Category: Uncategorized

again, thank you all for your support. also you lurkers who have sent me emails – thank you. sometimes i hear the words, “i’ve gone through that too – what you’ve said means so much to me” and now i am the one getting the emails from people sharing that they have been through this before, allowing me to have the “me too” moment. so, thank you for sharing your stories of peace, healing, and restoration.

i thought we’d come up for some air and have a little fun. chris bought a new cd and it had a coupon for three free iTunes songs in it.

so, what should i get?

always do the right thing.

it seems obvious. but sometimes it is HARD. really, really hard.

so hard you can’t eat and you just want to throw up.

so hard it may take you a while to get there.

so hard your mind could be filled with what-if and consumed by fear.

so hard your life as you know might never be the same.

the old adage is true – the longer the agony, the deeper the pain.

don’t wait. do the right thing. do it as soon as you can.

and surround yourself with loving, caring people who will hold you up when you start to double over, who will encourage you, pray with you, pray for you, pray that people will bring you cookies to cheer you up, people who don’t mind when you cry, people who are brave enough to tell you to kick the negative thoughts far away, people who will travel thousands of miles to make things right, people who don’t laugh when all you order is mashed potatoes because you can’t think straight…

people who care. simply care.

[to those people, today, i say – thank you].

today, abbi zeliff was a guest blogger on one of my favorite blogs, swerve. she had a great post on simplifying. i know it has been a while since my “weekly installment” of attempts at simple and that is for a good reason…i have totally been sucking at it lately!

the last two weeks have been crazy: traveling to nashville last wednesday-saturday, recovering from a plane-borne cold on sunday and monday, about five zillion (yes, i exaggerate) phone calls regarding book things (which is GREAT, don’t get me wrong!), a bunch of meetings and a long phone call about another more personal thing, driving with some friends to athens to see shaun groves tonight, helping my boss out at the fusion conference tomorrow, and meeting with a literary agent who’s in town for breakfast saturday…not to mention i am on a HUGE fall cleaning kick and have been a tornado of swiffer and mr. clean at home the last couple of nights. then there’s preparing to speak three times next month (wooo!) in alabama and arkansas…i can’t wait!

oh, and then there’s this thing i have called a job which has a big magazine deadline of tomorrow (thank you to pinkhairedgirl for offering up some freelance skill and helping us out), and we have two big fall festivals next month for which i get the privilege of managing communications…a LOT of communications…oh, and some freelance here and there.

the good thing about all of this is i have realized something i’m actually good at – managing projects and time. it is a ton of stuff yet there is a place and time for it all and i’m confident in the people i have fortunately been able to delegate to and my own progress on these items.

the horrible thing about this i realized today when my friend/accountability girl called me and asked me if we were still doing lunch today.

sccreeechhh…halt….brake noises….wha?

i looked on my calendar on my computer and my phone (they sync)…nothing. i KNOW it was on there – i had sent her the invite and it’s reocurring…somehow all of our bi-weekly lunches were deleted and because i didn’t have it on my phone or computer, i TOTALLY forgot about it.

i am relying way too much on this piece of technology and not my own brain.

today, i realized…i need to just take five minutes…retreat…and BREATHE.

when i get in seasons like this i LOVE it. i love being busy and it’s sick, but i kind of get a rush from having an overwhelming amount of stuff to do…i love problem solving and figuring out how it’s going to get done, then seeing things getting done, and meeting new people…all of it is great.

but i need to step back…away from my starbucks and five zillion diet cokes (not exaggerating)…and breathe. slow down. smile.

and simplifying?

let?s try this again, okay?

reflection #3: washed away

i think in some of the comments in previous posts, people have said they don’t like taking baths because in essence, you’re sitting in a pool of your own dirty water. i agree. completely. which is probably why i haven’t taken one in 3 years AND why i showered after the bubble bath.

as i let the water out of the tub, my feelings of baths were only confirmed by the ick left after the water had drained.

“all that was on me?” i wondered as i looked down at the bottom of the tub. personal hygiene is pretty important…even with my daily habits, i still had all this dirt left on me. turning on the shower, i watched it all wash away…never to be seen again.

i thought i was pretty clean, pre-bath. i do shower every morning, so how could i not be? well, i was wrong. and many times in my life, i’m operating in routine mode, my spiritual disciplines often becoming spiritual to-do’s which i must check off. dirt slowly and discreetly collects on my soul, and in my mind.

it’s still mind-boggling to me how we are promised are sins are removed as far as the east is from the west, never to be seen again. taking the time out to sit and soak and i guess really clean off was essential. it revealed the dirt i didn’t even know was there. but with a quick shower to rinse down all the ick, i never had to see it again…and in my spiritual life, i know his forgiveness is like that final shower – cleansing, purifying, and recharging.

[the end]

reflection #2: warm water cools

japanese relaxation theorists think the ideal temperature for a bubble bath is 100-104 degrees fahrenheit. i am thinking mine was closer to 400 degrees, as my skin went from its normally pasty white to a lobster red fairly quickly. a little too hot.

i let some of the more scalding water out and turned on the faucet to straight cold water until the water was no longer boiling. however, for some reason the cold water wouldn’t turn all the way off, and trickled down the place where i laid my feet.

instead of being a normal person and putting my feet back in the comfortable, bubbly water, i kept my feet set underneath the faucet, allowing my senses to feel the tension between the warm water which enveloped most of my body, and the chill of the cold water which trickled down my toes.

just like this little sensory experiment, it is so easy to want to be surrounded by the warmth and peace all the time. in our spiritual lives, oswald chambers refers to it as the mountaintop experience. god’s presence is completely felt and seen. we are enthralled by his beauty and our hearts leap knowing we’re safe. i’ll let ozzy take it from here in a beautiful description of the warm water…and the cold –

After every time of exaltation, we are brought down with a sudden rush into things as they really are, where it is neither beautiful, poetic, nor thrilling. The height of the mountaintop is measured by the dismal drudgery of the valley, but it is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God. We see His glory on the mountain, but we never live for His glory there. It is in the place of humiliation that we find our true worth to God – that is where our faithfulness is revealed. Most of us can do things if we are always at some heroic level of intensity, simply because of the natural selfishness of our own hearts. But God wants us to be at the drab everyday level, where we live in the valley according to our personal relationship with Him.

eventually, my bubblebath would have gone cold, and probably a little sooner than i would want assuming the cold water would have kept dripping out of the faucet. and a lot of the time, i’m not on that mountaintop. but where it’s a little colder in the valley, a little foggier, a little less pleasant…this is the place where the father truly works through me…and in me.

so, the reason i wanted to know how many guys vs. girls read my blog was so i wouldn’t be surprised how much my readership might drop this week. :) i understand reflections from a bubble bath isn’t the most masculine sounding title…

the last time i had a good, relaxing bubble bath was june 2004. three years is far too long, so i put most of our candles in the bathroom, poured in the bubbles and put my iPod on a sigur ros playlist. after relaxing a bit, my mind started to wander. the next three posts will be about the three things i learned amid the bubbles.

reflection #1: we are meant to float
as i slowly became less aware of my surroundings, i noticed my arms went from two, dead-weighted limbs at my side to floating on top of the water. remembering that humans float naturally, i tried to see if my legs would do the same (thank goodness for large, garden tubs). sure enough, the more i would breathe, release tension, and relax, the more my body would begin to float to the top.

however, i started thinking about the process. i would try and mentally force my body to float, but would actually begin to slowly sink instead. it was only when i truly let go of my muscle control when i would start floating again.

lesson learned? we are meant to float; only the support of living water holding us in place. the more we try and do things our way, the more we sink…and even when we try to make ourselves float, we are unsuccessful.

we must completely let go in order to experience the movement, motion, and freedom floating brings.

sometimes, i see things that make me think,

“WHAT THE CRAP?!”

This is one of them.

The “Daddle.” The idea…potentially cool. But let’s make it a little less creepy, eh?

Daddle.com if you’re interested.

ok…the comments have slowed down (wow – thank you!) on me asking you what your greatest fear is. your honesty and transparency in sharing such powerful things with the public has just blown me away. now that it’s time for me to reveal mine, i can feel the hesitation many of you probably felt before pressing that “submit comment” button.

mine is death – more specifically, someone i love or myself dying tragically and unexpectedly. out of all the people i have ever known and loved who have passed, all but two have been unexpected. my close friend matt dying on his 31st birthday, my aunt who had ruptured a blood vessel in her head…or dying young…we had two funerals this week for a 20 year old and a 23 year old. a year and a half ago, my friend’s husband brandon passed away with NHL (read about it here and here). he was only 26.

so, all this fear…how can we combat it? fight it? how can we not let it rob us?

faith.

before writing this, i was reading a story on cnn about how a church collapsed in peru during a funeral. over 60 people are buried under the rubble.

the reporter notes the calm and peace shown by the nuns and the priest. he writes:

I couldn’t understand how this man and these women of the cloth could remain so calm, their faith so apparently unshaken while they contemplated the ruins of the church and the loss of people so dear to them. I asked them about that faith.

the priest replies:

“It’s difficult times like this that it [faith] exists,” the priest said.

wow. how frickin profound is that? without fear, doubt, question, turmoil…there would be no need for faith.

reflect on that a while…

“It’s difficult times like this that it [faith] exists,” the priest said.

have a good weekend…

what is your greatest fear? really. that secret one you never talk about. you’re almost embarrassed to say it. it seems so…petty.

i know i have one. i’ll share mine at the end.

your greatest fear is…..