Posts Tagged ‘jesus’
God is here
Posted by Nicole on January 13, 2014
God, when I sit in this room, I can feel both alone and the opposite of alone.
I can be aware of the table and my coffee. I can feel the air moving in and out to my nose. There is a chair beneath me and a black cat walking back and forth around it all.
I can choose to be aware of You, too: The I Am, The Presence. The One who is always here. I can choose to feel you in that air and in my bones.
God, when I sit in this room, I can feel both alone and the opposite of alone.
I can choose to see you as separate from me. In this way, you are here and yet different from the Me I consciously know. You are a loving relationship that requires space between us. I pray and you come. I request and you give.
I can also choose to see you as essentially in me. In this way, you are here as surely as I am here. You are a loving Presence in my cells that requires a connection with my own mind and body. Here, to love myself is to be loved by you. Here, to accept the body I am in, is to accept that this body is Us. Here, to pray for peace is to know that the peace is here waiting to be accepted already in my guts. To ask you to be with me would be like asking myself to go hang out sometime.
You are here. You are more here in and with me and available to me than my own thoughts and emotions and needs. You are the beautiful, quiet option that I don’t always know how to pick.
Jesus, I have no choice but to believe you are here in whichever way I manage to choose. You are present. YWHW – Presence.
Your bible is confusing. Your people are a mess. And yet, impossible as it seems, as real as this table or the lungs in my chest, God, You are here.
Sometimes I think you just want to be noticed. To be witnessed. I recognize the need in me to be noticed and I wonder if this is part of your image in me now – something holy demanding to be noticed in the pain, in the love, in the people, in the dirt.
I see you. In the trees. Bursting sap. Falling pine cones. Strong branches with kids hanging off them.
I see you. In the blue sky. Endless whispers. Wind from the atmosphere’s edges all the way down to my face.
I see you. In the people. Hand-holding. Laughing so hard they can’t open their eyes.
I see you. In me. Skin upon blood, ligaments, muscles and bones. A heart that beats. A body that breathes. Hopes. Loves. Hurts.
I see you in this body you made to fit this soul just right.
God, you are here as surely as I am here.
Sometimes love is just choosing to see.
Run with Joy 1000strands.com
Posted in Beauty SOS47, Free Flying Faith | Tagged: faith, God, hope, jesus, Love, Presence, seen | Leave a Comment »
Never Been Kissed
Posted by Nicole on December 23, 2013
Advent. We wait. We wait for God to come down here and be with us. Just hurry up and be with us.
Yesterday, I felt it, that dull discomfort of waiting for things to be RIGHT – To feel God with me and to feel Him making all things comes together for Good. I wanted it, bad.
This incredible waiting that is called LIFE drives some of us mad. We get short burst of fun, joy, beauty, and meaning and then we wait again. This incredible waiting, like watching intermittent shooting stars when what we really need is dawn.
We wait for heaven and the Light of the World to come. Heaven will not just be for our souls. Heaven involves our bodies too. This is the gift of making love.
God, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven – not just in our hearts but in our bodies too.
In honor of Advent and Love and Making It coming together this week, today we have the gift of reading a personal essay from a woman who has never been kissed and is beginning to let herself feel the desire and hope of what will come someday. May all our waiting and longing be this vulnerable and brave.
-Nicole
****
I dreamed a few months ago that I had my first kiss.
Yes, I’m 25 and I’ve never been kissed – or even been on an official date. I was a little too “mature” (and obnoxious) in high school to stoop to “chasing boys,” and I was a little too driven in college to take time out for life. Which is strange, really. I’ve always wanted the support of a relationship and the chance to build a life with another person and love them unconditionally. I want the deep friendship of shared experience and ideas and the knowing of each other that comes from that. I want to explore the world of sensuality and romance in a healthy way, which I haven’t always. Other things have just gotten in the way.
It doesn’t take a significant other to experience growth, of course. Sometimes that can even inhibit it. I’ve grown more in these last two years at home dealing with chronic fatigue than I think I have my whole life. I’m learning to make space for myself, and that I have a right to take up room in the world. I’m learning to let go of other peoples’ burdens and pick up my own oxygen mask first in a crisis. I’m learning to lean in, to stand my ground, to experience life ready to fall and fail and make mistakes and then get right back up again.
I think it’s appropriate that my dream took place at some kind of fancy dinner. I’ve discovered a deep love for food and cooking since I’ve been home. I even remember what I was eating in the dream – it was some kind of deconstructed gourmet s’more with a white chocolate mousse and graham cracker crumbles served in a martini glass. Which actually sounds delicious.
It’s also appropriate that in my dream, I spilled some on my shirt. I’m kind of a messy person, a fact I’ve hated my whole life. I bump into things and fall up the stairs. I spill things all the time and have never managed to keep my room clean. I have big curly hair that goes frizzy in the rain. As much as I’ve always wanted to be sleek and svelte, I’m learning that I’m really a flannel pajamas and fuzzy socks kind of girl. And that I’m beautiful, curly hair and all.
So, laughingly, I tried to wipe the spill off my shirt, standing by the table. My date laughed too, kindly. He put water on a napkin and helped me clean up the mess.
We were standing close then, of course, and when I noticed I felt the urge to back away. Not because I was afraid of him, but because I had heard what happens when people stand too close. Because it’s the reflex I’d developed overseas to protect myself and maintain purity and propriety. Because I wouldn’t want to send mixed signals or be rejected or make someone else uncomfortable go too far or do any of the dozen other things I’ve been warned about. There are no guarantees when you let people get too close.
But this time, I stood my ground instead. I chose to take up my own space and let someone else move out of the way, for a change, if this wasn’t what they wanted.
I looked up at him – he was definitely taller than me – and closed my eyes.
He leaned down and we kissed. My heart beat fast.
Then he put his arm around me and walked with me to a quiet corner, a bench where we could sit together and just be.
There was no rejection, only welcome. Only peace. Only the comfort of knowing I was home.
I don’t expect my real first kiss to be quite this revelatory, necessarily. But now, I think I’m finally ready to find out.
Ellie Ava: I’m a storyteller, an explorer, and an avid fan of all things science… especially when it’s fiction. After many years of exploring new cultures and perspectives in Europe, I’m back in the USA taking time to discover the things bubbling up in my own heart and mind. I blog about life at ellieava.tumblr.com.
Posted in Free Flying Faith, Love and Making It | Tagged: advent, Christmas, God, Heaven, jesus, kiss, love and making it, waiting | 5 Comments »
Advent Stories: Hookers, Heathens, and Me
Posted by Nicole on December 18, 2013
One week til Christmas. One week til we celebrate God being with us.
For some people, their lives are so full of family and friends, hot chocolate and Christmas Lights, that the darkness is just a shadow in the corner or a fading streetlight down the road. For others, this is a time where the darkness threatens to swallow them whole.
Light flaunts its warm power in the life of one and barely flicks the skin of another covered instead in cold, dark loneliness.
Advent is the waiting. The waiting 100s of years for God to come and make things right. Waiting generations for triumph and light and love to flood the world. Waiting for God to be with us – really with us. We need God with us. God, who says He is Light and Love, and yet seems to leave us lonely and scared in dark places.
God, are you avoiding me?
Where are you when I need you? Psalm 10:1-2
Advent is the waiting. We have no choice. Reminded of our powerlessness against the speed of time, we wait. We cannot save ourselves or our friends from the pain of waiting on God to BE WITH US.
With Christmas comes the promise of a future where we are whole and full. Christmas is the promise that while the pain is still here, God is doing a new thing. He came down to sit in the dark with us.
And this is what He also asked us to do for each other too. While we wait, we wait together. I will wait with you.
The light breaks through dark’s hard shell at the exact points we meet each other. At the loving touch of a friend, a spark ignites.
The spark that says we are going to make it.
Every day this week, I will be posting a story or an essay on advent and waiting and God with us.
Today’s first story is written by Melissa Hawks. A friend I met through adventure and spontaneity. She knows how to tell a story and she knows how to find God in the dark.
This is a story of sitting in the dark and waiting together – seeing the sparks of God’s great love in our small acts of faith.
****
Hookers, Heathens, and Me by Melissa Hawks
I left early that dark morning, stopping to get gas on my way. It was freezing and rainy as I stood next to the gas pump, tears threatening to spill over and mix with the drizzle. Standing on tiptoe to keep my too long yoga pants from soaking in the puddles, I was so lost in my own painful thoughts I almost didn’t hear her.
I was jerked from my inner turmoil when an “Excuse me,” escaped her chattering teeth. She was beautiful and had a black eye. A leopard print chiffon shirt bared her stomach, a tiny skirt, and platform heels to rival the ones I tend to wear covered the rest of her. Her blonde fro curled wildly in all directions and her eye make-up was smeared from tears she had cried. At the moment, mine was a mirror image.
“Can I pay you $10 to give me a ride to my car in the parking garage over there? I just got beat up really bad by the last guy I was with. I don’t mind riding in the backseat.” The pain in her eyes.
“Get in the car, girl, and don’t worry about paying me. A girl’s got to help a girl out.” I didn’t really put any thought into it. She was shivering and in pain. “Of course, I’ll drive you. And no, you’re not sitting in the backseat. Get up here in front.” I tossed my bags in the backseat and made room for her.
She climbed up into my Jeep and began to cry. “This man. He just started slamming my head into the TV. Why am I still here? Why am I still doing this? I need to go home. Back to San Jose.”
I was empty. Beyond empty. I was at the bottom of the pit called empty, broken open. All I could offer was this “Our choices, baby, we make them all by ourselves and we have to remember we are in control of our destiny. We have to choose better.”
Sitting in my car with a prostitute/hooker/call girl who had just been beaten up by a john, I’ve never felt more broken. There were no words to her about God. There was just an understanding about her brokenness because I was experiencing it myself.
I think that’s what love does in the face of broken. It doesn’t look away. It holds the face of pain in its hands and says “you’re not too much for me.”
She must have seen that deep pain in me too, because right before climbing out of the car she leaned over. In a cloud of perfume she hugged me and kissed my cheek. “We’re gonna make it, girl. We’re gonna be okay,” she whispered in my ear.
Some days we can only make one good choice in the midst of a dozen awful ones. Some days we can’t rescue someone else. Some days we can not even rescue ourselves. Instead redemption comes from the most unlikely of sources.
No promises that we’ll be unscathed or that we’ll come out whole on the other side. No false illusion covering the a fact that it’s a brutal and ugly process. Not even a pledge of some small beauty that awaits at the end. Only one simple truth.
“We’re gonna make it.”
God speaks to me through hookers and heathens. Maybe because I am one.
****
Melissa Hawks is a curator of brand and story at Hawks & Rock. She is discovering what it means to write her own story and how God lives in the detours.For her personal brand of awkward, space geekyness, and inspiration follow her @melissahawks account Branding wisdom can be found at her company’s twitter @hawksandrock and the Hawks & Rock website and blog can be found at hawksandrock.com.
Posted in Free Flying Faith, How Can I Help | Tagged: advent, Christmas, community, darkness, faith, God, jesus, light, Love | 7 Comments »
I am a wife and I am a Jesus Feminist
Posted by Nicole on November 11, 2013
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
I am a wife and I am a Jesus feminist.
In the game we were taught, we had assigned roles.
I am a woman. I am the church.
You are a man. You are Jesus. ???
You get to be Jesus in this story?!
Have you ever played an imaginary game with your kids? Or did you play as different characters when you were a kid? What did you love to play? Were you the hero? Were you the parent in charge of it all? Wasn’t there always one kid who took the best role, the best character, and demanded you be like … the pet… or the baby… or Robin to their Batman?? That just sucked, didn’t it?
If you are a younger sibling, this was probably your life-story for a time. 🙂 Well…
Imagine being a woman in the church.
Imagine being told, from the day you started to form a true identity, that your role is to be the sidekick. Even when you were on fire, you were never the hero. To fulfill someone else’s vision, someone else’s hopes and dreams, someone else’s ambitions… this was your life’s work; not as a choice or a calling, but as an assigned character to play in someone else’s game.
People with a desire to lead need followers. Kingdom builders need servants. If men see themselves as leaders, it is very convenient and logical to have a built-in support staff ready to go; they can even grow their own army from scratch. There is nothing evil in this, this is logical for a leader to believe… and men are told they are leaders, they alone have the vision from God, and they have been assigned subordinates.
The difference and the problem we often forgot is that at the heart of Christianity is the design that all leaders are to be servants. And when I see Jesus, he is being a servant – always. He invites people to join him but never demands.
The issues we have between men and women in the church often come down to a differing picture of who Jesus actually is to us all, the church.
Now, there are amazing theologians talking about men and women and Jesus and the church. I am no theologian. But, I do have as much access to the Spirit of God as anyone else and here’s what I know….
Jesus empowers the church.
Jesus empowers the church. Jesus serves the church with his life. Jesus dies for the church. Jesus invites the church to do the work of His Father. And He does all this with excitement and always at our sides.
Jesus says, YOU go and do. I love you and I support you and I am always with you, now GO and be brave and be bold and tell the world the Good News that everyone has access to God and New Creation has started.
Men, today, did you cheer your wife on to boldness and bravery? Dads, did you encourage your daughter to pursue the dreams God has put in her? Did you empower her to go after her calling to share Love in the way her gut tells her to?
I never saw Jesus tell the church to stay put so He could go out and do great things. Actually, Jesus did nothing but empower others to do great work and be more fully alive, healed, joyful. It’s embarrassing sometimes just how much Jesus trusts us all. Jesus trusts us to pursue our lives and dreams all in His name. He used all of his strength and power and love to make a way for His church to be free and powerful too.
Every encouragement, every hope and reminder to the church in the New Testament is an encouragement and hope and reminder to you too – regardless of your gender. Our gender does not dictate our level of freedom in Christ. We are all the church. Jesus is the only Jesus.
What if we stopped playing the old version of “Jesus and the church” where men always get to be Jesus and women always have to be the church that silently serves? What if we started playing a new game where we are all the Church living free and brave under the power and wild encouragement of our servant-king, Jesus? Jesus changes everything. Everything.
We are all the Church. Jesus is the only Jesus.
It makes no difference whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a freeman, a man or a woman, because in Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King,
you are all one. – Galatians 3:28
I am a wife and I am a Jesus Feminist.
I am dedicated to making sure the world knows how beautiful the present and future are for everyone, under Jesus. I am dedicated to loving my husband in the way that makes Him more human, more brave, more free, more himself. He is dedicated to doing the same for me. This does not diminish him, this makes him more of a leader and more of a man after God’s own design.
We can both be heroes. We can both be Batman.
We cannot both be Jesus. Only Jesus is Jesus.
*****
This piece of my story has been written as part of a synchroblog to celebrate the amazing Sarah Bessey’s new book, Jesus Feminist. It’s not what you think. It’s a book about love and hope for all people – even you, even me.
Posted in Free Flying Faith | Tagged: Equality, Feminist, freedom, Gender, jesus, Love, marriage, Sarah Bessey | 2 Comments »
Beautiful Scars
Posted by Nicole on November 7, 2013
All beautiful you are my darling, there is no flaw in you.
Song of Songs 4:7
It seems pretty absurd to believe we are without flaw, doesn’t it?
Massive cultural and financial structures are built on us believing there is something wrong with us; that we must destroy and annihilate all these “flaws” on our bodies through surgery and chemicals and anything else we can buy. We are told by 1,000s of songs, commercials, movies, magazines, and actual people, how we “should” be and how we are definitely NOT. We are all aware of every possible physical flaw.
To hear a message that we are already all beautiful is so foreign a concept that it feels false and trite and rather stupid. Ask anyone at anytime today and they can tell you one thing about themselves that is decidedly ugly. If you’re silly enough, you can ask and they’ll tell you something about you too.
And if you are like me, you still remember the things people said were wrong with your body years and years ago.
Because of all this, even starting this conversation feels like a waste of time. No matter how much I tell you that you are beautiful and formed perfectly, all it takes is one magazine cover or a boyfriend’s inattention or callous comment and you could be lost again. I know. I know.
I want to undo my brainwashing (more on brainwashing tomorrow). So, I am starting with one item at a time and relearning the truth about myself.
If I am brutally honest, my biggest struggle recently is that most days I see my stretch marks as a failure. I am an embarrassment. Some mothers have abs of steel but I do not. We applaud and congratulate those without stretch marks or evidence of birthing a baby. This leads me to believe showing physical evidence of birthing a child (well, other than the actual child walking around) is a bad thing. No one is congratulating each other for having stretch marks. There’s no “SWEET Stretch Marks, Nicole!” high five!
Even when I work out and weigh my healthiest weight, they are still there… the scars… the ugliness…the lack of high fives.
I read that bible verse, supposedly a word from God, and I do not agree with it at all….
“All beautiful you are my darling, there is no flaw in you.”
Well that’s just B.S.
There are things about us that are absolutely not beautiful… how can we reconcile those lovely words of scripture with the beliefs we currently have about ourselves? I disagree with God … and where I disagree with God, it’s pretty obvious who is wrong, but how do I deal with this?
In the end, what has most helped me is the story I tell myself – the way I frame the truth. I can tell a story of a girl living in a world where stretch marks are hideous and an obvious failure of character. (I lack discipline, money for the proper creams, and the love of God that delivers hot abs.) Or I can tell a story of a girl living in a new kind of world, one where the rules are upside down … and everyone is beautifully made, we just can’t see it yet.
****
Imagine this story:
One night my little girls are snuggled in their beds. The blankets curl around small, soft bodies. Stuffed animals of every variety litter their floor. My husband and I sleep soundly in our room, my right foot touching his leg as we sleep.
Suddenly the room is full of smoke. Fire. There’s a fire in our house but not in our room. Our room is full of smoke and I can hardly see. I already have a headache and cannot find the door. My husband is not in bed, he must have jumped up and run out without thinking. I stumble to the patio slider to open it and let out smoke before running deeper into the house for the girls. Before I can even get to their room, my husband climbs out, carrying the two most precious things we will ever know – our girls. They are crying but alive, barely burnt. As the sirens approach, I look at my husband and see that he is collapsing on the ground, badly burned. He gave our girls life but he will be forever scarred by the experience.
A year later, we are together and healthy and happy. My husband has healed, but he has scars on his face and arms. They no longer physically hurt but they will always be a visual reminder of that night. They are warped and rough. I run my fingers gently on his cheek as we kiss and I know two things to be true: my husband is brave and when our girls needed him, he gave them life. Every time my fingers touch his scars, I am filled with so much respect and gratitude that I can hardly contain my love for him, my husband who gave our kids life when no one else could.
****
Imagine if I saw my own scars like the ones my husband has in that story. Imagine if I saw my scars as a source of pride and love. These scars that I carry because I gave my kids life, they are beautiful. I risked my own body and life in order to give them theirs. We take pregnancy and birth lightly now, but they are not light at all. They are acts of bravery and power and generosity. The physical evidence of being a mom is not shameful, it is gorgeous.
What if every time I ran my fingers over my scars, I was proud? What if I allowed my husband to love my scars, to feel proud of me and respect and love me even more for them and not in spite of them?
We all carry scars – both physical and psychic. Freckles on our faces from days in the sun. Tears that spring up when we see a father yell at a child. Small lines of scar tissue on a thigh. Surgeries, accidents, acts of bravery or despair … We carry them with shame when we really are allowed to carry them with honor. Our scars tell our story. We just need to frame it differently. We are allowed to celebrate and lament and celebrate again.
So today,
If you love your spouse despite her body or her face, you have some serious work to do with your Maker.
If you love yourself despite your scars… if they shame you and make you want to hide… it’s time to tell yourself a new story.
We are loved by a God who is not ashamed of scars. We are loved by a Creator who carries His scars past death and into New Life – past resurrection and into Heaven on Earth – who asks friends to touch them and know who He is BECAUSE of His scars.
Grace and Peace to you today, Beautiful Friend.
Wanna see my beautiful scars?! Hi five!
Posted in Beauty SOS47, Honest Home | Tagged: beauty, birth, children, jesus, motherhood, redemption, scars, stretch marks | Leave a Comment »
When We Were On Fire
Posted by Nicole on October 17, 2013
If you’ve read this blog since it’s inception, you know I am a woman of open and hopeful and thrashing faith. I believe in a big God who loves each individual… but that belief is a wrestling I do fresh every day. Like Jacob in Genesis, I wrestle and prevail, and like Jacob, I am constantly finding God in new places – finding Him Even Here. I met Jesus by name in a youth group when I was 14. This entry is a poetic remembering of that time as part of Addie Zierman’s synchroblog in honor of her beautiful new book:
When We Were On Fire.
We ran through fields and over chain-linked fences to escape the hands of the enemy, in practice for the rapture. Dropped off in the middle of the hills and left to find our way back to the school auditorium, we feared Jesus would someday leave us behind because we didn’t truly believe.
*
We sang at the top of our lungs with Joel Weldon at Hume Lake. We sang of love and hope and a Jesus who was everything. We knelt and sang quietly, trying to find the perfect pitch so Jesus would know we were worth loving… and so the boys next to us would too.
*
We piled in vans and went to outdoor festivals to rock for God. When we were on fire, we could do anything for God! We moshed for God. We bought tshirts for God. We floated on crowds who lifted us up on their hands – 1000s of hands lifting us up so we could be closer to God, voices of love and cheering and camaraderie.
*
We held hands and vowed to give our very bodies to God and only God, no matter what it took. And some of us kept our promises to ourselves and to God while some of us made babies… ones we kept and ones we did not.
*
When were were on fire, we shaped our gold into a god in the refining flames – A shape to worship that made sense and we could hold, until, in a fit of tears, we would melt our golden god down; reshaping Him again and again.
*
We will always be grateful for the days we were on fire, to know we can melt, that at one time we were not too cold or too far to be reached by Love – a love bigger than our confusion and much much bigger than our idols.
*
AND to know we can be on fire again, but this time we will keep the doors wide open; avoid the backdraft and explosions that happen when we try to control the fire.
Posted in Free Flying Faith | Tagged: books, christianity, faith, God, jesus, struggle | 19 Comments »
Stop Hitting Yourself
Posted by Nicole on February 14, 2013
Stop throwing stones, please.
Walking around the world, feeling disappointed in yourself, is never fun. It sucks, actually. And, I fully realize that many of you are just fine with your fine selves, but I have a sneaking suspicion that many of us are not… Still not, even after looking through 100’s of motivational pins on Pinterest.
(it’s like dieting. i am not dieting when i read about diets. … and i am not actually feeling better about myself when I read how i should feel better about myself… you don’t lose weight by reading about losing weight…)
It feels impossible to hit the target in life – to reach that sweet moment of pure joyful success – when all you do is practice hitting yourself.
You learn to hit the target you aim at.
**********
“What’s wrong with me?”
“I wish I was different…”
“Why did I say that?”**********
I know it’s the same for me as it is for some of you – The voices inside my head can be loud, demeaning, demanding. All I can see is how I don’t measure up and I wish I did. I’m guilty under the law. So, I throw stones
………….. at myself.
Stoning: Execute (someone) by throwing stones at them.
We stone ourselves. Without a proper trial, we sentence ourselves to a painful execution. Each nasty thought, a stone. Each critique without care, a stone.
I pick up each rough, dirty stone – each rough, dirty thought – aim and throw. Pick, aim, throw. Pick, aim, throw. Pick, aim, throw.
But, in the black-comedy turns of life, we are too close to ourselves to properly execute the guilty. I chuck a stone at my own head and it bounces off – painful but not deadly. Another. Another. Bruises form. Wounds appear and build on top of each other. It’s an incredibly slow, painful death.
Hundreds of stones thrown by me at me.
You learn to hit the target you aim at.
And, I’ve discovered that I spend entirely too much time aiming at myself.
(I say this to you as I say it to myself….)
It’s time to Stop it. Drop the stones. DROP IT.
What do you actually want to be good at? Practice that!
Every time you catch yourself picking up a stone, drop it before you even aim to throw. Don’t spend your life practicing self-stoning. Stop hitting yourself.
You learn to hit the target you aim at. So… what target DO you want to hit?
Take long enough away from chucking stones to hear yourself answer the question. Give yourself time to answer, you jerk! 🙂 What do you want to aim at?
Start small. Focus and aim at getting out of bed and smiling at yourself in the mirror. Maybe you just need to practice setting the rocks down before you are tempted to throw them.
Focus and aim at saying kind things to yourself and others.
Focus and aim at doing one thing each day without caring what you or anyone else thinks about how you did.
Or, if you’re ready, go BIG. Focus and aim at a life-long dream.
I can promise you will get better at what you practice, so
Practice what you want to be good at.
Everything else… DROP IT.
Thank you & you’re welcome,
Nicole
Posted in Wonderful Wrestlings | Tagged: focus and aim, jesus, Love, practice, self care, self esteem, stones, struggle | 1 Comment »
Let’s Celebrate Life
Posted by Nicole on January 31, 2013
When you go to Disneyland, you can ask for a big button to wear all day. It will say “It’s My Birthday!” or “Let’s Celebrate!” And you can fill in your name underneath or write what you are celebrating: “Anniversary” or “Graduation”. Then everyone who works at Disneyland will see your button and comment and welcome you.
“Happy Birthday, Princess!”
“Happy Anniversary!”
We live near Disneyland and go often. The other day my little girls and I were walking through the huge plaza full of people as another woman walking towards us caught my eye. She wore a “Let’s Celebrate” pin, crew-neck t-shirt, big white sneakers and high-waisted shorts; Typical, comfy, I’m on vacation from rural (fill in a state) attire. I always think about the people at Disneyland as they walk past us. Is this their first time? Are they spending 3 years’ savings to make these memories with their families at Disneyland? What’s her story?
Then, as this particular woman moved nearer to us, I looked closely at her button and saw that it said “Let’s Celebrate… LIFE.” Instantly, all the details I had subconsciously noticed about her came into focus: Comfy clothes. Thin, short, newly-grown-in gray hair. Pale and slightly puffy face… New cancer survivor. Laughing with her friends. Walking through the Disneyland plaza. Celebrating LIFE. Smiling at me as she passed. She’s on a LIFE.
Life. I want to be on a LIFE. Let’s celebrate… LIFE.
“Happy LIFE, Princess!”
So, step one of going on a LIFE – what that woman in big, white sneakers and high-waisted shorts wore all over her gorgeous face: Gratitude. For Everything. For Life Itself.
(pause.)
Gratitude. It only happens in this exact moment.
What makes a LIFE? How does a person permanently change, ditch the Die ette, find gratitude, or even choose a new path without using fear, peer pressure, strict rules, pre-made meals, a personal trainer and a nanny? How do we combine all the things we currently want into one nice life where everything fits and we’re happy about it?
LIFE is in our habits. In the moment-to-moment choices. This is who we are. Whether it’s what we eat, watch, say, do… We ARE our little decisions. It’s so hard to celebrate life when our little choices keep veering off course. It’s so hard to feel really alive when my little choices – my little steps – keep taking me further away from the life I want. Do you ever feel that way? You want something so much and yet you continue to take little, tiny steps away?
This is why DIE-ettes don’t help. They are temporary black & white fixes to life-long, complex issues and goals.
I am done pushing and striving to follow a short-term, fix-me-quick die-ette. Spending so much time researching, trying, failing, being on day 3 for the 100th time, judging results … I am looking down and forgetting to look up with gratitude. Gratitude that I am alive.
Now, I am done with DIE-ettes BUT the issue is still here. I am still not living Life to the fullest, healthiest, most vibrant standards and I know it because I feel conflicted. I want things that contradict each other. I want pizza and a flat tummy. I want a deep connection to God and to watch The Bachelor.
This year I am going to get deep down in this messy little spirit and body of mine and try to get to the HEART of why I choose little DIE-ettes instead of LIFE. I am going to stop surviving and start living.
Will you join me? Whether you read this today or a year from when I’ve written these words, I am throwing out a strand your way. Grab hold. Let’s go on a LIFE.
Posted in Free Flying Faith, Healthy You | Tagged: addiction, Cancer, Die ette, diet, Disney, Disneyland, food, Gratitude, Habits, health, jesus, joy | 5 Comments »