A Twinge in My Heart

I am participating in an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.

“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

What message is yearning inside you? What is something you know deep in your soul? Don’t look for someone else to describe it. You do it. Write it down. Write it as a poem, a sentence or even just a string of words. Just make sure you get it to paper.

***UPDATE***
I actually wrote and posted this short poem earlier this morning, before I looked to see what the prompt today was. It seems to have answered the above question before I even knew what it would be.

A sudden thought, a twinge in my heart:
I want what you want for me God.
Because your ways are Beautiful
and Mighty
and Glorious
and I marvel at your Majesty
working in my life
all around me
the way you speak to me
your Spirit moving within my heart and Soul
causing me to want more
of You
and like a bird
I rise higher and higher
on the gusts of wind
you send my way.

I Am Good Enough

I am participating in an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself. Use this as an opportunity to reflect on your now, and to create direction for your future.

“If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

At any given point in time, you’re only one thought away from changing your thinking. What thought can you change today?

I have so many thoughts that I am working on changing. It is tough sometimes to un-root all the bad habits, the negative thoughts that underlie my life and that I’m not always even aware of because I’ve had them for so long!

But today, in this moment, what would I change?

Immediately it comes to mind, the thought that I am not good enough. Perhaps “hell” is always comparing myself to people who seem to do life so much better than I am.

These past few weeks, I have been learning to accept myself the way I am, right now, in each and every moment. I am accepting my flaws, loving them, especially for what they keep teaching me. Because no one is perfect, and while I have never wished or tried to be “perfect,” I am seeing that perfect is boring. Sure, I’m not so great at small talk, and I’ve had plenty of awkward conversations and more embarrassing moments than I care to remember. But that is a part of who I am.

I have always been shy ever since I was a little girl, a trait I have not been able to shake no matter how hard I have tried. So finally, I’m accepting it. Yes, I am shy. But I am going to talk to people anyway. And it may feel like I fail at it, like it could have gone way smoother, but I am going to keep doing it anyway.

Teach Me About Love

I am participating in an online initiative and 30 day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.

“Books are the best of things, well used. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

As a writer, your only duty is to be original, to inspire, to put something new on paper. Don’t be reasonable – your job is to to fire up people’s imaginations, to give them permission to dream, and to lift their heads up to the incredible sight of the stars. They may forget what you wrote about – but they won’t forget how you made them feel.
It’s your turn now. Dream, be unreasonable and write what comes to you for 15 minutes.

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Life is sacred. But how does one live a sacred life? Every day, I keep reminding myself to live in the present, to “be here now,” to not worry about the future and what it may or may not hold. There is so much that I want, but if I dwell on what I do not have yet, or that which is hard to come by, I miss out on all the moments happening underneath my nose.

This is a challenge for me. Be content right now, accepting myself as who I am in this moment. It is a challenge to be happy when the guy I want to know better seems to be out of my reach. It is a challenge to be peaceful when I am not confident in my own words, thoughts, and actions, when I am fearful of taking risks. Because what would happen if I actually got what I wanted? What if I didn’t want it anymore? What if I hurt people? Disappoint them? But the other question begs, “What if you don’t?”

And so here I am, plunging into the great unknown, trusting that the One who made me will lead me through troubled waters onto steady ground. I have several risks I am about to take, but I do not want to say too much because the time has not come to make them real. But I cannot ignore my heart’s leading, the intuition that prods me in one direction or the other. I’ve ignored it before, many times, and my own ignorance caused me great heartache, unnecessary misery.

Nearly two months ago, I asked God to teach me about love. Because I am more clueless than anyone. I felt as if God laughed and said, “Finally! It’s about time!”

It struck me as funny that I have never thought that precise thought before—I have never asked God to teach me about love, somehow as if God and love are separate things. But when I said this thought, I felt God laugh, and my eyes stung with tears. There was a deep pang in my chest as I wondered at the enormity, yet simplicity of such a request.

Now here I am, two months later, and I am simply amazed, humbled, and gratified at all the things God has been teaching me. He has been easing me into it, but the message is clear…He is not merely going to “teach” me about love. He is going to fill my life with it so that I experience it in all its glory, in all its many forms. Just wait, He says. There is much more to come.

Perhaps the hardest thing He has called me to do, aside from accepting such boundless love, is to give it away with my arms stretched wide and all the generosity I can muster.

It requires, in every moment, a shifting of my thoughts from the darkness of my past, to the heights and glory of His all-consuming purpose.