myself in a viscious cycle fueled by caffeine! I drink coffee all day at work to stay awake because I'm so tired, then I can't sleep at night (likely because of all the caffeine in my system). So, the next day I'm even more tired so I injest even more caffeine, and once again I can't sleep. And so the cycle goes.

Until last night. I went to bed at 6:00 p.m.!!! I woke briefly to answer the phone around 8:00, but went straight back to sleep, slept straight through my alarm at 5:30, and woke up just in time to scramble to work. But I slept!!!! YAY!!

So today I opted for green tea. Maybe that will help break this cycle.

It's amazing how changing one little thing about your daily routine will affect your moods and actions and, in turn, affect all aspects of your life!

What little thing could you change today that would improve your life?

Next, I'm changing my radio station to gospel music.

It's kind of difficult to be discouraged or frustrated when listening to

How Great Thou Art or I Can Only Imagine!

WD-40

I don't recall what song the pianist was playing, but I was singing with gusto along with the congregation when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

"You need some WD-40 for that squeak?" the young girl on the pew behind me whispered in my ear before she and her best friend erupted in giggles, earning a stern look from her mom.

I can't remember if my mouth instantly closed, if I continued mouthing the words of the hymn, or if I began to simply hum along. All I remember is my chest tightening and stomach aching and counting down the next 45 minutes until the service ended so I could go home and lock myself in my bedroom.

I felt humiliated. As an insecure 13-year-old girl, having a girl I had known all my life and thought was my friend say something so hurtful destroyed part of me. At 13, I had yet to learn that friends are very fickle and few really care about you at all, so I felt as though everyone was laughing at me and making fun of me when I wasn't looking. Around the same time is when another girl from school who visited our church a couple of times turned her nose up in the parking lot after a Wednesday night service and insulted my shirt for being bought at Wal-Mart. (I now think it's ridiculous how much money people like that girl spend on their clothes at designer shops and feel sorry for them for throwing their money away!)

Neither girl probably remembers saying those hurtful comments to me. In fact, she may even read this and wonder who I'm talking about, but it doesn't matter. Those hurtful words changed me. Before that Sunday night service, I loved to sing!! I had been singing solos since I was old enough to talk, and singing ran in my family. My dad was the song leader, for goodness sake!

But after that night, I didn't want to make a sound. It wasn't until more than 10 years later, when I heard a recording of myself singing with my brother (who is an amazing vocalist, by the way - majoring in music in college and already following in Daddy's footsteps as a song director at a local church and planning big things for his musical career) that I began to overcome my insecurities.

She was wrong. I didn't need WD-40. But I let her words stop me from doing something I loved to do for much of the next decade.

She needed to feel better by putting someone down, and that unfortunate someone happened to be me on that particular night. And after the comment about my clothes coming from Wal-Mart, I eventually quit trying to dress cute at school and adorned my plain t-shirt and jeans nearly every day until graduation because I'd rather look like I didn't care about my clothes than to look like I was trying to fit in and fail.

Moral of the story, your words leave a lasting impression on the people around you, so choose them carefully. Don't take your frustrations or insecurities out on someone else, no matter how insignificant your comments may seem to you. 

If you can't say something nice, don't say nothin' at all!

By the way, I love to sing now and smile to myself when people tell me how stylish I am! I've even become the go-to person for beauty and fashion advice for so many of my Avon customers!! No matter what someone has said about you in the past, don't let their words stop you from being whoever you want to be. If you want to wear t-shirts and jeans every day, fine; but don't do it for the sake of blending in. Sing to the top of your lungs if singing is what YOU want to do. This is your life!! Don't let someone else's meaningless words dictate your actions.

Desserts in the Desert

"The desert is only a season in our life. When He has accomplished what He wants in our lives in the desert, He will bring us out. He has given us a mission to fulfill that can only be fulfilled after we have spent adequate time in preparation in the desert. Fear not the desert, for it is there you will hear God's voice like never before."

[Os Hillman, Today God Is First (Pennsylvania: Destiny Image Publishers, Inc., 2000), 24.]

So... this morning I woke up craving chocolate. Now, 7 a.m. after indulging myself in several mini chocolate bars whose names I can't pronounce and flavors I'm not quite sure of other than they were delicious (my brother brought them home from his tour of Europe), here I am contemplating why I don't start EVERY day with chocolate!

As an emotional eater, I'm surprised these chocolate bars escaped the last couple of weeks untouched. Several times recently, I have found myself feeling a little detached. The path my life seemed to be on for so long is shifting so rapidly that I am hustling to stay on track with this new pace, and I feel as though to escape the marathon outside - a marathon I've trained for by sitting on the couch - I've ducked in a small, stifling theater, out of breath to watch a 3D movie of my life in silence sans the glasses.

I've been so stressed lately, but do you know what stressed spelled backwards is??
DESSERTS!
 

In the midst of my desert, I'm choosing to indulge in dessert! God didn't intend for us to rush through every day just checking things off a to-do list like I seem to do sometimes. Every day is a gift from God, and we need to alter our pace in order to indulge in the simple pleasures with which He has blessed us.

Pause a moment to inhale the smell of fresh brewed coffee, to breathe in the fresh air and watch the clouds drift slowly by, to stand under the steaming shower an extra minute letting your muscles relax, to sit on the porch with your dog's head rested in your lap, to listen to a mockingbird.

Life isn't about to-do lists, wasn't meant to be about gaining possessions,

and shouldn't be centered around computers, I-phones, and TVs.

God didn't create this beautiful world for us to race our way through it, so indulge in the good things, the simple things, and slow down.

Here's to having desserts in your desert :)

Giving God the Eraser

Have you ever heard the saying "Write your plans in pencil and give God the eraser"?

In a devotional book I discovered as I was packing away one of my many bookshelves (Have I mentioned we sold our house in a week and have found no where to move?? More on that later), I happened upon that simple quote this week and it got me thinking.

I can't stand when things don't go as planned (I'm going nuts knowing I have to move in a few weeks & have no clue where I'm moving!). I push forward with determination to make things end up the way I want them to end, which is great as a writer because it means I get my story finished by my deadline, but not so great as a Christian woman. I'm not good at giving God the eraser.

When I don't like how my life story is going (ex: no place to live starting in July!), I treat it just like my fictional stories. I erase the lines myself and write and rewrite over and over again until my eraser is bare and the page hardly legible from pencil smudges (and my hair is falling out and I'm exhausted), trying to get every piece of the storyline exactly how I think it should be. I try to force the outcome I want, the happy ending we find in books. Sound familiar?? I know I'm not the only one who is a control freak :)

But our lives aren't stories in a book.

How often does God have to jerk the pencil out of your hands or even snatch the paper away because you just refuse to stop trying to fix it yourself?

Give Him the eraser today and let Him be the author of your story.