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I have struggled to live with courage for a long time. I’m always the one to hold back and stay on the sidelines. Playing in the game always seemed so risky, it felt safer in the stands. I’ve let myself opt out of things I should have done or tried for. For so long I wasn’t living with courage, I was living with fear. I was living in my insecurities and hurt. Insecurity and doubt are scary things. They have the ability to take over our hearts and minds and infect them with poisonous lies if we let them. But that’s the key- if we let them. It’s all up to us friends. We can either hold hands with Jesus or let the lies of insecurities roam our hearts.

I’ve struggled with anxiety for most of my life. It’s something I didn’t even recognize I had until about the 9th grade. My anxiety feeds me lies. It tells me I’m not good enough or pretty enough or strong enough. It basically multiplies every insecurity you could think of and puts it on full display in my mind. For so long I let these words control my life. Everything I did was based off the lies of my anxiety, and this was harmful to my living. There were so many things I longed to try like starting this blog but my anxiety kept telling me every reason why it wouldn’t work. Y’all I lived in my anxiety and I lived in my insecurities. Until I found courage through the Lord. Read More

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I’m scared of a lot of things. Things like talking in front of crowds, hurting someone’s feelings, looking silly, sharks, snakes, ending up alone, and the list goes on. I live in constant fear of messing up. I hate making mistakes or making someone upset. I don’t like to rock the boat. I’m scared to take risks because I’m afraid of being embarrassed. These are just some of my fears all of which I wish didn’t exist. For a long time, I lived in my fears. I’ve wanted to start this blog for probably about 3 years but was too scared to put my heart out there. Living in your fears is quite possibly one of the worst things we can do for ourselves. I know, because I do so often. I hold myself back from good things because I’m too scared of the unknown. I’m scared of the risk.

Taking a risk is not always a bad thing. In some ways, I think when people think of a “risk taker” they think of a skydiver or a cliff jumper. And that’s cool because for some people that’s their risk. That’s what their afraid of. But I believe we can all be risk takers in our own way. Facing a fear and journeying into the unknown- that’s a risk- no matter how big or small. Fear is a liar friends. He is not good and does not want the best for us. He intends to hold us back from our greatest potential. I’ve realized lately that we miss out on a lot of life when we’re afraid of it. Friends it is so easy to be afraid. Life is scary. There is good news though. Our fear is a liar but our God is not. He is honest and kind and intentional. I got the inspiration for this post idea from a new song called “Fear is a Liar” by Zach Williams. I will link it at the end and I pray you give it a listen because it’s pretty much getting me through every day. My favorite lyrics from the song are “Oh, fear he is a liar, He will take your breath, stop you in your steps, fear he is a liar, He will rob your rest, steal your happiness, cast your fear in the fire, Cause fear he is a liar.” Seriously though. Fear lies to us. He tells us what we can’t do or what we just couldn’t possibly be good at. He tells us we are unworthy and dirty and too messed up to fix. But he is wrong. Read More

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Letting go is hard. At least for me. Saying goodbye to something my heart once loved so deeply is quite possibly one of the worst feelings. It’s hard for me to write this post because I have in no way mastered the art of letting go. But I’d like to try. At the beginning of this year I picked a word that I wanted to represent my year with the Lord, and I picked trust. A simple word with a lot of power. Trust is something I personally struggle with. I find it hard to let people in and understand why things happen. As much as I want to trust, it continues to be something I struggle with. Trusting why things work out the way they do, especially when it’s not what I had originally hoped is challenging to me.

Letting go becomes even harder when I have already let someone/something in but it no longer fits in my life. It’s a sad thing to do. I’ve always found that whenever it comes time to say goodbye to something, out of everyone I’m with, I always struggle the most. Letting things go from my life is honestly just the worst. So that’s essentially where my word trust comes in. Because during these times, when my heart is so fragile and unsure, ultimately the only thing I can do is trust in the Lords plan for my life. I think this is something we often tell each other when upset. “Just trust him.” But do we take this to heart. Do we really trust. Because that is much easier said than done. To fully put our burdens and worries into his hands and just let go, that’s hard. Because sometimes as humans we feel like we need to be in control of our lives. And to a point this makes sense. We want to known what’s going on. But the truth is, we just aren’t in control. This life wasn’t designed by us but instead for us. Read More

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How many times have you looked in the mirror and the first thing you noticed was what was “wrong.” To us, our flaws stick out like a sore thumb. We notice the tiny hair that sticks out from the top of our head, the extra inch on our thighs, the pimple on our cheek, and so on. It is so easy to look in the mirror and see what’s “wrong.” It’s hard to remember the last time I looked at myself and thought wow I’m not looking too bad today. Instead I cringe at the reflection.

As I sat today and reflected on why we might do this I began to wonder when did we stop loving ourselves? When did the little girl with pigtail braids and sparkly justice shirts stop thinking she was the coolest. Because guess what, that little guy or gal you once knew, they’re still the coolest, sometimes we just forget it. Serious question: When did we stop loving ourselves? When did we stop thinking that being different was great? And y’all why? Why have we as a society forgotten that we are loved by a God so good and so kind and that’s all that matters. We have forgotten that he thinks we’re good enough to die for. And how flipping cool is that. We forget to love on ourselves. Every once in a while, we need a compliment. A little boost, a smile. We are nowhere near perfect people, but we also aren’t the horrible image we’ve created in our heads. Why do we think it’s not ok to have a pimple? That’s life yall. People get pimples. That doesn’t make you not worthy. When did we start thinking we all had to be the same size. Since when is there a perfect body type. We are worthy because we were created by the Lord in his own perfect image- not the worlds. We look like God wants us to. Read More

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I’m a hot mess. I swear I’ve said that 15 times in the past three days. I’ve let the word mess define how I feel about myself. I’ve been trying to keep what feels like a million things straight and make a million decisions all at once and in the process, I have worn my heart down. I often find life to be so over complicated. We sometimes set these unattainable goals we feel we need to reach to survive in society and it becomes so overwhelming that eventually we begin to drown in our own burdens. PSA to myself and to the world. Everything is going to be ok. Yep that’s right. The pain you are feeling, the stress that is overcoming you, the hurt on your heart. That’s temporary- no matter how permanent it feels.

Here’s a kind of weird analysis that I use to compare pain and “mess” to Gods healing. Our pain is like a temporary tattoo. When we first put it on its bright and smooth and it’s the first thing our eye notices when we look at it. It’s something we are constantly noticing and thinking about. If we try to scrub it off right away it makes big red mark and hurts quite a bit. No matter how much you scrub, you can kind of see where the tattoo once lied for quite a little while. Though slowly it begins to fade. The tattoo that was once so prominent loses its bright colors and smooth texture until eventually it’s gone and our arm or shoulder or wherever the tattoo was now looks like it once did. The tattoo or “hurt/pain” in this case has faded or “healed”. But it took time. We need time to heal friends. When our life’s feel like a mess or our hearts break and we feel hopeless, we need time. When you get a cut or a bruise it takes time to heal. And that goes for our hearts and minds too. God heals y’all. I’ve seen him heal me through time, over and over again. Read More