Looking for myself. Again...

I've come to a humbling realization recently. One that I think will be a difficult thing to write about (and a bit long, sorry!). At the same time, I feel I must.

The truth is, I feel like I haven't been an honest blogger.

It's a terrible thing for me to admit, because from the first day I wrote my first blog post back in 2010, I based the idea on basically two foundational pillars:

The first was honesty. The second was being interesting.

It was a good system. When it came to my writing blog, it meant that I had to keep writing in order to find interesting things to blog about.

Later, I started this blog, which was about me going after my dreams and sharing some of the lessons I learned from experience along the way.

Honestly, I think that for the first two years, this was a great blog.

It was honest.

It was interesting.

And truly, it was something positive. Living breathing proof that things do go well for people who go after their dreams.

Then came 2014.

I can safely say that I completely and utterly lost my mojo this year. Which really, isn't a bad thing, per se. Except that I lied by omission.

When stuff went wrong with my publishing deal, I wrote about how determined I was to bounce back. I did not write about how soul crushing it was to have this happening while my business, my only source of income, was failing.

It wasn't the failure of the business, really. Businesses fail. It happens. And honestly, by the time the critical break came, neither me, nor my mother (with whom I owned the business) were happy in it.

The real crush was that we put what we had left into the farm. Which for a while was a source of hope. Except, it took all of our savings and produced not a cent in return.

To give you an idea of sheer hell: All this was February. If you click the link, you'll see me mentioning that I was a "bit blue." It was me practically crying myself to sleep because my first publishing experience had all but turned into my worst nightmare. And it was only the start.

My family put all of our time, energy and money into making the farm work. Which meant that activities I'd always loved like singing, dancing, fencing, even painting got put aside to "when things are better."

I focused on my writing, more determined than ever to make that gig work. But with every passing day, the strain of having to put a happy/determined/brave face on it all when really, stuff sucked... It just wore me down to the point where I no longer felt like writing. And really. I didn't feel like blogging here either.

Because the truth is that I didn't want to admit that things were bad. This was the HAPPY!!! blog. The one where I encourage others and myself to go after dreams! To dare more! To dream more! To remember exactly how much we have to be thankful for.

And yes. I realize that I have a LOT to be thankful for. Through everything, I still had my amazing family right there with me. And I still do. We are all still healthy and together. (Except for me getting a bout of what I suspect to be Strep, and my brother getting tick bite fever last weekend.)

But there remains one point:

Being positive when everything you've accomplished in recent days goes to hell around you is actually a lot more soul-destroying than your life all but imploding in the first place. 

But keep a determinedly brave face on it all I did. But that's the thing I didn't realize at the time. I thought: It's just for a bit. Things will turn around. No one will ever notice. 

But when I started filtering my experiences for public consumption... I sanitized my life right out of a blog... about my life. 

Which meant I wrote less and less and less. And when I did write, it came through this fake, bland filter, which made everything I wrote seem like the worst ever case of sitting with strangers and discussing the weather because there's nothing else to discuss. And this blog all but died. 

And really, it deserved to. I lied. I. Lied. After taking it on myself to show people of how awesome things could be when things go as planned, I didn't give this shitty year the same treatment. 

Which I feel terribly enough. Although I think that subjecting you to the downward spiral that was my life this year wouldn't have been good, I do believe that if I had stuck with being honest, I could at least have made things interesting. 

I might have made things easier on myself too. Maybe, if I'd admitted that yes, my life sucked ass for the past eleven months, I wouldn't have gotten dragged so deep under towards the last few months. 

Full disclosure: No... I don't think I sank into depression yet. But the shoe business really started at the exact right moment.

Even with it, though, I'm fighting to get back to the place I was in December 2013. Full of optimism and full of belief that the year had unlimited potential. 

We're building back up, and today, we got a string of great news that's giving me hope that things are turning back around at last. 

But with this turnaround, there came a sense that I needed to take stock. That I needed to learn my lessons before I can move on. 

But it's good, I guess, because I can share my lessons and, who knows? Maybe help someone else. I guess that means that I'll have quite a bit to write about as I take stock. 

For now, I'm taking the blog feed off twitter and Facebook. Because really, I think I don't need the added pressure of trying to attract readers while I'm trying to find me, my life and my voice again. So if you're here for the upswing in the ride that's my life, I thank you. 

And if you are, and you pray, please do pray that the upswing keeps going. My family and I can really use the break. 

How are you doing, really? 

A confession

I went to a new church today after a almost a year of taking a break from the church I’d belonged to. The break had been necessitated by my becoming involved with said church’s activities. I had joined up with the youth and music ministries in good faith, thinking that I could really help and make a difference, but ended up three years later, angry and embittered because of being ignored despite the fact that the current methods being employed helped absolutely no one.

The experiences brought along by my involvement exhausted me emotionally and spiritually to the point where I withdrew from church entirely. I didn’t feel like being friendly and civil to anyone in church. I didn’t feel like doing anything for anyone, since no one there appreciated it anyway. No. Correction. No one even wanted me to do it.

So I shook the proverbial dust from my ankles and walked away.

But the damage had been done. Because although I didn’t know at the time, the experience did much more than just tire me out. It planted a seed of bitterness. Or maybe poured water and fertilizer onto it so that the bitterness could once again take root in my life and infect every aspect of it. The big thing is, though, that I'd allowed this to happen. In fact, I didn't even see it happen. 

The only reason why I do now is that I went to the new church and spoke to the pastor there. He told me that once there’s bitterness in my heart, it’ll deliver fruit according to the tree that’s there. So anger, resentment, impatience, frustration with my life and so on will all be there. They’re bringing my life to a standstill. Which actually makes things even worse. Because nothing adds to my frustration, impatience etc like not moving forward in my life.

It stops now. I’m going to address this bitterness with prayer. I’ve forgiven the people who’ve embittered me, but I know I’ll need to do it again and again and again. For as long and as often as it needs to be done until this anger and resentment I have is rooted out of my heart and get replaced by something healing.

I know it won’t be easy, because it’s been a fall back position to me for so long. But I have to start. And by the grace of God, I know I’ll succeed with His help. 

Do you have bitterness rooted in your heart? Do you want to get rid of it?

A to Z Challenge: Let It Flow

This is actually one of my Grandmother's favorite sayings. Usually, she says: "Just let it flow."

But the doing is so much harder than listening to the words. When we take charge of our lives, we'll be exposed to a huge and very dangerous temptation.

You see... we're suddenly all about choices and all about doing things. And sometimes, we want to take the steering wheel from God's hands.

Which is usually when we start planning way further ahead than we should. It's also when we start worrying. Distrusting. Our vision is nowhere close to God's. His is perfect. Ours barely extends beyond ourselves. So when we start trying to wrest control of our lives from Him, serious trouble starts.

Tiny bumps in the road become insurmountable obstacles. And we get lost trying to reach our destination.

In the mean time, I imagine God is sitting there, tapping His fingers while He waits for us to realize we're being idiots.

It's just not a good place to be in. So what do you do?

Well. If you've noticed that you're lost (in the past or future), worried, unable to imagine how you'll achieve something alone, it's time that your remember you're not. And that you're not supposed to be doing the driving.

Then you give the steering wheel back to God, and go where He tells you to go. Even if it doesn't make sense. As long as you do what He tells you, things will fall like they're supposed to. And nothing you can do on your own power will help you more.

Once the wheel is back in God's hands, you get to plan, and act and do all the things required of you. And you get to trust that God's will in your life will come to pass.

Prayer

God, 

I'm feeling like an idiot right now. I've been acting as if I know better about where my life should be going. About what I should be doing. Honestly, though, I know I don't. 

Your will, Lord, should always come first, and I know that nothing else I can do will ever amount to more than living to Your glory. 

Please forgive my foolish actions, Lord. Take control again. Because without You, I'm lost. 

In Jesus's name I pray, 

Amen. 

Starting to Take Charge of Your Life: Part 1

I've been mulling over three things since Thursday.

This morning I woke up realizing what my mind had been up to. It had been writing a three post series for this week on starting to take charge of your life. 

For me, taking charge is about many things. It's about becoming the master of my own fate (within the scope of God's plan), but it's also about being responsible for my own happiness. 

A lot of people out there are very unhappy. I was one of them. I saw myself as trapped and couldn't see my way out of my own life, short of killing myself. 

I used to be desperately unhappy and although I never seriously contemplated suicide, I got close enough for me to be scared into thinking about what had gone wrong to get me stuck in a life I hated. 

Basically, it came down to three things, and I think I'm far from the only one who had issues with them. I also believe anyone can change their lives for the better if they're aware of these things. They are: Responsibility, a willingness to question the status quo, and tenacity. 

So why are they necessary? Easy answer: taking charge of our lives requires change in many guises. Maybe your whole life needs to change (mine did), or maybe it's a succession of small changes adding up to something big. 

Point is, if you're afraid of change, odds are you'll never take charge of your life. 

With that said, let's get started. 

Responsibility

We humans have a few flaws, but one of the big ones is the fact we blame other people and factors outside ourselves for a variety of things we don't like. We blame others for preventing us from doing what we want. We blame the weather for making us sad. We blame the dog's barking for making us moody. We blame our circumstances for being trapped in (and this funny in a sad way) our circumstances.

Some people are determined to determined to live like this. I suspect most of them don't even realize they're doing it. 

Blaming others has its purpose, I suppose. It helps us to deal with the symptoms of our unhappiness, of our discontent. On the other hand, it obscures the root cause of that very unhappiness and in doing so, it makes the whole thought of escaping it look like an insurmountable mountain. 

So we blame our surroundings more, trying to feel better, until it becomes an addiction that obscures our own lives from us. 

Think about it. How many times have you wanted to do something only to blame people and circumstances for why you can't? How many times have you tried to do those things anyway?

I understand. I've been there. But I've also been to a point where all those excuses and resentments I had to others stopped cutting it. 

It's a wonderful place to be, but damn, it's incredibly painful. It nearly tore my life apart while I dug past all the crap in order to find what I really wanted. 

That's why I'm writing this series. I hope that at least one person reading this can find happiness before having to go through hell. 

I believe happiness doesn't come from being happy. Being happy comes from doing things that make you happy, but in a way adding value to your life. 

Those things are usually tucked away, far in the deepest, darkest corner of the back of our minds. When we don't do them, we become miserable, because we're not doing the one or two things we're really supposed to be doing. 

We become aware of them every now and then, maybe wishing we could just try doing them. We instinctively know we'd be much happier even trying to do them than we are right now pretending to be happy not to. 

Instead we blame things for why we can't. The keys to our happiness are shoved back into the darkness and we pretend to be content. 

Contentment isn't happiness. 

Blaming your surroundings do much more damage to your life than it helps. It keeps you unhappy for longer than you ever needed to be. 

More importantly, it blinds you to the opportunities and ways you could do exactly what you want, even if it's in a different way than you expected. 

This is why you need to take responsibility for your happiness. It will never come to you unless you realize that you are the only human on earth who will make you truly happy. 

To escape unhappiness, it's necessary to admit something terrifying: You are responsible for being unhappy. Not your spouse, or your parents, children, dog, next door neighbors etc. You. 

Because no matter what the things and people around you do, you're the only one who can change what makes you unhappy. You're the only one who can make yourself do things you're afraid of. But that's for Wednesday's post. 

Are there things you've been wanting to do, but felt like your life was keeping you from it?