Equipping you to brave forward in life, work, and faith.
Last Wednesday was the worst. It started out fine until once again it hit me: I’m pouring all the energy into my work and finding it producing very little fruit. And what I mean by fruit is MONEY. I don’t need to make a ton, just enough to pay my mortgage and get my hair done. The tail spin of doubt begun with looking at our budget and playing around with the numbers.
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As I was explaining to a professor at my seminary why I switched from Master of Divinity to Christian Leadership, she asked me “Well, what do you really want to do?”. Sheepishly I said, “Really, I just want to work and lead in a local church but I don’t want to deal with the uphill […]
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In one sense, it would be easier to recognize the hunger in my belly; to be so starved that I would even consider eating food from a pig trough. This would be undeniably obvious that I have left abundance for severe scarcity but we don’t experience spiritual hunger like this. It’s much more subtle and easily ignored.
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Everything I have learned about shame, I learned from Brene Brown. Shame is an emotion I felt I had very little knowledge about nor even a basic awareness of its existence in my life. I remember listening to Brene Brown’s teaching “Men, Women, and Worthiness” back in 2010. My husband and I were on a road trip and decided to listen to it. It was pretty life changing and marriage changing to say the least but I remember feeling like I couldn’t relate while listening. I didn’t think much of it then but then a few hardships hit our life like a bird to a clean glass window and we went running back to the content of that teaching.
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I have been struggling to write a post for sometime now. Primarily it is because of the mass amount of frustration I have been experiencing due to a personal situation. I can’t tell you how many times I have sat down this summer to write and just couldn’t get my head into the right space. One day, in my frustration, I finally reached out and posted on the Hope Writers Facebook group about it. Within minutes I received encouragement and tips, and I felt more at ease with this battle. One of the tips was to write a “list post” of which I had to actually google but quickly figured out. Writing this simple “list” post snapped my out of current pity party and forced me to reflect on all the things I have learned in just the last 30 days.
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Exploring the motivational obstacles we encounter & creative ways to get around them
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The phrase couch appeal isn’t just a cutesy phrase but a real dilemma for me at times. I am honestly been baffled by my inactivity in my life at times all the while my dreams and goals are running ramped through my mind like a herd of adorable puppies. I have things to do and sometimes I get to them, and sometimes I sit on my couch and scroll through Instagram.
I think it’s time to crawl out from under my rock and get my eyes once again adjusted to the light. 2018 was such a whirlwind that I am feeling a little beat-up by all of it. I feel that as we get older the years pass through us less gracefully than they did in our vibrant years of 20-something. Life is just a bit more jarring and the recovery period keeps getting stretch out longer and longer. Let me do a quick recap of 2018 first before I move into more details about our fertility journey.
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Summer brings a rush of relief from a busy Fall and Winter (which is soon to be around the corner). Summer also brings us more margin, allowing us to engage in activities that Fall or Winter kept us from. But summer can also be a time when we fill those margins so full with activities, desiring to experience all that we could before fall arrives. Ironically this leaves us feeling exhausted and surprised at how “fast” the summer went by. As I wrote in the previous blog What our souls need more than beachsides and margaritas this summer is that our summers can also be a time to feed our souls.
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My dearest friend,
You had asked me “How do you do it?” while sitting in a busy car with a crying baby.
It wasn’t a question pertaining to my accomplishments but about how I continue to be apart of a church, or the church I should say. With all its flaws and failures, you were looking for an answer as to how I keep being apart of the church. We never got to finish our conversation, so this is my answer to you and to anyone else wondering how I keep going to church.
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Ahhh summer… It’s so magical even when it’s ridiculously hot outside like it is now, here in Portland. Our bodies awaken from a winter slumber, our energy spikes, we start planning trips and hikes, and watch our gardens grow. We move at a different pace during these months and much of it is focused on rest and play. And yet, even with a new, slower pace I still find myself saying, “It’s mid-July!! Where did my summer go?!”
Summers can be a great season to start new habits as well especially when it comes to our health. We are more active in the summer, eating more fresh produce especially here in Portland where the Farmers Markets are plentiful! But summer can also be a time where we start to let other habits slip.
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