How to do you feel about your body? Do you feel connected to it? Do you feel respect for it? How do you nurture it? How do you challenge it?

The curves and ups and downs of the cursive letter F has always bothered me. With two in my name, they were constantly nemeses to write in my younger years. The awkwardness of two directly next to each other made writing them torture. I never liked the dips or the way the top seemed lopsided and the bottom too heavy. No uniform could be found between the lines, unbalanced and messy. And its connotation with negative performance did not help it much.

As I scrawled words across the page recently and found myself making the familiar loops, forming an F with grace, I was surprised to find myself admiring its structure and shape. They fit in perfectly next to the other letters, their loops adding to the cohesiveness and beauty of the word's entirety.

Perhaps it is due to over two decades of experience with lines and doodles and scratches hitting the page or simply a change in perspective. Fresh eyes have a way of changing the surface unlike any other.

Fresh eyes come in many sizes and varieties and circumstances we cannot always control, surprising us along the way.

Respect for my body has been the same process. The wrong curves in the seemingly wrong places were in the forefront of my mind during adolescence and nothing could figure itself out. Awkward and unbalanced and messy and insecure described it so well.

My body has been sweeter to me than me to it. I have always been rough and hard on it. Demanding more from it than nurturing it, not intending to but rather expecting that is what it does. 

Diets of Cheez it's and Jack in the box tacos in high school and Crystal Light packets and more Cheez it's in college, along with Doritos and ice cream. It was for me to use, not something to treasure. 

A passionate nutrition teacher at the end of college and birthing two babies has changed my perspective and given me new eyes for my body, along with lots of prayers.

As the scale raced high in number than I had ever seen with each monthly pregnancy appointment, insecurity started settling in. And the thoughts of what would become after. The stretch marks. The post baby weight. The possibility of the skin shrinking back to its original state.

All the while my body was growing a new life, I hardly gave it the credit it deserved. The things it knew to do that I could not even imagine or completely understand. It performed perfectly. Twice. Graciously without stretch marks or extra skin after.

After much prayer and listening to God, genuine appreciation and gratitude has set in deeply. 

Thankful for ears to hear and eyes that see. For the freckles and each functioning limb, able to run and hug my children and chase them around the back yard. For the blonde hair I covered for years and the fingers that type the words out as they come to fruition.

And these days, I am a lot nicer to by body. Intentionally feeding it more wholesome food and salads when I can remember. But some days, I forget and God gently reminds me of the gift that my body is. How he does not make mistakes and how we are all knit together perfectly and made in his image. And how his love is not based on looks or performance but simply because he made us and we are his.

Here's to our body and being nicer to it. 

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This is part of a 365 day blogging series through Savor by Shauna Niequist. If you would like to blog along, whether daily or weekly, I would love to have you for the journey; be sure to link back to the post. And if you are not a blogger, you can join along, too. Just leave your response and answers in the comments.

Have you ever run a marathon, or fulfilled some other physical goal that pushed you beyond what you had thought you could do? What did you learn from that process?

I have hardly set physical goals for myself that I can recall. I move when I need to and run when I can. Usually a mile or two in after morning devotions and before breakfast on good days.

The majority of my physical exercise comes in the form of chasing children around the house and parks and stores. With a backpack full of water and snacks for three and wearing an 18lb child, the work out comes naturally.

In elementary school, I once did a six minute mile. Not by choice or determination, rather by chance. I starting running our weekly mile with a different friend that day because my usual running partner was home sick. She was the fastest girl in class and a soccer player, not something I had taken in to consideration at the starting point. 

Running was not something I excelled in or cared much for at the time but as we started running I found myself keeping up. My lungs breathing heavy and my feet moving fast. The rest of the class followed behind, my breath lost back with them somewhere. We arrived back the starting point with our time given out. I had never been that fast and my body told me so, as I walked a little light headed and dizzy to the drinking fountain, recovering slowly.

Exercise became a means to deal with stress in junior high and high school. I never minded the running in class and would do laps around my neighborhood, processing life as my feet moved one in front of the other.

Pushups and sit ups worked their way in to a nightly routine, too. Though I hardly recall how.

Running and exercise and life can be determined by speed and accomplishments. How many marathons we have taken part in or races finished or the place earned. It can be by where we graduated from or who we married or how many children we have.

Life can be tied up in keeping up with everyone else's pace. A pace not marked out for us, nor one that will resemble the likeness of how we were created and will leave us feeling heavy and lacking oxygen.

Life is best enjoyed with others surrounding and encouraging the running and goals and God adventures. Life is best enjoyed at our own paces and meeting when our paths cross, not increasing speed to collide.

But when it happens that the feet hit the pavement harder and quicker than they should, here's to walking. To slowing down and enjoying the view and others along the way.

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This is part of a 365 day blogging series through Savor by Shauna Niequist. If you would like to blog along, whether daily or weekly, I would love to have you for the journey; be sure to link back to the post. And if you are not a blogger, you can join along, too. Just leave your response and answers in the comments.

"Someday can be a seductive word. It carries intent and promise, that certain things will eventually be part of our lives. But it also lets us off the hook. Is there anything in your life that's living in the distant could of "someday"? What's keeping you from moving and working toward it now?

When you are living out your somedays it is hard to ponder what else could be. While sweeping the floor one evening a few weeks ago, this realization came to me yet again. Everything I have ever wanted is before me, in my hand.  

In junior high English, we had to write a letter to our future self. The self that was graduating and moving beyond public education. It was a letter stating the hopes and dreams of our junior high self. What we thought life would look like at the time we dawned our green and white graduation caps and tassels and what it currently looked like as we scrolled the letters across the page, sitting in our brown desks.

I never ended up receiving my letter after graduation, perhaps all the moving and lack of address made it difficult to find its way to my doorstep. But my somedays were pretty generic and easy to recall.

Someday after high school I would go to college, majoring in teaching and minoring in writing. Someday I would get married and someday we would have children. Someday we would probably buy a house. And in doing those things, life would be filled and the happily ever after must be the result.

I went to college, though majoring in Apparel Marketing and Design as my creative side got the best of me and married one semester before graduation. Three children now share our last name and snuggles and laughs and a cozy rental home. It is not exactly what my twelve year old self had painted but the frame work is pretty close, and close enough in terms of horse shoes and hand grenades, as my dad reminded me while growing up.

Nothing is how I had pictured it would unfold in the day to day or perhaps I never was that detailed with the somedays. Nothing is perfect or without its challenges. Melt downs and tantrums and spilled milk and messes of any sort make up our everyday, along with endless lap sitting with books in hand and  swinging and piggy back rides and diaper changes.

But the frame work is solid. It is there and it is there that gratefulness has cultivated itself against the hard sheet rock of the daily duties and struggles to find the joy and fully embracing life.

And sometimes it can be a little eerie and I find myself asking what else? Is there something more?

And it is there that God throws in the surprises and reveals new mysteries and challenges and the unfolding of his plans. It is there that thankful hearts overflow for the framework, though in different shades and tones than could ever be imagined, and a constant reminder of his grace and love is renewed. And all of it is nothing short of a miracle.

Here's to somedays. 

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This is part of a 365 day blogging series through Savor by Shauna Niequist. If you would like to blog along, whether daily or weekly, I would love to have you for the journey; be sure to link back to the post. And if you are not a blogger, you can join along, too. Just leave your response and answers in the comments.

Is there anything that inexplicably makes you cry? What small step could you take toward meeting a personal goal today?

Crying and the whole waterworks of sorts are not regulars for me. These days crying does not bother me but queuing the tears tends to take a lot. Perhaps it is my steady nature or reluctance or the fact I have never been a very emotional but they do not come easy, with some exceptions.

That said, foster care and adoption have tugged at my heart strings over the past several years. Leaving me weeping over my computer and my Bible and in the middle of church services. Being a mom and thinking about all the children who are without one tugs like nothing else can. And I am grateful for the parents who step up to tuck them in to bed and wipe their noses and give them hugs and work through all the baggage and fears that life has imposed on them. But my heart still breaks for their parents, for the loss of their children and for choices. A constant prayer for redemption and love to abound.

Lately, there is been another stirring and wetting of the eyes.

As my children and I tucked ourselves in to the couch, the children's Bible in the middle and my arms brimming and filled with their little bodies, the story of the Good Samaritan crossed the page. One more, one more, they pleaded. So we read.

The priest saw the need and over looked it.

The Levite looked but kept going about his business.

And the Samaritan, the one considered less than and not enough, he saw and took action. He came and helped and met the needs of a stranger he had only just met.

The tears started brimming with each passing page. I had read this story countless times. Treat others how you want to be treated. People are important. Stop for people. See the need and help where you can.

The usual lessons from them fresh in my mind.

But on this morning God reminded me his people, of women who are caught up in trafficking and prostitution and the in-between. These sweet children of his, whom he has been tugging at my heart to help. These are the people I am seeing. Though my eyes have not met theirs or seen the depths of their wounds, my heart has been breaking for them, too. Some of these women were in foster care, and have ended up on the streets. High statistics like 60% of women who were in the system end up in trafficking and the like.

It is with opened eyes and opened hearts that we are called to help. To be the Good Samaritan.

God has been leading us, ever so out of right field, to start a creative business that supports women coming out of trafficking and sharing the love of Jesus with them. We are still praying and working on what this will look like and we would love your prayers, too.

Here's to things that make you cry and meeting goals. 

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This is part of a 365 day blogging series through Savor by Shauna Niequist. If you would like to blog along, whether daily or weekly, I would love to have you for the journey; be sure to link back to the post. And if you are not a blogger, you can join along, too. Just leave your response and answers in the comments.

Whether you're headed to your own wedding or to a neighborhood BBQ, coffee with a friend. or dinner with your family, the most important thing to bring is a present heart. (Savor by Shauna Niequist)

When Penny turned two, we requested no presents from her party goers, unless they would like to donate to a local children's home. The invitation noting that their presence was the best present; a statement a friend had included on an invite a few years before that really spoke to me.

We were thankful for the superfluous amount of love and presents she received for her first party the year before but it was the people who made it and we wanted to focus on this as her second year cultivated.

It was the friends, new and old coming to celebrate our first year of parenthood and her birthday. It was the memory of the wind threatening to blow the entire party away, complete with the cupcakes and pop up shade. It was family driving nearly two hours just to be there, one of them being my grandma who rarely can make the drive these days. It was her laughter and excitement as Penny opened her gifts and played with the boxes. It was her full presence and laughter and joy bursting forth that made the day extra special.

It was my in laws flying in from out of state just to celebrate. It was their help with all the transporting of decorations and food from our small apartment to the park in hopes that the cupcakes would not fall and that the sandwiches would stay together and that the food would arrive in the same condition we had packaged them.

It was the time Senia spent making and decorating the pink heart cookie favors. In true Senia fashion, she had stayed up past midnight to finish them, as she had been working. Her art abilities have beautifully overflowed in to her baking and she arrived at the party with the prettiest heart cookies, full of detail, which we packaged right there, my mother in law helping to fill the bags.

Being present is showing up. It is support and listening and the physical body just being. It is clearing our mind to truly hear hearts and taking them for what they are. It is showing up with no other agenda than to be there.

With so many variables pulling in different directions, being fully present is truly a gift, far beyond anything we can give. When our last breath inhales, it is not the things that people will miss but the person who passed. Some trinkets and such may last as reminders but it is the memories of time and presence spent together that span the divide and fill our hearts until we meet again.

Here's to being fully present.

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This is part of a 365 day blogging series through Savor by Shauna Niequist. If you would like to blog along, whether daily or weekly, I would love to have you for the journey; be sure to link back to the post. And if you are not a blogger, you can join along, too. Just leave your response and answers in the comments.

My husband introduced me to Shauna Niequist several years ago. He had come across Cold Tangerines as a recommendation from several friends and wanted to see what all the raving was about it. We checked it out from the library because that is how our usual reading material goes and started reading it together. And surprising myself, I loved it.

Her writing style instantly became one of my  favorites. Her use of life and learning and description and word choice were perfect and for that, the reading was quite simply delightful. Like the walking in the clouds kind of delightful - that sparks memories and inspires. 

After reading it, we moved on to other books and studies and never looked for any other pieces by her.

Until April.

On our two and a half hour, childless drive to Redding in celebration of my birthday, we searched for a book to listen to and stumbled over her other books. We chose Bittersweet and listened, as miles ticked by and blue skies met the mountains, leaving the valley behind.

And I remembered just how much I loved the way she birthed stories out of her words and breathed life and redemption in to the hard seasons for all to hear.

I searched our local library for other works and came across her devotional, Savor, which takes parts of her books and turns them in to snippets to ponder and think on, along with a question or two. One devotional for each day of the year.

So, loving her rhythm of life that is stitched in to each page, I thought it would be fun and a bit crazy, to blog through Savor. Sharing a post (hopefully) daily, with grace days laced in between I'm sure, that corresponds to each day of the devotional, answering her prompts and questions.

I told the idea to Ricardo, to which he immediately checked Amazon for the devotional because the library only lends a book for so long and it just happened to be half off. It arrived in the mail as an early mother's day present and my biggest writing challenge. I have struggled with writing consistently and have a tendency to get clammy hands and for my mind to go blank when given a prompt, so it is a stretch.

I sat with the book the following morning next to my bible, questioning if I should try this. It is a big commitment to write every day and to share it openly. Possibly a little more than I can chew. But it sat there. Already purchased. A commitment in itself. After more prayer and over analyzing the whole thing, God urged me forward. He would provide the words, just as he provides for the birds of the air.

I cannot clearly see what this will look like, as the questions are scattered with life and God and all the things in between and I have not read them all because that would be cheating (right?!), so here's an adventure in writing through Savor. It will probably be messy and random and hopefully laced with smiles and laughter and honesty, from my heart to yours.

So, starting June 1st, the adventure will commence. 

If you would like to blog along, whether daily or weekly, I would love to have you for the journey; be sure to link back to the post. And if you are not a blogger, you can join along, too. Just leave your response and answers in the comments.

Here's to savoring the year.

Our final craft last year for Pocket Blessings was putting together smash books. It was my first time making one and decided to theme mine for mamahood and finding the joy in the daily. I searched and gathered and printed little quotes that were encouraging to me and smashed them together with pretty papers and stickers and the like. I ended up miss punching the holes to bind it together, never fully finishing it and tucking it nearly in to my craft cabinet.

I loved the thought of it and idea behind it and combining it with the concept of savoring joy moments by writing them down, enabling them to last longer. This lead me to creating sheets and templates and layouts. An easy print out of all the inspiration and quotes in one place, not so smashed together. A little more organized and a little more cohesive, which I find I am loving these days. Along with the inspiration, there are places to write down moments from the day that you enjoyed and a landing spot for you to look for the joy throughout the day when there seems none to be had.

It is a place to carefully look at life and what captures your heart and births thankfulness, despite the difficult or monotony of the day. Because life is about these moments. It is about breathing and laughing and finding the joy, no matter how hard or easy. It is about being fully present and feeling and thanking God for it all when it does not always make sense and choosing joy.

The notebook is a place to hold this season of life, the moments that make up your life from the grandiose to the minute. There are places for pictures and writing and washi tape and whatever else floats your boat. You can number them or date them. The ideas are limitless.

For Pocket Blessings this past month, we put together these little notebooks, so I thought I would share them with other mamas out there. Here's a little how to, if you are curious and looking for direction. 

The details:

To make the cover:

We cut cereal boxes and cover board down to 8.5" x 5.5" using a rotary cutter. Chipboard or old books would work great, too.

We covered them with paper and fabric. I personally loved the paper covers, they were a little easier to cover. A 12" x 12" paper can cover both the front and back, when cut in half. I left the insides uncovered but they can be covered, too.

Punch holes with a crop a dile. Depending on your thickness, you could use a hole punch but it will not have the fun and durable eyelets to finish it off, like so. 

Inside:

There are a total of 28 different pages to print, which works best if you print on both sides.

Pages can be inserted in any order and reprinted to change the order of the pages.

Cut pages in half and hole punch. Be sure to punch holes at the same measurement as the cover.

Add rings and it is finished and ready to be decorated. 

Create one for yourself and one for a friend. They make a perfect gift for a new mom or an experienced one. If you make one, be sure to share your awesomeness via #findthejoytoday. 

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