Category Archives: Getting Involved

Perspective and Grace

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It’s early. The stillness is calming as I look out on the water that looks like glass, the sun is just starting to peek through the layer of clouds spread across the sky. Last night my dreams were filled with random and stressful things. I was running through most of it. Physically running.

Is that what I’m doing? Running? I have sat down staring at this white page on the computer screen a dozen times in the last week. Nothing. There are millions of things swirling around in my mind. Good things. Bad things. Meaningful things. They just won’t come together to form a sentence.

Last night I spent some time on my good friend, Leanne Penny‘s blog. Her latest entry is about seasons of life. It hit me. Why am I struggling so much? Why do I keep trying to force words into a post? Why am I looking at my stats? I know myself well enough to know that if I had 5,000 “followers” I would be asking myself why I didn’t have 10,000. When really, that’s not at all what this is about. I have to remind myself why I started.

It was to share my experience, strength and hope with others as a way of giving back. A way of saying, “Thank you.” to the God who could have left me in the gutter. A way of spreading hope and healing for broken dreams.

I am a living, breathing example that you can have a plan for exactly how your life is going to go, but for the majority of us it will not look at all like we planned. If my life had gone the way I “planned” I would have been a published author by the age of 30, after I had grown tired of being a successful actress, model and Broadway singer. You laugh, but that is what I was aspiring to.

And then something went wrong and I turned into a wretched depiction of my former self. The more I self medicated, the more hollow I became. I was far from home and completely disconnected from all that had ever been good in my life.

It took an undercover cop, a u-haul, some garbage bags filled with my things and a trip across several state lines before I could begin at zero and build from there. I look back at that scared, emaciated, ego driven, 18-year-old girl and it doesn’t make me sad or regretful anymore. It makes me smile. To think of how far one can go to escape God and everything one has ever known only to find a better understanding than she ever would have had otherwise.

I am the face of redemption. I am cleansed and restored. I have been put back together. I am found. Never to be lost again. I am People of the Second Chance.

 

My Prayer for You

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Downloadable Version My Prayer for You

1-Minute Meditation: Today

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I read this earlier on Anita Esch Montgomery‘s facebook page. It is quite fitting for many of us and the conversations we have been having lately. I hope that you too will find that it meets you right where you are…today.


Today Is Your Best Day

In God we boast all day long, And praise Your name forever. Psalm 44:8

Here are four reasons why today is your best day.
– Today is your best day because you are here. God has placed you in this moment of time for a purpose, and the things that happen to you today will be an unfolding of that purpose.
– What happened to you yesterday, however easy or difficult, was used by God to help prepare you for what He has for you today.
– God will use what happens today to prepare you for what He has for you in future days.
– God has used your past and worked it all together for the good, and He will use this day to add to the good that He has already worked in your behalf.

~ Roy Lessin, Today is Your Best Day.

Sunday Post: People

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Children are people too… just smaller

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you.
Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough.
Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.”
~Mother Teresa~

I think children have a much greater concept of this beautiful reading from Mother Teresa. I learn so much from the many children who I am blessed to have in my life.

Are you thinking about a great illustration for Jake’s challenge this week?
Join in by clicking the badge below.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Solitary

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“We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land.
It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other,
to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is:
each the others opposite and complement.”
~ Hermann Hesse ~
“I don’t fit into any stereotypes. And I like myself that way.”
~ C. JoyBell C. ~
“Insist on yourself; never imitate.
Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force
of a whole life’s cultivation,
but of the adopted talent of another,
you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
This third picture is one of my favorites of the dove on the wire with the crows.
There are times when one can be surrounded by others yet still solitary.
If you have experienced this you know exactly what I mean.

Wanna play along? Click here

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Travel Theme: White

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“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness.
God is the friend of silence.
See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence;
see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence…
We need silence to be able to touch souls.”
~Mother Teresa
(Peacemaker) If you would like to join in this travel theme in honour of the International Day of Peace, here’s what to do:

Create your own post and call it Travel Theme: White. Put a link to this page in your post so others can find it. Don’t forget to subscribe to keep up to date on the latest weekly travel themes.

May peace and beauty be yours wherever you go.

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I’m a hypocrite

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Some days… when standing before my reflection stripped of everything… motives, guilt, expectations, past images, I can honestly look at my body and speak the words of Psalm 139 with great certainty.

There are other days when I stand before the mirror and wonder whose body I’m trapped in and when the merger occurred. I look at my curves as too curvy. My hair appears dull. My laugh lines are deep and obvious. My image is distorted.

These are the times when the Father whispers my name, “Chosen one. Beloved daughter. I have called you by name. You are mine.”

I used to have such a hard time with the phrase, “Beauty is on the inside.” I felt like everyone I heard say it was unattractive and used it to self-soothe. (Mean and judgmental, I know.) Interesting how perspective changes when inner beauty is realized in others and strived for in oneself. It is much more difficult to acquire, maintain and increase than outward beauty. It is the great reminder that this “shell” is temporary. Appearance is fleeting. What’s on the inside will indeed show through…eventually.

I have found it fascinating how the inside begins seeping through the eyes and the smile. The mannerisms and responses. The posture and tone. I know several women over the age of 55 who have a rare beauty that a 20-year-old doesn’t even know to wish for and certainly could not understand. My perception of beauty now differs greatly from when I was 20 or even 26. I don’t think it can adequately be defined. It’s like trying to wrap ones mind around “forever.” It simply cannot be done.

Truth be told, twelve years of abuse to one’s body doesn’t just go away. I know that eating disorders in general are a phenomenon to many. For those of us walking through it, it could not be more real. Some days I wonder if I will ever have a healthy relationship with food. I wonder when I will stop wanting to bend over and vomit every time something passes my lips. I wonder when I will stop trying to force my curves into straight leg jeans. I don’t know?

What I do know is that when I stand up in front of your daughters and mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives and friends and tell them that God made them with a purpose in mind and we should embrace the body he has created for us, I better be living what I’m speaking.

Some days I do. There are days when I have too much confidence. Those who know me well would attest to that. On the days when I’m not appreciating my laugh lines, the curve of my hips or the scar on my belly (that provided a safe delivery for our son) I remember the verse that I have given out to so many women and girls. “I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a creation!” Psalm 139:14

I am not the crease in my brow or the lines encompassing my eyes. I am not the stomach lacking definition or the thighs that will never fit into a size 4 again. I am not the arms that hide from sleeveless shirts or the boobs chest that is, at times, less than manageable. I am not the chin that is no longer well-defined or the insipid, brown hair on my head. The fact that more things jiggle when I walk than I would like, does not decrease my value or deflect me from my purpose. All of these things make up my physique, but they no longer define me.

I am a child of God. Made in his image. Created with great purpose and craftsmanship. I am his masterpiece. Dearly beloved. Beautiful in his sight. Purchased with his blood. Worth dying for.

And darling, so are you.

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