Thursday, October 31, 2013

"tell me about you. brazil is soon. you need to quit a job. you live with a boy. youre eating new food. tell me about it" -Christine in an email today.

That sums up my life pretty well. I have been in a season of busy/rest and of creating new normals. Creating new normals is scary. It means you are tired and up and down a lot and in my case-not very compassionate but demand compassion from everyone else because "my life is changing and i just need you to give me grace" and then i forget that everyone's lives are changing-big or small- and they need the grace too. I forget that. I've been reminding myself that a lot this week after a few weeks of tempers, tears, and being incorrigible. 

Brazil is soon. Brazil isn't what I thought it would look like or be. I thought Reid was going. I thought I'd be going with Crossroads. I thought I'd have community with Mark and Paige (i will...just starting in april) But, I know I am called there. I can't be discouraged or bitter about the things I thought. I can only continue to be faithful and obedient to the Lord and know that this is His plan. Or...my plan and He's just tagging along and promises to be faithful if I am too. Either way it is good. If my life has taught me anything it's that I'll never be stranded anywhere. I'll never be alone. I'll never have to feel desolate and destitute. I can always choose joy. 

I have 6 jobs. Hopefully soon to be 5 again. After Thanksgiving it'll be 2. That is good. This season has been so fruitful financially. I am so grateful. It's so crazy. This town has loved me well. I have been given so many opportunities to serve and love people that love me. God does this crazy thing always where things work together and work out in the moment and in the future. This seems silly to say but working at the Gap and at the coffee shop have given me so much confidence in my future. I can be understood when speaking to strangers, I can learn new skills, I am a reliable employee. I am efficient and effective in the jobs I do. I am not hanging my hope or my life on these traits but they are good for me to learn. 

I do live with a boy. 4 of them but specifically Josh still. We adventure, we laugh, we don't take life too seriously, he makes me slow down and rest more than I'd like to but it is so good. Grateful for this fun season of life with him.

I've started making my own food. Specifically, I've stopped eating sugar. I started 3 weeks ago and I've replaced 4/6 cans of ensure daily from my diet. I had really bad sugar withdraw headaches. I was grouchy as shit. I demanded more from the people I love than I ever should. I'm mostly past that point. It is good. I feel good. Everyone in this town asks me how I'm doing with it because Britt told everyone. Chelsea and I have been praying that it works. That it's real and not a fluke. It's crazy. 

I've learned things along the way too


  • just because you cry, doesn't mean you haven't made progress in life. doesn't mean you aren't healing, or processing life well. it's okay to cry.
  • you can't let how you feel affect how you treat others. you can't act like a bitch all the time because you are going through sugar withdraw. you have to deal with it. this goes for most sicknesses. there are exceptions.
  • my computer can last 2 hours on a 33% charge. 
  • seasons are seasons. chances are they aren't going to last forever. embrace them. live fully in them. love fully in them. 
  • you will find that is is necessary to let things go;simply for the reason that they are heavy. 
  • "here's the thing. peace isn't the absence of distraction or annoyance or pain. it's finding me, finding peace and calm, in the midst of those distractions and anoyances and pains." 
  • "people need a safe place and some time to discover what they already know. so i just try to hold space and time for folks."
  • "the only meaningful thing we can offer one another is love. not advice, not questions about our choices, not suggestions for the future. just love"

Monday, October 7, 2013


I have been running lately. And I didn’t know it until yesterday. Running from things I don’t want to deal with. Running from (potential) shame. Running from actually admitting things in my life that hurt me or people that have hurt me. I spent time with Chelsea yesterday catching up on life and sitting with her in hard things and before we sat in hard things I told her that my life was good and I was content and that it was calm and easy to breathe right now which is not a lie. As we waded through things in her life and she let me listen and love her I realized there were things that I didn’t want to deal with that could affect my content state of being. I still don’t want to face those things. I still don’t want to acknowledge them. But they are looming closer now. It’ll happen when it’s supposed to happen and I may get kicked in the ass later in life for not dealing with them now but that’ll be alright too.

also, I realize I’ve been living in a false reality. Which goes along with the above. I read a blog by Ellie Holcomb a week or so ago and she talked about how she’s been so good at lying to herself for the past few years and it wasn’t until she started going to counseling recently that she realized it. My first thought was to be shocked that Ellie Holcomb just admitted and really would lie to herself and about herself and live in a false reality. Her life seems so perfect. And then so quickly I realized that I was living in a false reality even about people like her who I don’t know—I so often think other people have it all together and must never have messy lives like I do. Dumb. So Chelsea and I waded through the waters of realities and perceptions and expectations. Heavy things. I lie to myself about things that happened (things that I maybe wish would happen but haven’t or things that could happen even though they probably never will) or how I see myself or how others see me, and I lie to myself about what other people’s lives are like.

Brandon and I talked the other day about how people perceive us. He talked about how he wished people would perceive him as the person he wants to be (his potential) not who he is now. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately because I thought at the time it was a dumb thought. I thought you should take people as they are and not just wish they’d be this person you think they could be. I think both sides are right though. You have to be expectant that God is changing that person just like he is changing you but also be okay to sit in the heavy things for a while until they figure life out. If God is choosing to work in my heart and weed out the bad things then chances are He’s choosing to work in other people’s hearts too. I forget that a lot. Again, I live in this false reality that people are either perfect or too messy to have the Spirit weed out the junk in them.

I want to live in reality. I want to live with the messy things that have happened but I want to have a kingdom mindset and live in the glory that is in me that happens to be the same glory that was in Jesus. I want to live in the grace gifts I’ve been given here and not live in the shame or even in the potential shame that I know I could face someday again in life if I gave into it. Not because I don’t want to face reality but because the reality of my life is that I’m forgiven and loved and treasured and that is the only reality I want to choose to live in.  

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

I am grateful. grateful for the ability to run, to laugh, to hang out at 9 year old's baseball games, to stop on the side of the road for a sunflower field, to make decisions about what i put into my body to make it healthier, to have honest hard conversations, for a multitude of jobs, to sit in a tree for 2 hours with josh deer hunting, to make excellent lattes. 

i've been told over and over for the past 12 months that i need to slow down. that i need to rest more. that i need to be by myself more. that i need to do less. i hate being told these things. i hate sitting. i hate not doing things. its the controlling part of myself. i don't know when i got to be this way. but here i am. tring to pray about it, find time when i can, spend more time with the Lord, and breathe easier. when Josh asked me to hunt with him yesterday I thought we'd be like running through the woods and hiding behind trees and stuff. I didn't know I'd sit in a tree for two hours and have to be quiet because once i came up I couldn't go back down. So...I sat. I prayed. I thought about my life. I decided Kelly's spirit animal. I breathed slow and deep. and I was okay. Life went on even though I didn't do anything for two hours. So...today, I did it again. I was supposed to clean a house and I didn't have to so I slept in and had a quiet time and sat in the sunshine and went on a run and sat in the sunshine some more and took a nap at 11 am and then went to work. taking life a little slower isn't so bad all the time. 

Why would I ever want to write a book? Who would ever want to read a book I wrote? the market right now is definitely oversaturated with chr...