Blessed

With the family home yesterday to celebrate my birthday

everything felt just right!

It's hard to articulate how I was overwhelmed with emotions.  With each of the 'kids' living out on their own, I hadn't realized how much I love it when they are all able to come home at the same time.

We enjoyed a super yum dinner of Roast Turkey, Dressing, Gravy, Roasted Potatoes with Bacon & Cheese, Baked Scalloped Cauliflower, Broccoli & Carrots, Butternut Squash Puff, Green Beans with Sauteed Onions, Coleslaw & Raspberry Jell-O.  oh and for dessert, who could forget the Pumpkin Praline Cheesecake with caramelized pecans on top! thank you - Kryssi!  We spent the rest of the day laughing, chatting, laughing, playing games, laughing, snacking, laughing. hottubbing and did I mentioned we laughed, oh how we laughed!

Then I read this, and I sat at the computer with tears welling up in my eyes.

What did I do to deserve such a wonderful family?

Thank you Gerard, Krystle, {Bentley}, Wayne, {Sasha}, Darcy, Kyle & Teya - it was such a blessing to have each of here to celebrate with me.

Blessings

45

Who really wants to think about getting older?

45, to be exact.

45 is old enough to see how far I’ve come, but young enough to know there is still much ahead {Lord willing}. There have been some tests along the way: tests of faith, tests of courage, and tests of determination. I have had to make choices about my faith…choices to trust the Lord with my whole heart and not just with head knowledge.

As a child I used to think that once you were a grown-up, you were finished growing. Now I can see that the older I get, the more there is to learn. I don’t like tests. I don’t like to be out of my comfort zone. The little girl in me would like to stomp my feet, dig in my heels and not move forward. I like where things are comfortable and predictable.

And yet, if there is one thing that the Lord has taught me is that growth only happens outside of my comfort zone. It has taken me a long time to see this.

With family relationships.

With writing.

With service.

With faith.

With all of the things that make up my life, growth requires me to re-think old patterns, habits and ways of doing things. Growth requires me to take some chances, try some new things and make some choices for how I want to be living my life.

On purpose.

Not out of default, or fears, or old patterns of behaviour.

With heart and hands wide open to the grace of God, knowing that as long as my focus on the Lord, I am safe to reach out.

Happy birthday to me!

Blessings

I've lost my MOJO!

Are you ready to work, serve, or create with passion today?

Or is your passion for what you do gone?

Feeling ...

If you are feeling depleted, overwhelmed, stressed-out, frumpy, tired, bored or lethargic, you may have lost your mojo. Urban Dictionary describes mojo as: N. 1. Self-confidence, Self-assuredness. As in basis for belief in ones self in a situation.

I know that feeling. I've felt burnt out before. Burnt out on working before. Burnt out on house-keeping before. Burnt out on blogging before. It's an awful feeling and a worse way to live.

If you want to fall back into love - with your work, your home, your hobby, your family, your life, or even your walk with God - you have to change your attitude and show up to it differently than you have been.

How can you make your work fun? How can you be cheerful while working? How can you get creative or inventive with your ministry? Or, how much could simply speaking positively about your life begin to retrain your thoughts and feelings about it?

Maybe zeal is something we bring to our work, rather than our work bringing to us. How can you and I approach our work, ministry or life with zeal instead of just waiting for it to hopefully emerge?

Burn out is common, but it's also curable. When you’ve lost your passion mojo, acknowledge that reality, and realize that it’s time make a change about the way you think - after all attitude IS everything!

Blessings

It takes practice

I could make a list of all I am thankful for, but really is that what I want to write about? No, not really. Cause it's easy to make list or several lists and rhyme them off at different intervals throughout your life to give yourself that gentle reminder.  But as I am sitting here.. .. .. . thinking.. .. … I’ve realized that I am not truly living a thankful life. I go about my day to day life doing what I always do without being thankful, I mean truly thankful.

To be honest I’ve come to expect a warm house on these cooler days, a fridge, freezer & even my pantry are full overflowing with food. I’ve got clothes on my back, and money in the bank and if you combine all that, we would likely be in the top something percent of the richest people. Are we, by today’s standards considered wealthy, um no, not likely!

Does that mean I have nothing to be thankful for?

Of course not!

But I think being thankful is more than just saying you’re thankful.

I want to live a life that is thankful.

Too often though I tend to compare my life to those near me, I look at what they have and think if only I had ..{fill in the blank} .. then I could be thankful!

Playing the comparison game forces us to look longingly at all we don’t have instead of all we do have, resulting in a skewed view of perspective. It ultimately leads us into a preoccupation with ourselves. Before we realize it, self-centered attitudes like “Am I good enough?” “Pretty enough?” “Gifted enough?” creep up on us, robbing us of all that’s good in our life. It is here that the enemy snares us to keep us from appreciating all that God has given to us.

Another secret to defeating comparison is simply practicing thankfulness. If we’re to overcome comparison, we need to train ourselves to be thankful. Have you ever noticed how your outlook in life instantly changes when you choose to be thankful? Thankfulness enables us to focus on all we do have in our lives instead of on what somebody else has in their life.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 tells us that we are to “give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” This includes giving thanks for how God has made us. We need to put our false perceptions aside and ask ourselves, “What is the best way ~~ given my gifts, abilities and desires ~~ to fulfill the calling God has given to me?

So, the next time you’re tempted to compare yourself to someone else, remember that God wants to use you in the place of His calling ~ a place that only you can fill.

Blessings

When Life is hard

For the past several months, my life has been . . . complicated. Messy. Full of stuff. And even though a lot of that stuff has been hard and all of it has been challenging, some of it has certainly been good. But all of it put together has felt overwhelming, to say the least.

The least is about all I can say about it, though.

 Because as much as I’d like to, I don’t actually share everything with everyone.

As a blogger, it’s not always easy to figure out what to say, what to share – and what to keep to myself. Sometimes it’s simple; the story isn’t mine – or isn’t only mine – to tell, so I don’t. Other times, the story is still working itself out or one I still don’t understand well enough to put into words on a printed page or screen. But other times, I work out my feelings about an issue by writing, I grow into a stronger person by writing, and I find the ability to let go of things by writing. And it’s just not always easy to figure out what kind of “time” this is.

The problem of not writing through all my feelings and experiences – when they’re not mine to share or they’re too fresh or hard or complicated to put into words just yet – is that even if I’m not writing about something, it’s still there in my heart and my head, taking up a whole lot of thinking and processing and feeling space. And that doesn’t leave a whole lot of space or energy for other blog-appropriate subjects.

In short, it’s hard to write when life gets hard.

See, I’ve got things to say, important {to me} things. But when I sit down to write, all I can think of are the things that I can’t say. And so what comes out is, at best, inconsistent and, at worst, non-existent.

Life is finally starting to calm down a bit, or straighten out a little, or feel a little less overwhelming. Some things have gotten better, while the sting of some things has faded a little over time. And as for the chaos that has moved into my life, I guess I’m just getting used to it. So as we move into the fall {yay! fall!}, I have every intention of writing more, writing deeper, writing better.

Of course, I realize by saying that, I might be tempting fate to throw a catastrophe of some sort my way. And really, no phase of life is without its challenges and even its drama. Perhaps it would be better for me to just learn how to write when life gets hard.

So let’s discuss this. If you’re a writer – of blog posts, of books, of Facebook statuses – how do you balance the private and the public? How do you decide what to share and what to keep quiet? And when you have a lot you’re not sharing, how do you keep writing anyway?

How do you keep writing when life gets hard?

Blessings

Solitude

Loneliness is marked by a sense of isolation. Solitude, on the other hand, is a state of being alone without being lonely and can lead to self-awareness.

I am one of those people that solo time is essential. It helps me to think clearly, breathe calmly, and even give me a sense of contentment. Solitude is a time that I use for reflection, inner searching and/or growth of some kind. Deep reading requires solitude, so does experiencing the beauty of nature.

Each night as the moon comes into view it makes me think. .. .. ..

.. ...  about who I am, what I am doing, where I am headed, and probably the biggest question is why?

Since I’ve starting working {yes, yes I know it’s only part-time- but I must admit I had gotten quite used to having more than enough solo time each and every day} I find that there are days when I need to carve solo-time into my days again.

As the world spins faster and faster - or maybe it just seems that way when an email can travel around the world in fractions of a second - we need a variety of ways to cope with the resulting pressures. We need to maintain some semblance of balance and some sense that we are in control.

We all need periods of solitude, although temperamentally we probably differ in the amount of solitude we need. Some solitude is essential; it gives us time to explore and know ourselves. It gives us a chance to regain perspective. Solitude can renew us for the challenges of life; rather than having them run by schedules and demands from others. It can help restore the body and the mind.

Blessings

Comparisons

My name is Anita and I struggle with comparing myself to others.

It feels like such an embarrassing admission – the rabbit hole of comparing yourself to other people. It feels like something better whispered in the ear of a good friend than admitted out loud. But today I think I need to sit at this desk in the corner of a {not-so-messy-as-usual} kitchen and pull you aside and ask you, “How can we be in this together instead of competing at this?”

Comparison will rob you blind, smash in your self-image, trash your house and tar and feather your kids.

It takes what is beautiful and tears it up into tiny bits like so many shredded pieces of paper.

Comparison will eat at the heart of everything you love the most.

Love to write?
Comparison will whisper it’s pointless when nobody reads your blog anyway.
Love to make crafts?
Comparison will tell you that without a gallery, a show, an esty shop you’re a fake.
Love to cook?
Comparison will tell you that your pots and pans would shame Julia Childs and desecrate her recipes.
Love to grow a business, build a brand, market your mojo?
Comparison will tell you that you should have done it differently, done it like her, done it years ago to be any success at all.

Nothing is as terrifying as thinking you don’t matter because you can’t do it like her.

But if we were to look down, look away from what we wish we had. If we would glance back at where we are, we might see we've been standing with high heels ground down on top of the hand painted, one-of-a-kind life art crafted for us.

For you.

For me.

We are each of us uniques.

A fingerprint swirl of utterly and totally incomparable. You are.

I’m writing this because I need to remember. Because when I forget and compare, parts of me wilt and fear takes bites out of my dreams.

I need to remember who I am. Just me.

I can never capture all of it on this blog. I can only show you glimpses. Don’t waste even a moment of your own beautiful life comparing it to mine. And I’ll promise to return the favour.

Rejoice.

Let’s choose to rejoice with one another.

Let’s not trample what we’ve been given in order to get to what we wish we’d got.

No girls, let’s dance. Right where we’re at.

Blessings