Tuesday, April 30, 2013

love love love. as much as you possibly can.



and then we sat there but i don't believe we were sitting.  we were dancing in my mind, running these hills of deep deep red that surrounded my autumn obsessed heart.  he was twirling me around like the record of my favorite song and it touched us in the most beautiful way.  and that was that, one of the best nights of my life.  i discovered his past and i opened up about mine and it will never have to be mentioned again.  we needed to know one another and i have finally escaped the weight that has pressed against my shoulders for years.  there comes a time in a girl's life where she finally understands it. her past, that is.  she stops trying to give reason to her mistakes and she no longer tries to piece together every wrong she had once crossed.  it's the time when you are so very thankful that you experienced a hurt by so and so and that you didn't fall for what's his face because if you had, the one that's meant for you wouldn't be next to you in that very moment.  he reached across and held my hand.  the sunset was shining into his truck in the most delicate way and i felt his fingers interlock mine.  i learned a lot about myself in that very moment.  i learned that i've never been one of those people who is optimistic all the time, but he makes me that way.  i could never compare myself to the million other daredevils out there but this boy, he makes me want to climb mountains.  he turned me into a believer, something i have been wishing for all my life.  he makes the time pass slow and allows me to remember every single minute i spend with him because out of no where they have become the most precious ones.  we drove south and listened to his favorite artist sing about boots and carolina and a simple life with the one you should always call baby.  i danced all night and i didn't know if i should thank him or god for making me the happiest i've ever been.  i struggled with relationships, all types of them, and perhaps this is why i'm writing all of this tonight.  we are all searching for love.  we all push it out of our lives at some point and then pray for it to return.  love is so so simple but it can be one of the hardest parts of being human.  i had used the word love more than a million times and i can still remember asking myself if that was how god intended it to sound.  and then this moment came where the right person entered my life and i knew that my world needed nothing else but him.  you will experience this and i can promise you that you'll never forget it.  you're shaking,  you're questioning whether or not he feels the same, and then you realize that you don't want to run away from it anymore.  i whispered i love you and i smiled.  my entire life changed that night and while many may have said we are fools, i stood next to him smiling and trusted that 60 years from now my boots would still be right next to his.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Pedal.

We were not born to wait around.  We were meant to celebrate.  We were meant to laugh about nothing, to run on roads surrounded by sun.  We were meant to pick flowers and write stories in the sand and watch this world around us become older and wise.  Let us smile at every joy and be the crazy ones that can't get movement off of our minds.  Open your heart to new things, say hello to fear, and do something good with someone close and watch your relationships grow.

100 minutes for Y Partners.



Thursday, April 25, 2013

Why I'm a Christian Girl.




I'm going to be a little straight forward with you here, but the following sentence once again has truly saved my life.  When the going gets tough, keep going.  Something happened to me today in which I had to make a decision on what my life was going to be.  There were many areas that I had to think about, however, the one area that kept repeating itself over and over was whether or not I would give up completely or take the hand that life has dealt me and do with it the very best that I know how.  It scares me to think about the thoughts that were going on inside of me and it scares me even more that my life has been put on hold because of something that I have no control over.  I watched the sun slowly enter my room this morning, hour by hour.  I heard him leave and tears rolled out of my eyes as he kissed me good bye and I pretended to sleep.  My body ached and each time I opened my eyes the room started to once again spin around me.  I wanted a hand to hold.  I wanted the pain to disappear.  And I wanted to exercise, or at least have the ability to walk outside on this beautiful day.  All of these things felt so far out of reach and the scary thoughts that entered my mind wouldn't go away. 

So I prayed.

I cried and I cried and I prayed so hard that I'm not even entirely sure what I was praying about.  I just needed him to listen and I needed to proclaim my trust in him verbally so that he would prevent my body from giving up completely.  And just when I thought I hit my second round of rock bottom, I was reminded why I'm a christian girl and why patience and faith and believing in him can without a doubt change your life.

I choose him first because I realize now that his way of communicating with me is directly through the people I love.  I choose him first because he overfills my heart with joy.  He reminds me that there is no reason to be scared and no longer will I have to endure the pain that I thought my body had surrendered to months ago.  He tells me I'm beautiful and he tells me that patience is a blessing.  He speaks to me when I consistently write these words and reminds me that I am touching someones heart, even if it's just one heart, somewhere in this sweet sweet world.  I chose him today because he lifted my spirit and brought to me the strongest woman I know to remind me that he's not done with me yet.  He led me to a place of comfort and brought me there for more than just one reason.  Keeping your faith is smiling even when it seems impossible.  It's reminding the people that love you that they make your days worth fighting for.  And it's when for the first time the arm you were just vaccinated with is actually aching more than what has been affecting your life for the past seven months, and this dull ache in my arm I speak of just might be the greatest feeling in the world.  Faith is understanding, it's communicating, and it's taking one more sharp turn just when you started believing the road was straight.  Our lives will never be straight, not any part of them.  Embrace everything, even the hurts and the struggles.  And when you are experiencing any of these sorts, I encourage you to fold your hands and communicate.  He will speak to you and then this moment, a very mind blowing moment will come and he will remind you to never ever stop.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

make today great.





 If we intend to be ourselves and focus on enjoying our lives everyday, we will eventually come to a point where being thankful for all great things becomes our only option.  When you see good, feel good, and understand that He wants you to experience good, all of the bad begins to fade.  Realize that it still might exist because lets face it, living a beautiful life does not mean we never make mistakes.  Learning from those mistakes is his way of speaking to you.  It's stepping out and doing things that he has put on our hearts and learning by wisdom and experience on how to keep reaching a little further when the next time comes around.  Be bold, He says.  "The wicked flee when no man pursues them, but the righteous are bold as a lion."  I encourage you to step out in your faith today and be all that He has called you to be.  Do not hide behind your fears and insecurities any longer.  If you have already had some major set backs in your life and have been living in fear because of them, this is the time to forgive yourself and press on.  Free yourself from everything evil and be all that He has planned for you.  Not just half of it, not even three quarters of it, be all that he has designed you to be.  Remember:  free people are happy people.  Just for today, let yourself and your mind wander somewhere new and I'm going to ask you to do it boldly because with even just a few brave souls in this world, and I mean brave in any form that applies to your life, you will make it an even better place to be.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Keep Hope.

I sat there today and I was surrounded by people with strong faith.  So strong that I could actually feel a powerful movement come over the softly lit room.  That's how I usually feel when I'm there.  My body becomes so filled with emotions that often times I just close my eyes as my body trembles and my eyes tear.  We were reminded of patience today.  Everything in our lives requires patience.  Actually, it requires patience and faith together.  Recovering does not in any form mean immediate relief.  It means gradual improvement until our bodies receive the actual manifestation.  Patience might be one of the most difficult qualities for a person to develop and maintain.  It comes with maturing, it comes in time, and it comes in our faith.  This faith I so often speak of, it comes by hearing and hearing and hearing.  More importantly, however, it comes through the spoken word.  It shouldn't be something we look for only in times of distress, it should be a lifestyle.  I listen to the man before me and I watch him lift every person's eyes to the sky, including my own.  I was reminded today that there is hope.  How can the words I write be so differently than what I sometimes speak?  God never intended the word to be read silently.  We can be blessed.  We can meditate the word, but meditate actually means to speak, to advocate, to shout, and to boast.  I was reminded today that if I read his words aloud, I shall have great success.  We should learn to operate in patience in order to receive his blessing in all forms.  Remember that patience is hope, it's cheerful, it's endurance, and it's constant.  As hard as it is for me to remain patient, I'm learning that each day is a choice.  We can either choose to ignore the great and let fear take over our minds, or we can accept patience and trust that everything will heal in time, even if "in time" sometimes feel so far out of reach.  It will be the perfect time though and I promise you will realize this when that time comes.  And until then, we need to continue to walk with him each day never to be undisciplined with our words.  Patience is discipline.  It's maturity.  It's when our hearts are lifted high and oh how sweet it is.
And then he whispered "you're my best friend in the entire world," and suddenly my world became perfect.  There is nothing greater than a love like this. Nothing.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Why I Love My Yoga Mat.




Nobody can get you there but you.  That's what I love about this discipline.  It's about faith.  It's about liberation.  It's freeing your mind in order for your physical being to follow.  We live in fear.  We will never be fully capable of our fullest potential unless we've broken the barriers that consistently weigh us down.  I stand here, barefoot and breathing and think about nothing but that; naked toes and the air around me.  My inhales silence my exhales and even though I feel slightly off balance today I remind myself that not every day is perfect.  I start to have doubts about healing and I immediately stop myself.  Our fear becomes outward emotions when our mind's start to wander away from what we actually know.  I have to remember that the mind itself can often times be our biggest barrier of all.  He calls us to live our brightest and biggest of lives and he calls us to shine when we decide to lay each of our doubts in his hands.  If we "commit our way to the Lord, role and repose each care of our loads on Him, and trust and show confidence in Him, He will bring it to pass."  Move from a place of fear to a place of love.  I ache, and my neck starts to feel tight so I move to the top of my mat and release the tension inside of my head.  I'm new to the practice, however, he's brought me there once.  I've been to the place where seconds are lengthened and I feel lighter, stronger, and deeply happy.  He creates our world and we need to believe that it's made of star stuff.  Powerful moments where we can feel that we are living the life he has planned.  Walk away from fear and all of its negativity.  I'm not an expert about all of this.  I do know, however, what it's like to fear things that are both big and small.  Often times it's just one small moment that can help us move away from the fear that lives in each of us, and helps us turn our hearts toward something great.  I take one final breath, thank my body for moving a little differently than it did yesterday, and kneel to kiss the earth.  Letting go of my fears and all of it's forms is why I love my yoga mat.

Be Blessed.

Elizabeth.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Hello World

A first post.  A new journey for me and maybe you as well.  We all start somewhere, right?  The blog world started for me when I was 21 years old.  I sat at my desk one morning and came across two blogs that I consistently read to this day.  I love learning from others and I love connecting to them even if they never even know I'm a reader.  To sum it up, I was inspired.  I've always been a writer and I've always been able to look at or hear something and put a creative twist on it.  That's what I'm passionate about.  That, and people.  I'd like to welcome you and invite you to the About Tab at the top of this page as it may introduce you to this blog and what it's all about.  If you've already been there you probably know that my main goal each day is to live a balanced life physically, mentally, and spiritually.  


It is not my goal to get entirely personal in all of my writing, however, I feel that I owe it to you and to myself to share why finding and maintaining balance has become such a huge part of my life.  While I'm far from perfect, I'm happy.  Maybe I should back up a bit.  I was happy (I'm also happy now, but you will soon see that my world became very dark and until this point, I was confused, hurt, and had completely lost hope).  I thought I had complete control over my life and all of the things that were happening until this past December when I discovered that this was very much not the case.  I moved, I started and finished another year of school, and I started a job and hated it, so I quit.  I still hadn't forgiven myself for a failed relationship that had ended nearly three years ago.  I was driven, but I couldn't figure out what I had the drive for.  I tried to tell myself I didn't care and that things would fall into place, but I did care.  I was over exercising to fill time and to battle insecurities that remained with me from years ago.  I was nutritionally deficient and looking back at myself, I was tired, pale, anxious, and the negativity in my mind completely took over my body.  Still, I thought I had all the answers yet my physical symptoms were telling me otherwise.  To make a long story short, I spent the months of November through March with a symptom that started as constant vertigo and eventually led to shoulder pain, minimal neck mobility, jaw pain, ear aches, and migraines.  All of these things on top of the vertigo completely changed my once active and positive lifestyle.  The symptoms were one thing, but what might have been the hardest part was seeing nearly 14 different healers and doctors in order to discover what was happening to me.  Nobody could help, or it seemed that way anyways.  I promise you that I'm not writing about all of this in hope for any sympathy or attention.  My hope is that what you will read in the next short paragraph will change your thoughts about anger, depression, and pain.  I had all three of these and I had to dig deep to learn about myself and my body to truly change my life around.

As I really started focusing on myself, I could truly see what I was lacking.  When we look at our lives, especially when we are sick and trying to handle pain, there is only so much you can do before you want to give up.  There is only so many times that you can hear that "everything will get better," when your lonesome mind is telling you otherwise.  I felt as if the Lord was punishing me for my past and for not staying true to myself during certain times.  And then one morning I discovered the true healer that my life had been missing all along...

 Easter Sunday was life changing.  I finally came to a point in my life where I learned two things.  The first was that I spent my first 24 years  in a complete rush.  I did everything fast and hard and with no faith, love, or direction.  Then this fall, maybe the darkest of them all came and everything caught up with me and my body became someone else and it took me six months to realize that what I needed all along was to just slow down.  The next thing I learned was that I have wasted precious energy by caring too much about the thought's of others and soon after, all of this negativity built up inside of me and forced my body into things that it wasn't capable of.  I killed my body.  I killed my emotions.  And I killed my relationships with many of those who were close.  Days of pain and emotional distress have finally passed and it was the Lord himself that has brought me to this place.  A place of understanding and trusting that things will happen exactly how they are supposed too.  I found my very first scripture in my walk with him in Jobs 22:21 and it is one that was truly life saving for me.  It says "Submit to God, and you will have peace.  Then things will go well with you."  It wasn't until I felt him that morning and heard him speak the softest yet strongest of words I've ever heard.  Naturally, my body let go and I outwardly spoke that I CAN DO THIS.  For so long, I was afraid to live beautifully and reach beyond a particular limit, and that limit for me seemed so far out of reach, yet it only required me to slow down and embrace every piece of good that he has given me.  He is here to guide us through a wonderful life that he has already planned out and I realize now that no matter what situation I am faced with, I am kept in perfect peace because I choose to keep my mind on him.  God's words that morning made it perfectly clear that it is his will for me to be well, healthy, and whole.  But just because it is his will for my life, it doesn't mean that it will automatically happen for me, or any of us for that matter.  We need to reach out to him verbally and let him know that we believe in his promises, and it is something we need to do every single day.  My muscles and endurance are no longer my strongest features.  The negative words that the bottom side of my tongue so often spoke will no longer take over my every breath.   I can be happy and healing at the same time and I know this now because God told me so.  My faith is what makes me strong now and that is how my life will forever be.

I hope that my story can relate to you in some way.  We are all struggling.  We all battle things each and every day.  They may relate to health, finances, fear, or thousands of other things.  Pain can come in many forms, and it is a pesky part of being human.  It feels like someone is stabbing you in the heart, something I wish we could all do without in our lives.  It's a sudden hurt that can't be escaped.  But because of this pain, because of the tears and the agony I experienced over and over, I was suddenly blessed and felt the freedom of what I had been longing for all along.  I was suddenly at peace.

Remember to live completely and let your voice always be seasoned with grace.  

~Beth