33...and beyond

Today is Halloween. Let me just take a moment to share some auntie pride for a second and show you a picture of my cute little niece and nephew in their costumes. I'm dying. The cuteness is too much to even take in. The reason that I am so overwhelmed is not simply because they are so cute (I mean thats just obvious.) The thing that I find so precious is the reasoning behind both costumes. Let me just take a moment to introduce you to these little peanuts. They are my brother's children (and my lovely sister in law of course) Daniel and Gracelyn. Danny the little stud there on the left is five years old. He is nothing if not a character. Last spring at preschool they did a study that I believe was about sharks. From this point on Daniel has become genuinely obsessed with sea creatures.  I mean, we took him to the Shedd Aquarium this year and he didn't even want to stop for gas or to use the bathroom because he was THAT excited to get there. 

I'm going to come right out and say it. Today...I am grateful for failure. The past few days I have not been feeling that well. Beyond just the physical, I have been struggling with some emotions as well. When I get to this place I know that I have to lean into the Lord because I know my tendency to 'shut down." Once I shut down it is hard to pull myself back out of the tailspin. I don't want to do anything, frankly going for a run would be the LAST thing in the world I would want to do. I want to eat foods that are convenient and comforting, which of course are seldom good food choices. Have you ever seen a video from "The Tonight Show" of Jimmy Fallon and one of his guests playing "Slapjack"? It's a game where both contestant wear a GIANT hand and whoever wins the round of blackjack they are playing gets to SLAP the other with the giant hand. This hand is so big it is not abnormal for the contestant getting hit to fall right off their

As long as I can remember, my body has done this odd thing. When I am on the verge or getting sick or even of getting period (sorry if that's TMI), I have gotten a weird ache in my legs. It happens in my calves and I have no clue why it happens. I have affectionately named the phenomenon, the achey legs. It is a familiar pain whenever it comes. I bringing this up because for the past few days I have been struggling with my "achey legs." I don't know why but once again here they are. I can't pretend like this is making my whole "seven goals a day" thing easy, particularly when it comes to the goal of running. As I lay in my bed, miserable and sore with this pain, paired with some exhaustion, it is 8:00pm. It's pitch black outside already and after running around all day I have not been able to muster up the energy to complete my one mile minimum run for the day. Oh I still plan to do it. In fact when I close this laptop I will lace up my

I have often had the thought drift through my head that I don't think people can really truly know me. Not all of me anyway. The reason for this thought is that I cannot help but think, unless a person has seen me in my work environment, there is a massive piece of the Linda puzzle missing from view.  My job...is something else all together.  It is genuinely the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. It is also the most amazing thing I have ever done in my life. I can tell stories. I can write. I can try to paint a picture in your mind of what an average day at the shelter consists of. All of those things, however, would fall flat in giving you a clear idea of this part of my world. As I was working particularly challenging shift the other day, a thought suddenly danced through my head and set me into actual, real deal, out loud laughter. The thought was of a younger Linda. One who NEVER would have imagined her life would be what it is today. One w

My very favorite movie/book series ever is "Anne of Green Gables." If you've never watched it, well, stop your life right now and go and do so...so your life can be complete. Ok, that may be a little overly dramatic but still, its wonderful. Perhaps the reason that I love the character of Anne Shirley so much is because I see myself in her. She too has a bit of a flair for the dramatic. Today as I trudged through my day, nothing particularly awful happened but I was over it. My body was weary and sore and my head was pounding. I woke up this morning feeling like I hadn't even slept at all and I felt a bit like I was chasing my tail all day at work. As the day wore on I couldn't help but think of Anne. In the second movie, which covers Annes young adult years as a teacher, she has a day that absolutely nothing goes right. Anne has a bit of a genius for trouble. Suffice it to say after some public humiliation, chasing a cow through a muddie potato field

Today is exactly 30 days from thanksgiving.  Over the last 30 odd days I have done a lot of personal reflection. I have taken time to consider where I am strong and where I fall short. (Although I am VERY certain much more will be revealed over the next 349 days.) Something that has surfaced over and over is a struggle for contentment in every area of my life. When I talk about contentment the common most minds leap is to my singleness. While I agree that is very important, I am realizing there are many areas that I need to strive to be content. The overarching theme of this is simply finding my contentment in Christ. Yesterday, I wrote about envy. I talked about how I am coming to realize that this has been a butter seed growing in my heart for far too long. The Lord longs to break the bonds of my jealousy by satisfying my desires. I feel like that goes hand and hand with the idea of gratitude. With this in mind I have decided to go on a little journey within this j

In the period of time that I have spent over the last 30 odd days traipsing through a bit of desert with the Israelite people in the Old Testament, something has occurred to me. The Lord describes His power to the reader over and over. The Word talks about His authority over all of creation. He shows Himself to be a generous and a good provider. It says repeatedly that He worked for the people of Israel with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. He reaches out to us. God is mighty. God is holy. God is good. Because all of this is true God deserves our unwavering devotion. In fact, He is jealous for it. He even goes so far, in Exodus 34, as to describe Himself as “the Lord, whose name is jealous…” Jealousy is a strange thing. When I googled the definition of jealous this was the first thing that popped up: jeal·ous ·          feeling or showing envy of someone or their achievements and advantages. ·          feeling or showing suspicion of someone's u

Today is actually a little bit of a milestone for me. Four weeks ago today (Monday, September 26th) was when I started the first broken efforts that were the beginning of this year long journey. Five days after that, I started this blog to meet my "write" goal and the rest is history...just kidding. Even though, when I weighed myself again this morning, the scale showed me numbers that didn't encourage me, I wasn't discouraged either. I may not have dropped massive amounts of weight, but I have learned and gained more than I can even explain and I am only beginning to scratch the surface. Today, as I entered into the second month of this, I knew the Lord was calling me deeper. I sat down last night and made some lists. I formulated plans and scheduled how I could really make this happen and dig in deep. HA. Life has a funny way of ruining our plans. No spreadsheet or list, no calendar or schedule can predict all the things that may come

Yesterday as I was running, a song came on and it really stirred my heart. When I heard it, I knew what I was supposed to write today. I knew that the Lord wanted me to write a prayer for "my" children. That may seem odd because I don't actually, and may never, have children. There are, however, a lot of children that the Lord has placed in my path to love. I sort of had to chuckle to myself this morning as I stumbled around bleary eyed from having my niece and nephew spend the night last night, that this was the thing on my heart to write today. It was a ROUGH night. We had a slumber party in Aunt Linda's big bed and well...now the bedding is in the wash from not one but THREE "incidents." I thought of it again as the blonde curly haired culprit behind two of those instances wouldn't let me go, so I helped lead worship this morning from a stool with her cuddled on my lap. I may not be a "mother" in the truest sense of the word but I

I cannot pretend that, over the next year, I am will not write a lot of things about running. There is a reason the Lord didn't say, "Linda...walk." or "Linda Zumba." Running is something that I spent my entire life until I was 30 hating. I think I mostly just hated it because I thought I couldn't do it. I'll be real. I am not good at it. I'll never win a race. I saw a shirt today that I probably need to own. It said, "I run slower than the internet in the 90's...but I run." Word. Jesus didn't as me to run fast. He didn't ask me to win races. He asked me to run. The reason He asked me to run is the same reason, I'm afraid to tell you, that there WILL be some running posts in this blog. There are very few times in my life that I hear the Lord speak to me as clearly as He does when I am running. I know that the reason is because running is something very far outside of my comfort zone and the Lord loves to u

This summer, before I made the choice to defer my marathon run to next fall, I was working very hard. I was eating very healthy and running LONG miles everyday. One day I decided the time had come to pop on the scale and check out my progress.  ....it broke me.   It told me that I had gained weight. I literally went into a tailspin after this. I couldn't pull myself back together. I laid in bed sobbing half that morning. Later that day, I tried to  go out for a "long run." I had planned to go ten miles but, at about four, I broke down on the side of the road sobbing again. I had to call my mom to come and get me. Like I said, I was broken. Just yesterday, one of my sweet fitness buddies sent our crew a selfie of her sitting on the floor dejectedly. She had just weighed herself. I had some rather "choice" words to say about the scale and how it measures our success. That was great, when I was saying those things to her. This mor

I want to sort of add a PS to the post my friends helped me write last night. One of the things that was so incredibly beautiful about that post was the fact that we took some time to build each other up. We wrote words that the others needed desperately to hear. They were words of life, hope and encouragement. They were words that we should probably say to one another more and words that each of us find hard to believe. As I worked today and watched my clients interact with each other, my mind drifted back to those words. There were two things that jumped out to me as I pondered this. The first is this :  We HAVE to stop assuming we know what is really going on with people. Something that I find myself doing a lot at my job is assuming the role of peacemaker. Whether I am jumping in between two people fighting, or listening to a client pour out how much another client or even staff hate them. It may be sitting two clients down to hear both sides of the story or salming some

As a woman, I struggle with my identity. I cannot seem to quiet the sound of the enemies voice as he spews all kinds of awful things at me about who I am, how I look, my relationship with the Lord and so many other things. I work with women who struggle with this for my job. My deepest passion in this line of work is to speak truth to them so they can start to believe something different about themselves. Many of them pretend to be so strong and confident but they are angry and wounded. They show this by giving themselves in ways not worthy of the priceless value they have in the Lords eyes. A question I constantly ask myself is how can I convince others of their value when I can't seem to believe in mine? I saw this quote this week and it cut me to the quick. When do we stop believing in our value? As I eased into this journey, I shared my plans with a three very close people in my life. Across the board they could all relate with this journey in some way. Each one d