5 ways to Kickstart your Day

I woke up this morning and I laid in bed. I wasn't quite ready for life to start just yet. And those mornings can be nice, really so very nice! But that wasn't how I was supposed to start today. I had planned to be productive, but it was Monday and I wasn't ready. I finally pulled back the covers and made my way to the kitchen, where I vowed to myself to devote 30 minutes to quiet reflection on my thinking chair while I ate breakfast. After doing my devotion, I opened up my Instant Happy Journal and the prompt for the day was to trace the words "I'm Not Good Enough" and then cross through them once done. I originally thought about skipping it, because I thought it sounded a bit silly! But sometimes you just do it anyways!! Oh, it was so freeing! Freeing to cross out the "I can'ts" and to let go of the running list of ways to fall short! And after that my morning took a jump start! So I really started thinking about the things that, if done each morning, help me feel like I can take on the day at full force! So I figured I would share them with you. Hoping they help you get the day started off on the right foot- or if it's already on the wrong one, maybe it will help shift that weight! Either way, here they are... 

- Be Still to Start Strong! Take at least 10 minutes out of each morning to just be still; To sit in a quiet cozy corner somewhere and just breathe in the day. The rest of the day will be rushed, there will be things that must get done, but this 10 minutes? This is my 10 minutes! I like to spend mine with devotion and prayer. Today, carving out 30 minutes was so nice! I know that won't always happen, but if I just set my alarm a few minutes earlier the 10 minutes definitely can and should! I really do feel such a difference in the day when I don't have take that time to start my day off talking to God. 

- Journal! I had a prayer/ life journal that I kept for a little while, but like most things in my morning routine it got pushed to the wayside. So when I picked it back up at the beginning of the year and saw that the last post was from the end of 2013 I cringed. Writing down a few thoughts each morning really helps me to set a tone for the day. It clears my mind of some of the fluff and opens it up to make it ready for the new day. Don't journal? No worries, just thinking on something happy! 

- List the happy things! This one is huge! I couldn't recommend it more! Take a minute and list (either on paper or in your head) at least 3 things that make you happy in that exact moment. Today mine were: 

1.) extra quiet time

2.) doing things despite fears

3.) starting my morning off worshipping Jesus

Then I jotted down a few more too! The thing is whenever I start with my list of 3 things, I usually end up with a lot more than that. I actually do this a lot, not just in the mornings. I do it a lot in tough moments. It's amazing what listing things you have to be thankful for or happy about can do to uplift your mood. Seriously, try it right now! 

- List the you things! While you are getting ready each morning, standing in front of a mirror somewhere putting on makeup or picking out clothes, think of 3 things that you love about yourself! We are so hard on ourselves all the time. I feel like as I approach 30 I have gotten even more critical of my appearance especially. At any moment, at any age and any time, we are beautiful! Life has taught us that we have to look a certain way or act a certain way, but that's all just lies! Be yourself and love yourself. Embrace your You-ness!! So name those three things and at least one has to be appearance based. Most of our time in the mirror is spent picking over the fine details; cover this, smooth that. So while you swipe a brush across your cheek, think of something you love, like your eyes or your smile or even that widows peak you (I) tried to cut off as a child that you have grown to find frames your face well! Tell yourself "I love you!!"

-  Pray! I know I talked about this in the first one, but this is huge for me. I am not going to lie, there are many mornings where the other 4 just don't happen the way they should. Seriously, I am NOT a morning person (the Lord knew I needed a job that started mid afternoon). So, if I am up before 7/7:30 I never make it to my cozy blue chair. Literally it is: push the snooze 3 times, stumble to the kitchen, pour cereal, head to the shower (yes, with cereal in hand), sit down on shower floor and just let the water run while eating breakfast. I am sure you are trying to image the scene. Just picture: shower cap on, cereal on the lip of the shower in between the plastic curtain and the cloth curtain, with my head in between the two as well so that I can eat without getting water in my food. This is real life! But I sit there, with eyes closed and mouth chewing and I say a prayer. A lot of early mornings it goes a little something like this, "Lord, please give me the strength and patience to be a morning person today!" Even if it is just short and sweet and half awake, it is so, so good for my soul. Not sure about this whole God guy? Don't believe in Jesus? It's ok. I just say try it. Try praying, even if you don't know what you believe yet. Send up a prayer the way you would talk to a friend, maybe ask about who He is, wonder it out loud, challenge Him with tough questions. He doesn't care how you pray, He just cares about you. Period. Belief or not, you are loved! Just wanted you to know! 

I hope these were helpful! For me, they were a good reminder to me more mindful of how important they are for me personally. My days are so much more productive and so much more full of life when I do them. And the funny thing is they are so very simple that I had to laugh at myself for not doing them more often! So I set my alarm a little earlier? Better than dragging myself through the day feasting for coffee! I mean, don't get me wrong, there's still coffee! But it's so much more enjoyable as an added bonus than something that I am yearning for. 

Happy Monday! 

Any thing that you do that helps to start your morning off right?

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Y'all! Hope you are enjoying this beautiful day with family and friends! 

    Thankful for...
A Husband who understands my quirks, takes care of me, puts up with me and helps me follow my dreams. 
    A tribe of people who I am absolutely crazy about! Find your tribe and love them hard! 
    New adventures and a new day each morning to find joy in the little moments. 
    Kiddos in my life who remind of the wonders in the world and help bring out my own inner kid!
    Family! Through the ups and downs, when they drive us crazy or go crazy with us, they are there!   
    Ultimate Love through Jesus and the Grace that means I get to be part of His story! 
    Life; it sure does have its moments... beautiful, broken, awesinpiring moments and 
I am so very THANKFUL for all of them. 

Joy will Come in the Morning! Small Monday Blessings

Happy Monday World! 

It's not often that I am up to see the sunrise. Well, at least not up enough to go out and enjoy it. This morning though I woke up in the dark, got ready as quickly as I could, so that my sweet husband could drop me at the airport. He's a morning person and I am not, but he patiently waited while I stumbled around trying to get ready, all the while making him late for work. He had surprised me with a flight to Birmingham so that I could visit on of my dearest friends, who had her sweet baby boy recently. I haven't gotten to meet him yet and I can't wait to go snuggle him and hug her new mama neck! 

Anyways, we were up and out right as the sun was beginning to rise and the colors were gorgeous. The above photo does no justice to show the vivid colors and breathtaking light. The sun through the clouds, pushing up into the day, was a sight that my soul needed! It had been a tough weekend, but the reminder that joy will come in the morning was so good for my soul. There are little blessings to be thankful for each and everyday and this morning God reminded me of that in only the way that His handiwork can. Today I am thankful for that, I am thankful for time away to spend with a good friend and I am thankful for the blessing of a sweet man who loves me well. 

Hoping your Monday morning finds you catching small joys that come with a new day! 

More Than a Backpack

Our church is hosting a backpack drive. It is something we do every year. Last year my husband packed a backpack for a middle/high school student. This year I was really excited to get my niece involved. So Saturday morning, while on our yearly trip to Big Canoe, Ga. we packed up and after making a quick stop for some produce at the local farmers market, we pulled into the Dollar General.

I let Makaylin know that this was a special day, that we weren't shopping for her, but for another child. She was curious and so we talked about why. We talked about how when kids start kindergarten, like she will in a year, the school asks for them to have a backpack and all kinds of school supplies. We discussed how school supplies cost money and how sometimes there are kids whose families have a hard time affording those supplies. I may be biased, but she's a pretty bright little 4 year old and this seemed to make sense to her.

We rolled into the store and I will be honest, I was nervous. Dollar General is a kids dream! There was so much for her to see, so much for her to say, "I want that." But we headed straight for the school supplies and got cracking. The first thing she saw was a Frozen backpack and next thing I know she was fast at work. Her own little personal mission to make another little girls day a happy one. It was so neat to see her smile and see her little brain work through what she wanted to get. Everything she picked she picked with love.

"Oh she will love this Aunt Mel!!" 

"Oh this is the best! Here let me put it in the cart." 

"The flower folders are so beautiful (giving them a hug). She will think they're perfect (putting them in the cart)." 

If Uncle Andrew accidentally slipped something in the cart, he would get a "remember Uncle Andrew give it to me first." This was big business she was attending to and she had to make sure every item passed her little hand inspection. 

It was a wonderful experience! 

One I am so glad we got to do together. But, it was what came after that made this story not only so much more than a backpack for the general experience, but also so much more than a backpack for our car ride back to the cabin. You see, as we were checking out, Makaylin was telling the lady that the backpack wasn't for her but another little girl. The lady, being sweet and trying to encourage her, said, "your mommy and daddy must be so proud of you." We get this often, people thinking that she (or my other niece and nephew or the kids I nanny for) is our child. It just happens. Most of the time she just says, "that's my Aunt Mel." But this was different. On this day she chose to say, "My daddy is in heaven." 

Now this was probably because we had already been talking about him on the way to the farmers market. She heard his name in a song Babe and I were discussing and said, "don't talk about my daddy." I let her know it was someone else named John, but that she could talk about her daddy whenever she wanted to. And from there the questions came... "Why does he have to stay in heaven? Does God love daddy more than me and that's why he had to go to heaven? When can I go to heaven? I want my daddy to come down." 

It's those questions that wrench at the heart, but it's also those questions and more importantly the answers to them that set us all free... "He stays there because God made heaven so wonderful that we want to stay with Him, but daddy's always watching over you. No, baby, God's heart is so big he loves everyone equally, no matter what we do, God's love is big enough to love all His people. It's not time for you to go to Heaven now, God wants you here with us, we live life here on Earth for a while to learn to love well and to teach other people about Jesus. And I want to see your daddy too sweet girl, but someday we will get to see him again and all be together in Heaven forever, that's how Heaven works we get to live with God and Jesus in a real, never die, forever." 

She had changed the subject after that. Quickly switching from the deep questions of life to thoughts on pool swimming and rock sliding as only kids can. 

So it was there on the surface when that sweet lady mentioned her daddy. You could see the look on the woman's face, but we assured her that yes, we are a very proud aunt and uncle, that Makaylin's parents were proud of her, thanked her and walked out. And then it opened sweet conversation about what her attitude that day revealed. We told Makaylin that we were so proud of her. We asked her who else would be proud of how happy she was to be giving to someone else. She replied, "My mommy." And we asked who else, "My daddy!" To which we replied, "Yes, baby, even in Heaven your daddy can still be so proud of you." And we asked who else, "God!!" "Yes, big girl, God is so proud of you. Did you know that what you did today helped you have a heart like Jesus. You gave to someone else without thinking of yourself. You loved and cared for someone who needed help and that's how Jesus loves us. And God is very proud of you!" 

God is proud of her and I am proud of her.
I am thankful for her sweet heart. 

I am thankful for the chance to have heart talks about her daddy. 

I hope it helped her heart, but I know it helped mine. 

I am thankful for backpacks for a sweet little girl somewhere in Orlando. 

And I am thankful that a Frozen backpack has the ability to be so much more than a backpack. 

The Words of Others

Sometimes, often a lot of times, there are words that belong to other people that seem to speak to your heart better than your own words could. It's as if they say all the things your heart has been trying to transmit to your brain, the words that get stuck and jumbled between the feelings that are mixed into them. After posting on Monday, and reading through it again on Tuesday, I remembered a post I read quite a few months back on Ann Voskamp's blog, A Holy Experience. I love her blog posts, but this was one that had touched me and that would constantly pop back into my head from time to time. It was her words that first had me wondering about what it meant to be married to a stranger... 

"Everyone always marry wrong.

Because what’s wrong in the world is always us.

Marriage and love and time, these are the enormous forces that inevitably chisel and change us into strangers. The springs sag. Mattresses sigh. Marriage changes us into strangers who have to meet again and introduce each other to love."

and it was her words that encouraged my heart and my marriage in all it's "boring" love ways. 

I was laying here, watching My Fair Lady and scrolling through posts and I opened the link and the rest of the world faded away. I thought I would share it with you, because as I was reading it (again) I found myself in awe at the way her words reached places hidden deep in the far corners of thoughts. Maybe they will do the same for you. 

This is a beautiful post and I hope you find the same encouragement in it that I do! 

TENnessee Thanks for Thursday

At the beginning of this year I started reading through One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. It's a book written about her story, God's story for her and her journey of documenting 1,000 gifts. These are meant to be any type of gift God has granted to show life; a sunrise, the soft sound of a babies coo, dirty dishes in the sink that mean a meal has been enjoyed, the life stuff. Well I started out well intentioned, but life kept getting in my way. Meaning, I had totally lost the point!
Even if I may have bypassed the reading a few mornings- or months- in a row, I shouldn't have needed to forgo 'the list'. The list is something that can grow without the writing down, if I only remember to be mindful of thanks. That way I could go through the list, and when able, I could sit and record those thankful things. While in Tennessee, I brought my book and renewed my vow to myself to finish my 1,000 gifts. And so, starting with gift #117 the list below is my...

Ten Gifts from Tennessee

1.) (aka #117)- Tennessee Beauty; God created such a magnificent world for us to take in. 

2.) Sunsets

3.) Cornhole dancing; its an art people, a frivolous, glorious art! 

4.) Lake days 

5.) Bobbing; there is nothing like it and the Tennesseans have perfected it!! 

6) Catching up

7.) Quiet mountain mornings

8.) Cards with cousins 

9.) Side-stitchin' laughter

10.) Rummy rules and "cheating; because according to Babe, if he is not winning somebody must be cheating... let's just say there was a lot of "cheating" going on. 

I love Tennessee. It is the place where my soul goes to find rest. And it surely found some. I left feeling renewed and recharged. Now, to only find a way to keep feeling that way. Alas, reality beckons!