Brave, Anyway

Tag: thoughts

  • Freedom Documentation

    Freedom Documentation

    One of my greatest treasures is dozens of little pieces of paper from my Dad. Cartoons he cut out from the newspaper. Thoughts he wrote down and stuck in my purse or laptop bag. Notes from sermons that he wanted to focus on and that he tucked into the bibles he eventually gave us. Little messages from him that I saved over the years and recently went back through as I mentally prepared for Father’s Day.

    A three-time Vietnam Vet’s commentary on my date’s attire: “Last time I saw someone wearing something like this I bushwhacked him in the jungle.”

    Some were funnies or just hearts expressing love and some were reminders that I could always, always come home. But most are lessons – lessons that are fundamental and yet have different meanings at each life stage and event. Lessons that grow with you, as you grow. I’ve started thinking about them as his constitution. The Constitution of Dad.

    Pray every day. Eeeeeeeevery day, he’d say, making sure I knew that the frequency is important. Pray Psalms 91. Pray the prayers in Ephesians. If you don’t know what to pray, just say the name of Jesus over and over. Praying allows God to work. And praying doesn’t change God’s mind, it changes ours.

    The longer you wait before making a u-turn, the more costly it is in every way. Sometimes we get on the wrong path. We’re certain it’s right until we know it’s not. It happens to literally everyone. And most importantly, it’s not a disaster. Even if it costs you money or you lose a little time to go back or hop over onto another path, this is money and time well spent.

    Let everyone be wrong. About you, about situations, about anything. Your peace is what’s most important and it’s your job to hold on to it. Good humans will admit when they are wrong and reach out to you. You need to admit when you’re wrong and reach out to people.

    Be honest, with everyone but most importantly with yourself. See things as they are and not as you want them to be or as you wish others would see them. If you cheat on that test, you did not earn an A or finish first – you behaved in a way to gain something. If you do something halfway, you deserve the C. Cheating and short-cutting will always hurt you more than anyone else.

    What you refuse to surrender, you will eventually surrender to. Anger. Addiction. Unforgiveness. Fear. Insecurity. Expecting anything other than what God has promised.

    You gotta clean out your mind regularly. Think about what you are thinking about. Just like you tell your hand what to do, you tell your brain what to do. You choose what thoughts to keep and what thoughts to toss. About yourself and about others. If you allow your mind to focus on negative thoughts, you will feel and speak that way. And if you fill your mind with thoughts only about yourself, you won’t be of any use to anyone for anything – especially God.

    Do not limit God. With your words, your deeds or your thoughts. And our words have power, so always be mindful of what words come out of your mouth.

    Looking at his notes that most spoke to me, all spread out on my living room floor, I realized the common theme is they are paths to or instructions for living freely. There’s even a note on the inside cover of one of his bibles that says Get On With Life.

    Like Thomas Jefferson’s reference to our country’s living and breathing document to help guide a nation to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” the Constitution of Dad is my guide to living in freedom.

    My Dad and baby Ella. A girl Dad and a girl Papa.

  • Thoughts Throughout a Day

    …in no particular order, all over the place just like my brain this week.

    An apology without change is just manipulation. (credit: unknown Pinterest person)

    Some people are more worried about what others think of them, how they are perceived by others, than they are about what kind of people they actually are. These people will never be committed to anything or anyone more than they are committed to self and their narrative.

    If you’ve built a narrative for a situation, you are the villain and not the victim.

    Intimacy requires spiritual unity. I had forgotten this.

    Politics and policies are argued by the privileged, who, because of their resources, largely don’t have to live with any of the consequences of their stance. They don’t worry about not having health care or what they’ll do if their daughter becomes pregnant because of a rapist – they have the ability and access to “fix” those things. The masses, who have limited or no resources, are left to live with the results of the discussions of the privileged.

    The Redemption Project with Van Jones really moves me.

    Click Here for a Redemption Project promo.

    Some people deserve the death penalty. It is unfairly meted out in our society, and until or unless we can fix that it shouldn’t be imposed. There are more people living in suburbia who deserve the death penalty than there are sitting on death rows who will be impacted by it.

    Collateral damage is the “unexpected, unintentional, and/or unavoidable losses accompanying or following an accident or failure.” In real life it is a nurse at urgent care, seemingly tending her own old wound that still needs healing, who grabs your hand and says, “People just don’t think.” In real life it is a child’s friend who is now afraid when her parents argue, and it’s also the parents of that child.

    Still thinking about the validity of this thought: People who can’t really look at themselves in a mirror are the ones who most often post selfies.

    Why are SO many people running for President?

    Hospitals see humans at their absolute best and their absolute worst. At birth and at death, and in all the messiness in between.

    There are really good people filling hospitals all around the world. People struggling for breath even though they’ve positively impacted the lives of thousands of people. At the same time, there are people who’ve hurt others that are making plans for the weekend. This life is sometimes seemingly unfair – “seemingly” because people who’ve hurt others and whose lives are filled with narratives can never really rest in security. Not in this life or the next.

    Healing happens in hospitals, but it also happens on country roads, when your windows are rolled down and your music is loud.

    Freedom…Freedom…You got to give what you take…Freedom. Hold on to my freedom…

    Writing in a gratitude journal is an important exercise because it keeps me focused on the most important things. Going back to read old entries in my gratitude journal is even more important because it brings equanimity to my thoughts in a matter of moments.

    I recently found the Bible I used during my teens and twenties. It’s filled with highlighted lines and earmarked pages. The forty-five year old me scanning what’s underlined easily sees this was the resource of an anxious young woman who made many, many mistakes. I am so thankful to find a book with pieces of my story – pieces of me – that I’d forgotten. It’s documentation of my progress in some areas and my lack of progress in others.

    When I’m a big girl, a real adult, I want to publish a book. I’m writing pieces now, but they need to get much, much better. The pieces are like the daily training runs in preparation for a marathon.

    Should I change my kitchen cabinets from white to blue?

    Fatigue caught up with me today. That always happens when danger passes.

    I’m going to keep being me. She’s not perfect, but I like her.

  • Purses and Thoughts

    Purses and Thoughts

    My purse is out of control.

    My beautiful blue crocodile Kate Spade is so full of stuff and so heavy that once I sat my bag down in the passenger seat, my car flashed the seatbelt sign.

    I knew it was getting heavy – a couple of times recently I’d caught myself rubbing my shoulder and thinking I needed to clean a few things out. But my car thinking my purse needed a seatbelt? Come on, now.

    I really only carry a purse to keep up with 5 things – wallet, keys, phone, iPad, and lip balm. I came home and dumped everything out, and I found that my usual suspects had become surrounded by things that didn’t need to be in there and that I didn’t realize were in there. Additionally I found an alarming number of things I have no recollection of whatsoever, and I’m not entirely sure they are all my possessions.

    Two things became clear to me:

    (1) The hair ties we are constantly looking for at the very last minute on school mornings are all in the bottom of my purse.

    (2) It’s time to make some changes. Specifically, to set some boundaries for what I am willing to carry around.

    I’m carrying around everything from a blue stone I received as part of a sermon to remind us of our baptism to the official name-change papers I received 6 months ago now. My folder with the tax stuff. A couple of Audrey’s LOL Surprise dolls. Tootsie Rolls. An old device I need to drop at Best Buy for recycling. A Time’s Up lapel pin. A Virginia Beach Rocks rock. A small container of slime.

    I think in part what happens is I have good intentions of getting some things done – so I put the dry cleaning receipt in a pocket in my purse but I don’t actually get by there for weeks. (Zoots may actually be out of business by now and I need to probably check on that.) And in part as I am cleaning up after others when we exit the car, I put things in my giant bag thinking I’ll put them in the trash or put them away when we get inside. In part I’m carrying around things I might need, like Advil or my iPad in case I want to write. And in part I’m carrying around sentimental things that I may not see every day but are there to make me smile occasionally.

    Why am I carrying around so much stuff? The first thing I decided is that everything I carry around from now on is going to be because it is something I need or that brings me joy. I think of myself as not a Marie Kondo fan because at no point will folding laundry ever bring me joy. The first time I watched her fold clothes and talk about communicating her affection through her palms, it reminded me of the scene in The Silence of the Lambs where the serial killer rubs his palm over the back of the kidnapped girl. WEIRD. CREEPY. CRAZY.

    Watch Marie Kondo fold: https://youtu.be/Lpc5_1896ro

    But as I’ve read a little more about her and watched her a bit, I’ve realized that like her or not I have been employing her “does it bring me joy” method all around my house for the last few months. I’ve donated clothes that fit but that I rarely wear because I don’t love them. I’ve gotten rid of house stuff I like but maybe just isn’t right in that space anymore. I’ve dug up lilies around my yard because I want flowers only planted with love, and I’ve been trying to fill our living space with things that all have positivity associated with them. I may have even made this little KonMari step-hop when throwing a few things in the trash.

    So what do I do about my giant purse? I’m not switching to a smaller purse. One, I don’t like small purses. And two, I feel like I should be capable of controlling what goes in my giant purse. Just because I have an oversized bag doesn’t mean I have to fill it with stuff. But more importantly, I need to constantly filter for junk and stop carrying around things that don’t bring me joy.

    I started to wonder if my purse is a metaphor for my thought life. Maybe I’ve been wasting time entertaining thoughts that aren’t productive. Maybe I need to literally toss out thoughts just like I tossed out lilies. That’s why my current developmental sprint is to actively think about my thoughts and replace any negative thought I recognize with a specific positive affirmation, adapted from 2 Timothy 1:7.

    The old King James reads: For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

    But I like the Berean version better: For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but of power and of love and of calm and of self-control.

    I decide what I think about. Just like I decide what goes in my Kate Spade. In addition to the usual suspects it’ll carry my gratitude journal, a gift from one of my besties, a small/medium-ish supply of Tootsie Rolls, and a star from an American flag that my Dad loved and carried in his pocket for quite some time. It’ll carry a photo of one of my favorite places, a hillside in Ohio where the earthly bodies of some of my great cloud of witnesses are buried, and it’ll carry the statement of faith Ella made last year about choosing to remember God loves us (and that reminds me she said “darn” in front of the whole church and I was so proud of her anyway).

    For God did not give me a spirit of timidity, but of power and of love and of calm and of self-control.

    God did not give us timidity. He gave us the opposite of timidity, and that’s bravery.