You.

This is for you. Yes. YOU. You are fantastic. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and yet, you are still worthy of love and blessings. Don't doubt yourself. You are acceptable for everything that you are. No mistake that you have made could take away from the fact that you are lovable. Don't live your life driven by fear. You are love. Love is in you. It is yours to give and to receive. Fear stops the flow of grace, love and mercy from your spirit to others. You are strong. You are courageous. You do not have to try, just be. Without you, lives would not be the same. There is always someone who would miss your laugh. Your smile. Your opinion. Your stubborn will. Your thirst for life. Do not judge yourself as the world would. The world is on a path of self-destruction and you are an agent of healing. You are a spark that will set the world ablaze with passion, zeal and purpose. You are the one the world has been waiting for. Your thoughts are precious and valid. Speak out because without your voice there is silence. Keep silent because without your voice, wisdom can be heard. You have a talent that is wonderful. It does not belong to her or him. It's not like theirs. This one was made for you. Use it in the fullness of your ability. Too many people waste their time trying to be good at what the world tells them is awesome. The only person you need to be is you. So yes, this is for you. To remind you that you are not alone. You are not forgotten. You are here. So live without doubting yourself. Accept fully who you are. This is for you. To remind you that YOU that when you are you, you will change the world in the way YOU were meant to. warmth&blessings.

Invite Joy, Hope and Vision

For the past three years I've been a grad school student. My schedule has been flexible yet quite demanding. For three years I knew what life would be like. Each semester held new classes and new ideas to learn and financial aid would be disbursed and I could live in denial of the increasing debt that would await me upon graduation. The day has come. I have graduated and entered a season I've been longing for ... days and days of doing whatever I please! It has been wonderful. Waking up later, reading books for fun, painting, gardening, watching movies and soaking in the wonderful act of just sitting and enjoying doing nothing. However, the novelty of this is quickly fading. There are many things I want to accomplish this summer, over the next year and over the course of my life. I've learned the beauty of balance of resting and working. I've learned they can actually co-exist in the same season. What has been intriguing to me is this lingering feeling of discontent. It began as a faint whisper that was easy to ignore and has grown to a feeling in my gut that greets me each morning. In fact, I'm sure I've written about this very feeling before. It's familiar in a few different ways. 1) It feels like my nasty inner-critic telling me I'm lazy and don't deserve to rest or do things I enjoy. That voice is beyond annoying. Such a difficult little creature to destroy and yet, I have full power to do so. 2) It feels like a call from the highest form of myself to live into my greatness. I have a purpose, dreams and visions of what's to come. It's bidding me to not let these things fall to the wayside. 3) An urging from God to not be satisfied with just temporary happiness. His calling to me is one that urges me to find joy. An author once wrote that joy has the strength to withstand what happiness cannot. With this familiar feeling growing stronger each day I have had to think about how to use it for good and not self-destruction. The inner-critic invites despair to take up a room in my spirit. But that is not my desire so I have to combat it. The calling to accomplish the visions I've been given need to be nurtured and paid attention to; they need to be given air, light, water and tender-care in order to grow. And God, well, I have found that the urges I attribute to Him have always led me to unbelievable blessings. I woke up the other morning and decided on a plan. I came up with four questions that would keep me focused each day: -what is excellent about me? -what am i looking forward to today? -what do i hope for today? -what brings me joy? I have discovered that if I do this before I get out of bed, I make sure that once my feet hit the ground they do so with purpose and direction. I also feel a sense of self-worth and value. Each day I'm doing two things: I'm growing a list of praiseworthy and excellent things to remind myself of who I am and a list of things that bring me joy so that when circumstances aren't pleasant, I can always find my joy in every season of life. Second, I'm intentionally giving hope to each day and creating a sense of seeking out things to look forward to. This blog began based on Philippians 3: 8 & 9 "Finally, brothers whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me-put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you." The first two questions call for these things to be stated each day. The second two questions are inspired by Proverbs 29 that says,"Where there is no vision, the people perish..." Each day I encourage you to answer these questions and invite hope, joy and vision into your life. I pray that each of you would find your passion in life and go after it with all the excellent qualities you've been given to accomplish such things. Don't fade into a life of existence ... open yourself to a unique joy and hope and live your life to the fullest. warmth&blessings.

Cherry Lemonade

today has made me think of two sayings: "life is a bowl full of cherries" and "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade". when i began this blog i was on a journey to seek out even the smallest things in life that brought me joy. during times of seeming despair, i would try to find one thing, just one little thing, that would allow me to hold on to hope. it has not been easy, but the results have been drastic. upon moving to san francisco in 2004, my life was not the awesome adventure i had imagined it would be. here i was, fresh out of college and ready to explore a brand new city. i was young and spunky (still spunky, by the way ... still young too) ;) and i had all the potential in the world. unfortunately, my potential and spunk came without a job. in those days, looking toward hope didn't seem possible. everywhere i turned there was negativity being poured into my life. there were people who actually wanted me to believe that life for me would not get better. it was by far the most horrible time in my life. i constantly felt like i was being handed lemons and i just did not give a crap about drinking lemonade. i wanted life to be a bowl full of cherries, but it was more like a bowl full of ... well, you know. the journey out of that darkness was a tough road. there has been a lot of pain, a lot of cutting toxic people out of my life and a whole lot of taking responsibility for myself. my mind is my own and i had given control to others, but that was my choice. i choose to allow those things to happen. once i reckoned with that, self-pity didn't allow me to dwell in my misery. since 2005 i have made an active decision to alter my thinking, reclaim my life, live into hope and take whatever comes my way with my potential, spunk and a newfound grace. obviously, that is a much larger and detailed story, which i will probably get to in other entries. however, today's is pretty simple. a few months back my boyfriend and i entered our names for the new york city marathon. it's a pretty big deal. they hold a lottery and only the people chosen get to run the race. i've toyed with the idea of running a half and a full marathon, but i'm not really a runner. i just thought it would be pretty dope to say i'd done it. i entered my name more as a support of him. he wanted this and i wanted it for him and if we could do it together ... even better. the results came out today ... i got in. i immediately text him reminding him to check his status. his reply back said he hadn't gotten in and asked i wanted him to check my account for me. i told him i got in. i felt a great sadness as i typed "i'm in." i thought, "this is stupid". i only wanted this because i wanted to do this with him. he was so happy for me. he thought it was great. i still wasn't convinced. my immediate thought process was, "why do these good things keep happening to me?" (lots of other awesome things have been going down in my life and i'm in a state of shock lately.) what was alarming about this thought process was the tone behind it was a creepy familiar one; one that implied i didn't deserve good things or i wasn't worthy of a good thing. ew. that stopped right there. here is what i know: i spent a lot of years wasting time thinking i wasn't worth much. i spent a lot of time telling myself and believing i was life's punching bag. and then i spent a lot of time realizing none of that is true. i believe i was created with purpose, value and gifts. i learned that i am not a punching bag, rather i'm a force to be reckoned with. life has not been perfect since my quest of looking to the little things has begun. i still get lemons, nasty ones too. as i was thinking over being chosen for the marathon i started to feel a bit of excitement. i would finally get to go to new york. i'd complete my goal of running a marathon by the time i'm 30. it started settling in me that this could be a great, unexpected gift on so many levels. as we walked around walgreens, i told my boyfriend that i felt bad because i had wanted this for him. if he had gotten in and i didn't, i would have been thrilled and just gong to NY as support or if we'd both been chosen we'd be running the race together. he agreed it was kind of funny that i'm the one who got in, but he thought it was a great opportunity. i said i felt bad because all these good things kept happening to me. of course, he laughed at me and said i didn't need to feel badly for that. as we were leaving the store i looked down ... yup, twenty bucks. life is simultaneously a bowl full of cherries and a lemon dispenser ... might as well make some cherry lemonade. all things in their own way, remind me that i was made for greatness and that i am worthy of receiving good and perfect gifts. warmth&blessings.