Category: honesty

So much more than fear

I have dreams and goals.  Ideas and visions.  I also have fear.  Lots and lots of fear.

I hear all the time do it scared.  You don’t have to be perfect just go for it. I know, I believe, then I do.

The fear is still there but I feel better.  Dreams and goals are being achieved. Then I decide I just need a day to relax.  And the fear comes back in full force.

Why am I doing this?  Why did I say that?  Why didn’t I believe in them?  Why don’t I have any friends?  And I don’t want to move.  If I do I will shatter I know that I will.

But I move, I start writing.  I start believing in me again.  I hope that I can soon breathe through the anxiety.  I try connecting without overdoing the fear.  But they don’t answer my text.  I know it is because I offended them and they are never going to talk to me again. (OK really they are probably just busy but this is what my fearful brain tells me.)

I share what it feels like because that is the only way that I know how to get rid of the fear.

Breathe, breathe the fear isn’t real it isn’t me.  It is part of me but it isn’t the real me.  I have to learn to live with it.  I thought I had this all figured out.  Maybe I did.  I just need to go back to what I know.

Take care of me, love me, believe in me.  Love is the true me.  Love is always the truth.

Crushing Life Thursday!

I have run for years.  I was never super consistent until about ten years ago when my husband needed to do something to get his blood pressure under control.  We decided to start running.  Now my husband hated running!  But it was cheap (unless you think about the cost of running shoes!) and easy to do since you can just go out your door and do it.

We started really slow; run 2 minutes walk 2 minutes for about half an hour.  We eventually worked up to running races.  I have run half marathons and a full marathon.  My husband and I have run 6 relay races.  And it took me years before I would say I am a runner.  I still don’t claim that title very often.  I had a friend refer to me as a runner a couple of weeks ago and I said “No I run I am not really a runner.”

Why would I say that?  Because I don’t have the look of a runner.  I am not as fast as I think a runner should be.  I just felt that claiming the title of runner means I should be better than I am.  But guess what?  I run so I am a runner.

So often in my life I put down what I do because I don’t feel I am good enough.  I don’t claim all of the amazing things I have done in my life!  I am a runner, I am a mother, I am a blogger, I am a quilter, I am a speaker, I am a pageant girl, I am a joy coach.  I am amazing!

What amazing things do you do that you haven’t claimed?

This month’s is all about you!  I love the back to school time.  Getting to buy new notebooks and pens.  This time of year, more than January, makes me think about what I want in my life.  What do you really want in your life?  What one thing would you love to try but you are a little nervous, ok a lot nervous?  What habits would you like to break or make?

Join me every Thursday this month for Life Crushing Thursday!  Where we will explore different ways to explode our life into what we want!

Connection to God

Self care Thursday!!

Most of you know that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  My connection to the divine is through my belief in God and in Jesus Christ who saved me and  paid the price for my sins.  That is what I feel in my heart and what I believe.

Why does this matter?  Because one of the best ways to take care of yourself is to keep your connection with the divine strong.

I know that there are many different ways to believe and connect to the divine in all of us.  I have been blessed by knowing and experiencing this connection in many different ways in my life. Today I NEED to focus on a lesson I learned reading in the Bible. A lesson that demonstrated how I had been lifted and carried during the horrible anxiety time when I felt no one was listening.  And has shown me how to weather the daily storms of life.

I was reading in Matthew chapter 6, Jesus is giving the Sermon on the Mount.  At this point He is teaching the people how to pray.  He says in verse 11  “Give us this day our daily bread.”  I stopped and began to think about what that really meant to me.  He said give us the bread we need today.  Not give us everything we will need for this week.  Not, give me all of the knowledge that I will need in my life.  No He said give us what we need today.

When I was in the worst of the anxiety I wanted to be given the way out right now!  I wanted the pain and fear to be over NOW! But what the Lord was offering me was a way to become stronger.  He gave me what I needed right then at that moment, in that day, so that I could move forward.

I was given the strength to wipe my tears, get up off of the floor and take care of my family and myself.  I was given the knowledge of what to do that day to help myself feel ok enough to not hurt myself.  I was given friends and family and some people I never saw again to lift me up.  I was given a husband that listened to me everyday no matter what.  I was given exactly what I needed to be strengthened in that day.

What I wanted and what I needed were two very different things. I am very grateful that I was given what I needed and not what I wanted during that time.  I was given the daily bread I needed.

I look back and know that if I had been saved from what I went through daily I would not be who I am today.  I wanted to be saved from trouble and heartbreak.  When truly that trouble and heartbreak changed me into a stronger servant.  And I know that each day I must connect with the divine.  I need to be reminded of who I really am.  In the world today we are pulled in so many directions.  We are told so many things that aren’t true.  As we keep our connection with the divine strong we are able to remember who we really are.

When we remember who we really are we are better able to take care of ourselves.  We can combat all of the things that we are told that aren’t true.  We are able to lift others and share the light we have cultivated.  When I am connected to the divine I am given the words I need to heal my broken heart and hopefully share that healing with others. When we are connected we are able to live our true selves.  We are able to live the life we were sent here to live.

I share all of this with you because I need the reminder.  I need to remember how it feels when I connect with God.  I need to remember that when I am living in His truth I am living the life he wants me to live.  I want to remember each day the feeling of love and peace that comes God.  I want to remember that this peace is worth fighting for.  I want you to know that you are loved by me but more importantly you are loved by God.

Keep being brave!

Yesterday I did something super brave.

Next month we are running the Wasatch Ragnar and I have not been training.  I haven’t really worked out all winter.  Ragnar is a relay race of about 182 miles over the Wasatch mountains.  You have teams of 12 people, 6 in 2 vans and you take turns running.  Each person runs 3 “legs” of varying distance and difficulty. Even before looking at the legs I knew that I would be having a hard time because I haven’t been training.

Then I looked at what we would be running and really started to stress!  Not only do we deal with the ups and downs of the mountains but we have to handle the elevation.  The starting elevation is 4525 ft.  Here in Idaho where I live the elevation is only 2730 ft.  Then I looked at the distances and difficulty of the legs.  It looked like everything was hard!

I told my awesome husband last night that I new physically I was the weak link on our team.  It was awesome because my kids were there and they totally disagreed!  Yay for kids that have your back no matter what.  Anyway I told him that I should probably take the first leg which consists of 2 easy legs and a moderate leg.  I said that it wasn’t fair to give that to someone else that had been training just to make me feel better.

The reason that this was so hard for me to say is because I always want people to think the best of me.  I want to be seen as perfect and never making a mistake.  Yes you have read about that before.  I am working really hard to be honest with myself and with others about what I can and can’t do.  So even though I really want to be seen as super strong and able to handle anything I had to be honest in what I can do this time.

Besides it has been freeing to be honest.  To not pretend that I am something that I am not right now. Being honest allows so many more good things into life. There is room to learn and grow when you let go and be yourself!

Of course, this just made me want to work harder to be in shape for the Hood to Coast relay race we are running in August!