faith – Tru Original

Articles Tagged with: faith

Beautiful Brokenness

Beautiful brokenness.

In a world where the broken are thrown away, our faith says something opposite. The Lord says He is close to the brokenhearted and He saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalms34:18). There is something powerful about being brought to our personal breaking point or crushed. Sure, it’s a character builder but more so it’s where we learn surrender so that our hearts can truly be transformed. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high” Leviticus 26:13

True surrender demands we be broken. As I prepare my heart for Jesus throughout the Advent season, my prayer is the same every year. “Lord, break my heart for what breaks Yours, so that I may be truly transformed and wrecked by Your love. Amen.” (Lent prayer too!)

Loving all my broken friends today. What a beautiful time of year to be called to surrender! Xo

Keeping My Focus on LOVE

brene-brown-what-is-love

When I started a series of posts about unhealthy thought patterns some months back, I was really moving away from a long stint with negativity and I felt like I had some tools to share that may help others who were or are struggling in that place of BLAH! I had been hurt and forgotten what LOVE looked like. I love the quote by Brene Brown in the above image about her definition of LOVE. It reminds me of how love is cultivated and how love is destroyed.

I still want to share what worked for me in turning away from hurt and towards love. I hope it helps you move away from the ugly and focus on love, beauty and truth. I think a good place to get started again is from an excerpt from one of my blog post on this series…

I was in this dark place and I was dwelling on negativity, completely unaware of my feelings of hurt and rejection. So how did I get out of that dark hole? I am not an expert on feelings or anything for that matter, but I can tell you about 4 things that are working for me.

Set aside time for prayer and reflection everyday.
Identify my feelings and acknowledge why I’m feeling that way, then release them.
Intentional thinking.
Attitude of gratitude.

Let’s pick up where we left off !

Identify my feelings and acknowledging them is a good start. Most of the time what I’m feeling is a long way off from what is really going on. I know that seems harsh, but it’s true. Being an emotional being means sometimes our feeling are not reality. Brene Brown uses a great line that says, “the story I’m making up in my head is…” I love this because it immediately set the tone for more gentle and realistic self talk. Take this scenario…I am angry with a friend that does not respond to a text or email for several days. After recognizing my anger, I ask my self if anger is the correct response to not texting/ emailing someone back? Well, I’m not feeling anger as much I feel rejected. Why I am feeling rejection? Maybe my friend doesn’t care about me as much as I care about her? Is this a fact or an insecurity? Here is where Brene’s line works! ” The story I’m making up in my head is my friend doesn’t care about me.” Most likely, because she is a friend, the root of my feelings is based in insecurity because I know that my friend loves me, I see her actions towards me. Do I need to stay in this place of anger and insecurity after acknowledging this this is not a fact? No, I’m free to let go of that feeling and replace it with truth which is my friend is probably out of town or busy at work. This enables me to be compassionate towards my friend and move on. This is a powerful exercise and I have even said to my husband “the story I’m making up in my head is…” Even though he laughed, it got us to a place of truth and allowed me to be vulnerable. Hard, but worth it.

Intentional thinking is huge when trying to break the cycle of negativity. I don’t believe that critical, negative people enjoy feeling like a tyrant or victim. I believe they are stuck and this way of living has become that house guest that outstays their welcome. I do not wallow in negative thought patterns any longer. If I feel my thinking get stuck in a place of pitty, anger, negativity then I recognize that I am in that place and intentionally release the darkness ( because that is not the voice of God) and I align my thoughts with goodness and joy. My mind sometimes goes down what I call ‘the rabbit hole’. This happens when I am in that worse plane crash scenario that I wrote about and I get stuck in that. Identifying my thoughts, and moving towards intention is 2 big steps to take towards choosing LOVE.

Last, but maybe most important is to have an Attitude of Gratitude. Sounds so elementary but it’s not always easy to find gratitude in the reality of everyday life. But, gratitude is truly a lifestyle, a way of seeing that sets you on a path of freedom, hope and JOY . “Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be all right, and the determined choice to praise God in all things.” Kay Warren. That is gratitude in my opinion. When we can praise God for ALL things, we learn to look at our blessing and come to understand that He is in control. One thing that helps me and my family to focus on GRATITUDE is to keep an ongoing list of things that we’re grateful for. Maybe this can work for you too.

I’m making a choice, I’m choosing love over hate today! How about you?

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Free Spirit

Awww Summer! The excuse to get out of that routine and live like there’s no tomorrow. I certainly took advantage of that sentiment as I basked in the glory of late nights, late mornings, long walks and talks, painting in my studio, sitting in the sunshine and basically doing what I love to do. You know from past blog posts that I have struggled with relaxation, even felt guilty about it, but as I grow older I realize this is a prison of my own making and even God rested on the 7th day! So rest I did and it was wonderful. I hope that you all had some time to do what you love to do too!

If not…it’s never to late to embrace your FREE SPIRIT. Here are 10 ways that I let go and …JUST. BE. ME.

Take time to BE STILL and reconnect with your heart. Pray.
Discover you passions and share them with the world.
Love, just love.
Dance when EVERYONE is watching because no one else is dancing.
Be bold, speak your truth.
Have faith in what you can’t see. Let go and trust God.
Wear your feelings on your sleeve, literally! Dress funky.
Own your past, no excuses and then move on.
Explore! Try new things. Make a fool of yourself or maybe not.
Stop judging people. Not my job.

Still working on a few of these, but this is what I strive for.

Now with my teenagers back in school, the house is much quieter and I’m ready to get back into the swing of things. Although I have been taking the time to do the things I enjoy, I have also had some wonderful opportunities come my way and the timing of this has allowed my to revisit WHY I do what I do. So you’ll see some changes in my business coming this Fall and moving into 2017.

Mostly the direction of my business is moving towards more product development, branding, website design, and wholesale. This is very exciting but as usual, I’m having to learn a ton about business and marketing. This can feel overwhelming so I have to remind myself to do what I can do and leave the rest up to God. So a big change you’ll see in 2016-2017 is more information about the evolution of my art business and less workshops. I love teaching so this is a big let down for me, but needed so I can move my art into a direction that it seems to want to go. I do have some great TRY-IT classes that I will be hosting with Palette and Paper in the works, as well as plans for Art and Soul Workshop once per quarter in 2017. So, to my art tribe, I will not abandon you…ever!

I realized as I sat down to write this post that I totally dropped the ball on finishing up my series of post about how negative thinking affected my life and what I did to get myself out of that downward spiral, other wise known as “the rabbit hole”. I’m so sorry about this! I hope you’ll stay with me as I revisit the remaining 3 things I do to help me to stay focused on the good, the true and the beautiful.

After we’re done with negativity, I will share a series of post about creativity! Ha! That’s pure serendipity! So, thank you for being with me on this journey.

Pick up this sweet graphic below that I created just for you! Just a reminder that life is too short to NOT be doing the things we love.

I feel so blessed by you!

Running with the Scissors

Sunshine MW quote with website

This week, I came across this poem from Marianne Williamson and every bit of my heart yelled out “TRUTH”. I read this poem some years ago, but the word TRUTH didn’t come to mind. Maybe the word was bullshit, or lie, or what a load of crap. Regardless, I was not in a place in my life when I could recognize that I had a light and what it would mean if I let it shine.

Even now, when I know that all of us are born with gifts, talents, and “lights”, I sometimes hold back. Why? I could point to many reasons why I hold back…fear that my gifts won’t measure up (to whom I’m not sure), fear that someone will demand something of my gifts and I will be obligated (commitment phob), fear that I will become stifled and unable to produce ( bored and trapped)…ugh! It really doesn’t matter what the fear is telling me because the job of this fear is simply to put out my light. To extinguish the excitement, the courage, the joy, the trust and hold me in a place of stagnation. This fear is the lie that holds us all captive and redirects us from the “Glory of God that is within us”.

So, the image I kept getting in my head all week as I meditated on this poem was a little girl running with scissors. The little girl doesn’t know how dangerous it is to run with scissors, she’s innocent, and she’s not even thinking about the scissors…she’s running ahead to the next paper doll, or snow flake, ready to do what she does…shine.

If you follow me on Facebook or you’re part of my Art and Soul Prompts group, you know that it’s been all about courage and slaying the fear monster this month. You may recognize the above image as our April Soul prompt. if you don’t, be part of the group. I would love to support you along the way.

One last thing, I want to give you a little gift, the above image titled Own Your Light graphic . Print it off and hang it in a place that you will see it first thing in the morning…the mirror, the coffeemaker, the shower door. But don’t just look at it, read the words and believe in Your Light.

Own your light, it’s who you are, a child of God.