Emotional Wellness

Whether you naturally seek out routines or find them hard to implement, they are essential to finding an emotional balance in your day to day.

Watching our almost two-month-old daughter fall into her own cycle (gently guided by us) of awake, eat, sleep has reminded me of how that balance keeps us thriving.  I see a huge difference in her day if part of that routine has been disrupted.  One minute she is a happy, contented baby girl and the next she can be wailing with the disruption to her 'natural' rhythm. 

What's your rhythm?

Having a routine for yourself be it just a morning or an evening ritual will impart a sense of understanding and security into your emotional wellbeing.

My husband and I, since pregnancy have routinely taken a shower or bath together every night.  It accidentally, but enjoyably, become a routine that has created an emotional intimacy and relational wellness between us.

Routines do not have to be related to chores or to do lists.  Routines can be the simple things in life we do to create a peaceful lifestyle.

What kind of routines/rhythms do you have?  Are you capable of finding the things you need to create a balance emotionally?

Physical Wellness

I've had to change the way I've been eating.  It was of my own decision.  I birthed a child and wanted to equip my body to breastfeed and begin shedding the weight I needed to sustain her properly.  There has never been this much fresh food in our fridge or on our table.  

Over the past six weeks I have watched the changes in my body.  The weight dropping off and the energy surging through my veins.  

Fresh food.

It's the fresh that keeps us going.  

It takes real effort to be 'fresh'.  It costs more and it takes a lot more effort to prepare.  The benefits?  Priceless.  

An investment in yourself that will keep on giving. 

What's on your plate?  What fresh foods do you love?  Have you given your body the nourishment it needs?

Spiritual Wellness:

I was arrested here.  Brought back to and aligned with the spiritual side of me.  

We all have it.  A side that yearns for the part of this world that is all things abundance, growth, wonder and beauty.  Here in this moment by these stone steps: 

Captivated.

Captivation is the key to awakening your spiritual wellness.  What captivates you?  What arrests you in a moment and makes you pause?  Can you remember the last time you were captivated and felt that stirring.  That yearning that this world has more for you than the mundane?

The Creator wants to give you more, to captivate you by the beauty of this life that you breathe.  Yet it is so easy to miss, amidst the notions and commotions of the day to day.  

Open your eyes today, this week, this month.  Keep ready for a moment that captivates you, and sink into it.  Sink deep into the waters of your spirit.  Listen to it.  What is the whisper that tries so hard to cry out?

In all aspects of our lives we have the opportunities to collect moments of heaven and moments of hurt. 

We can gather wounds that we don't even notice until the bruise begins to grow and the welt begins to show.  It's just the way it is with life.  It's not that we try to be wounded soldiers with our pasts lurking like shadows, it's just that we are alive and real, and real means that we expierence the light with the dark.

If we can admit we are wounded in different places than why can't we find a way to look at them and reflect on them?  Not to dwell or soak in them like they are wine to drink but to take them into our eyeline instead of our blindspot.

The thing about wounds is they often seep out on others when we can't even see it.

So I am calling out: for this day of wellness to find your hurts.

Those relationships that damaged you, or are festering with negative thoughts.  Write out their names.  Identify why you feel that wound and let it be a meditation of healing as you go about your day.   Don't dwell in the bad, but dwell in the healing process.  How can healing begin?  Is the hurt something that you can work through yourself? Is the hurt a hurt that should be addressed?

Only you and the life-giver, the One who heals all hearts can tell you what to do with a hurt.

But ultimately, we are called to give our hurts and wounds over and let the power of love and grace to reside.  

Finding the hurts isn't a scavenger hunt for mud, but a search for that which will bring healing.

So list it.

Make a list.

EXAMPLE

HURTS

1. Being misunderstood by John Smith (planning the performance)
2. Feeling left behind (friends succeeding past me)
3. Realizing I wasn't encouraged as a child (sports, etc)

Once you've listed it.  Find the freedom in identifying the bruises you carry.

NOTE:

THEY ARE NOT bragging rights! THEY ARE NOT medals to live for. 

They are worth healing from.

Healing comes when we've given them up.  Given them over.

Giving our hurts over to a higher power allows us to be free from the weight the ugliness of their colour and the pain.  

It's a process.

Don't rush it.

Just start it.

We've created lists of 'friendships' on our phones, our Facebook, our instagram, our twitter.  We have connections like a spider web.  We weave in and out of each others lives and leave our silky wet trail behind us.  All our thoughts and parts of us we have shared are left behind.  We leave them like a lost and forgotten string of 'self'.

We have family and friends all combined in the 'acquaintances' and when we pass them by do we ever think to ask them about how they are truly doing before we jump into our 'self'?  Do we stop our endless string of 'show' before we sit and listen?

There are seasons of times when we are socializing and doing the 'out there' thing, and then there are seasons that stop us from this 'connecting' type life and then what?  We let social media do the talking and we expect the blanks to be filled in with all the fluff we throw around like it's normal to share fluff and not substance. 

Why do we let this 'insecurity' stop us from connecting to those we love most?  We do we retreat when we most really need to press in?

Reasons reasons... so many reasons.  We throw them out there and we struggle to be real in a façade world.

I'll tell you what I want you to hear and not whats in my heart.

I'll show you the best moments and not the worst.  

But show it all.

Tell it all.

Because wounded hearts bleed together best and those broken spirits need to walk amongst the trash in order to see the beauty.

This must be a plea that I feel arise in my heart.

I crave that real family.  That real broken family that walks on each others toes and finds words for the pain and can bleed together instead of apart. 

I crave that real friendship that tells it like it is and isn't afraid of being seen scared or hurt.  

I crave that real swinging front door that stays unlocked and shows a home of music, laughter, food and communing.

Communing with each other because social media was turned off and our hearts were turned on. 

Welcoming a newborn into our lives has been a magical and wonderful experience.  I say wonderful in the purest form of the word.  Wonder has caught us both as we watch this life exalt her lungs to the world, her eyes shut in pure rest, chest moving up and down with sleeping grunts, and hands gripping the sides of my breasts as she takes nutrience in deep gulps.  

Her eyes open and 'wonder' has been a word used when they gaze into the bigness of them.  She exudes this calm wonder when she takes it all in and how could we not be moved?

A Daddy calmly and patiently  deals with her cries and a momma works hard to keep this wellness going,  

Daddy sings the blues as he makes a dinner with his daughter in pouch and she'll quiet for him because he's the best one and she knows it.

Momma greets the day on a yoga mat nurturing a body that gave for ten months.

The two are a team and havn't found that the solo has ever worked for them, so they have teamed up and created space for these changes.

Created the space to live in wonder.   

They havn't rushed this and wouldn't dare.  They've seen what rushing the changes have done to their spirits.  They have been rash, wreckless and thoughtless in the past changes and now?  Now they have learned that settling in wonder together is better, bonding and beautiful.

It may seem irrelevant this baby thing to your life story, but the wonder stays true.

When you deal with the new, you're dealing with the core of who you are and that deserves wonder.

Living in wonder means you are taking the time to breathe in the moment of the day and not rushing the discoveries.  You embrace the moments as they come and you are not worried about what others may think of your journey.

Your journey is unique and when you live in the wonder moments, you are living well, full and free.

There is nothing like giving birth that brings one to a whole new level of awareness of life.  Life is a treasured and powerful force.  It comes on strong and it doesn't let up until it has completed it's story.   With every contraction my body took over the span of 12 hours, I was intrinsically aware of how powerful the journey I was on is.  The words that spun around in my mind as I breathed and focused were many, but among them the phrase 

"These are the precious moments our lives are made of."  A simple phrase I stumbled upon while watching weekly pregnancy videos and how true they are. 

The journey of life is precious and there are times where we submit to the force of it all and sink into each wave as it comes, and then, there are times we rest.  We rest in the pure and sweet shallow waters of a resting pool.

Recovering from anything is when we need to be retreating into those shallow waters.  The quiet and safe places we find in the everyday.   Those places are an individualisitic expierence and what heals one, may not heal another.

Learn your places.  The quiet places of rest.  A library, a field, a bedroom, a skating rink, a dance floor, a beach...

For me?  The ocean and it's off shore breeze.  My home and it's small peaceful rooms.  My bed at night with it's cool sheets and a husband who holds me close.  My yoga mat and it's welcoming colours as I stretch tired limbs.  

No matter the places, the whys or the hows, recovery isn't a process overnight.  Recovery is a journey and we can't rush it.

When a spirit needs rest and space, we must nurture that and protect that.  We must be the guardians of a spirits' need to recalibrate and reset.  Because the push and pull of this world will never heal, but tear.  But the peaceful rest of a spirit lead recovery will stitch up the wounds of the broken.

I have emerged from a week of guarded rest after childbirth and have bonded deeply with a husband and a daughter.  We have gathered precious moments that were not rushed but expierenced deeply.  Sleepless nights have been had, and tired lungs have wailed but the space we created around us has developed into a passionate love affair and a healing environment for our spirits. We are bonded closer, tighter and deeper.  This is the journey aspire to.  

Let us emerge slowly and gradually from our recovery as a chyrsalids process and watch us flourish as we spread our wings.

Recovery.

A process.

It's a waiting game.

Waiting for a new life to arrive.

The questions are endless.

"When?"

"Is she here yet?"

"How are you feeling?"

"Have you thought about intervention methods yet?"

"Any sign of labour?"

All of these questions are a distraction.

A distraction of the real story.

The real story: is the life that was created for the exact time and moment it arrives.  The real story isn't in the mamas control, it is in hands that are bigger and stronger than hers.  The real story is a story about relinquishing the right of control.  It is the lesson of mama hood.  Given a gift to carry and entrusted to care for, yet in no way is this gift in the mamas full control.  

And words of the Bethel  Music Song Shepherd "In the process, in the waiting...Your making melodies over me." has become an anthem as the days tick by and the questions build.

So I turn off from the questions and I am resting in the process.

And shouldn't we all do that?

Shouldn't we attempt this present life of the moment we are in? 

When we attempt wellness we need to attempt the deep breathing of bringing our real life forward.

Deep breaths like a birthing mama, and deep breaths like we inhale after coming up from the deep water. 

In the process I am reaching to rest in the presence of what is bigger than me. 

Here's the thing.

Words do matter.

We throw them around here and there and although we think our words are our own, they have life past our mouths.

I caught myself just yesterday throwing words around to the best friend, trying to describe thoughts that I was carrying.  All my opinions and concepts being formulated as I spoke and I cringed.

I cringed because I heard the words fly out and have a life past me that encouraged criticism.

I despise criticism.

I think of myself as highly aware of critical language that destroys life.  I pride myself in the awareness of the toxic words that fly around.  I see myself as a Katniss in the word world.  Bow and arrow in hand, ready to shoot at whatever is fake, unreal and untruthful. 

And there I was supposing that just because I wanted to "express myself" that I had a right to spout words out into the air that could cut like a knife.

I did check myself.

I did backtrack, but I also walked away from that conversation with a sense of disappointment over my lack of sensitivity.

So I am calling myself out today.

Wellness is about words too. 

And I want you to be well.

I want to be well alongside you.

I want to see us thrive and yes, I want to be truthful and call out the dark bits that we allow to walk in-between us, and I want to do that with a grace that catches our breath and makes us want to stand together.

I want to stand with you.  With words that matter. 

My city and province, Halifax, Nova Scotia is expierencing a cultural and well-being attack  seemingly overnight.

I need not go into all the political details and drama as a quick google study would inform anyone of what Halifax is up against this season with a new budget being proposed without the input of it's dwellers and industry leaders. 

Ultimately it all means that Nova Scotia's rise to be a place where people would want to stay and be inspired by is being cut.  We were never a province that one stays for the 'money'.  

 

No, we stay for the lifestyle.

Yeah, that East Coast Lifestyle company that came out of the roots of this city with a vision that has become world renown.  Their creativity and ingenuity started here.

So this Lifestyle that speaks of ocean spray, anchors dropped, salt air-in-lungs, music heavy and all those bodies yelling and screaming praise to the sky as they embrace every wave that comes their way, it is worth it to protect.

The life we've been working so hard to shake is that 'defeatist maritimer'.  The 'too much snow', 'too much rain' , 'not enough stores' , 'nothing to do' , 'if you want money, go out west' , 'we loose them all to B.C.'  

Thats a tired Lifestyle.  It's old.  It's aging.  We've had enough!

Those of us who have stayed here have seen a culture arise out of the defeatist ground and we celebrate every spring when the creatives and artists come out of there work spaces and spread their work.  Spread our stories for the world to see.

 I am one of them.

I didn't believe I lived in a city where I could be anything but 'boring', and then a maritime actor told me to submit a play in "The Atlantic Fringe Festival".  A festival that film and stage workers alike make possible.  It was there, after all the support my small group of friends and fellow creatives, that I began to believe my city offered me more than just a dead end dream.

Now, nine months pregnant, I am still figuring this 'Creative Life' out, but I wouldn't want to do it anywheres but this East Coast Lifestyle place where the salt air fills my lungs and the coffee shops are littered with aspiring writers, bloggers, actors, film makers and doers.  

I am over this Maritime Defeatist Life.

We are more than this Halifax, Nova Scotia.

We are worth more than just a cut in our growth. 

We deserve the time to sit at a table and pass 'grace' along to our city and it's members and discuss this with more than just a nod of 'goodbye'.  

Stand up and don't accept the 'too small' City concept.  Nova Scotia has what it takes, we know this, we have seen this and we won't accept anything more than the best for our now, and our future. 

Wellness isn't just a concept to aspire to.  Wellness is a way of life to step into.

Wellness is a daily challenge.  

A dare.

It dares you to take aspects of your life:

• Mental
• Physical
• Spiritual
• Relational 
• Financial

And give them a good shake up.  To embrace them as part of you in a way that offers respect to the life you are called to live.

We need to honour our minds, bodies, spirits, relationships and our means to live.  We need to cultivate and grow them.

It's Spring and the rains that fall on the ground are nurturing the growth that is coming.  We should all be nurturing growth in our lives.

So I am taking this Wellness Dare.

Thirty-Eight weeks pregnant, I am honouring the body and life I have been given and will strive to respect and nurture these things. 

Asking myself:

How can I challenge growth in my life and mind?

What are health and wellness lifestyle choices I can improve?

What does my spirit need and crave?

What relationships need work?

How can I work towards a financial goal?

Only you can ask yourself and answer the questions surrounding wellness, but when you do, you'll find you will be inspired to embrace this slow oncoming Spring with a new energy. 

Will you join me? 

It's the time of year for Spring Cleaning.  For clearing the cobwebs of your life and space and making room for the new and the fresh.

Those of us who find this a fun and inspiring task are already on the journey of renewing ourselves and our spaces yet again.

There are also those who don't enjoy this.  Who find 'renewing', 'renaming', or 'rebirthing' a very uncomfortable, scary task.

Both are valid.

We need those of us who have no problem moving forward into 'the new'.

And

We need those of us who prefer to rest in the known of before.

That is how we appreciate the balance.

There is balance when we make room in our lives for new things.

There is balance when we take the time to consider a new journey, decision, next step.

And although we may be scared to put a label on a 'next step', sometimes that is exactly what we need to do in order to progress more in our life.

Life is ever moving and changing.  We cannot expect to stay in the same place with the same people.  We either progress in our relationships, and work.  Or.  We don't.

We have to make room for life in our life.  Eventually, you and I have to put a foot in front of another and go.  Somewhere.  Anywhere.

For me, I am making room for a baby.  I am on the countdown to her birthday and daily going through the things that we accumulate that do not represent, or welcome her into our lives.  We have to make room for this new life and that means that we stop and assess what we value.  We make decisions based on moving forward to bring her in.

It's a natural thing.

This making room for more.

The more room you make,

The more life can happen.

So make room.

Here on the East Coast, it is white.

Like a new duvet cover our world has been blanketed.  Not just once, but over and over again.

For some, this is suffocating.  To be layered upon layered with white.

For me?  This is miraculous.  

No matter how many negative posts come out about our weather I am still smiling with my wilted tulips that I just had to say goodbye to.  Because Spring WILL come.  It does every year, and no matter how much weather we get in any season, there will be complaining.

It's too muggy.

It's too hot.

It's too cold.

It's too rainy.

It's too slushy.

It's too....

The city of Halifax has miraculously avoided many tragedies in the past few months.  One specifically in a public place which could have been devastating.  

Think of that.

Think of our soldiers away in hot countries who would give anything to be back in their snowed in homes, with their spouses and children.  Shovels instead of weapons. 

Think of the farmers whose land is getting the most rejuvenating moist giving season this year.  That we might actually profit from the lands white on white covering.

Think.

I hope the snow continues for as long as it needs to.  Because white on white might actually be what our land needs.  Because weather comes and weather goes and what is left is still you.

You are still the same person with or without the white.  If you are anxious for Spring, you will still be anxious when it arrives.  Because once Spring weather is here and all the rain douses our land, and the frost covers our tulips during a flash freeze, we'll be complaining then too.  

What is our problem that we can be in one of the most beautiful places on earth with all it's entitlements and still find reasons to be discontent?

I'll let winter sing a bit longer so I can learn patience, joy and rest in all this white it has layered on me.  

Sometimes life is in those quiet moments.

You know,

Those real live moments that are quiet.  

The nothing but ticking of the clock.

The twitch of a cats tail.

The feeling of a baby inside a tummy stretching for more room.

The blinking of a cursor on screen as thoughts scattered try to come together.

...

I don't want to be so busy that I miss those moments.

And often we are in the quiet moments when we least expect it.

Leave room for the quiet moments.  The moments that take us by surprise and make us pause.  Pause further.  Press into the silence.  There is something there worth finding.  Something there worth trusting.  May it rest on us and may we not be too scared to accept it as settles.

.....

We like labels.  They tell us exactly what something is or isn't.  They categorize, organize and set into place what we yearn to define.

We are born into this process.  We are given a name, and from there everything else follows.  We lean slightly one way towards what is so often called "The Right Brain"  (Which is a complete myth of a concept) and we are labeled 'Artistic/Creative'.  We lean in the opposite way and suddenly we are all "Logic".  

These labels that the our systems, cultures, and norms set up as a whole, only teach over time limitations instead of freedoms.  

Because when we are told something enough, we will believe it.

In my High School Grade 11 year I was picking out courses with my guidance counsellor and expressed a desire to take the next Biology class the following year.  I enjoyed the one I had taken, and wanted to take another one.  I liked the material and it interested me. 

The response?

"You can't take that. You are not good at it.  It won't look good on a transcript."  

That was that, I was dismissed as not good at Biology therefor I had no business being in a class that would teach me about it.

Implied Label: Not smart in the sciences.

I accepted it.  I never took a science course again.

Labels.

"Why don't you ever use a nickname for me?  You've never given me a pet name!"  I whined at the man I had married years before and known for even longer still. 

"I don't know...it's not easy for me.  You have always been 'Amy' to me."  He spoke into the quiet of our darkened bedroom. 

"Just Amy."  I huffed holding a cat tail with my left hand and feeling the rumble of her purr through it. 

"Not, just.  Amy is enough, you are enough as you are.  You don't need any other way to describe you, because Amy says it all."

The cat purred louder and I let go of her tail turning towards him.

"Amy?"  I questioned not fully grasping how my three letter name could say anything more than a popular name trend.

"Amy."  He pulled me in and I heard his breathing get heavier.

He wasn't trying to label me. 

Why was I?

Because I wanted a label.  

"Tell me what I am."  I had so often asked my family, friends, teachers, online tests, bosses, colleagues ... 

I am this.

I am that.

We need to be anything but these labels.

We need to flourish without a definition. 

Because we are enough.

We were made to be exactly who we are.  Contradictions and Consistencies all wrapped up into one person.  

Never label yourself as anything, because labels limit you.

And you are anything but a label!

Embracing change is a habit that is hard to wear.  We like our routines, our rituals and our safe places and we keep them like religious practices. 

What is normal and comfortable to us, is how we so often define our being, as a person.

I was slammed with this at an early age.  Twenty years old and I already had professors calling me out.

"This is how I am."  I would say.  Knowing and able to explain all the reasons why I am the way I am.

"That is a selfish answer and you won't pass this program if you keep acting like you can't move past these things."  Was her response.  She was a hard core woman who knew I had a long way to go before I could graduate with this title 'Interpreter'.

I didn't know it then, but I know it now.

She wasn't accepting my 'fear' as a right for me to stay the same.

Because anyone who says "I just have to say this,"  "This is just the way I am," , "Its the only way I know how to be."  Those are the responses of a life kept in fear.

Because fear holds us back from seeing past our limitations.

Trust me.

Fear doesn't want you to win.

Fear doesn't want you to see another way of being, saying, acting or showing.  Because it likes you the way you are.  No change, no growth, no perspective.

Change comes around the corner and your reaction is all you have.  You can't stop change but you react to it and it's either you reacting with your fear or your ability to see past fear.

Fear is the root of almost every negative reaction.  

That little nugget of truth right there should be on blast the next time you respond, explain or require a reaction from another.

Fear is the underlying theif that likes to sneak in and take your freedom away.  It tells you to rely on your crutches and your insecurities and it tells you that you will always, without fail, be the way you are.

But we weren't made to be enslaved to 'the same'.  We weren't made to be frozen in our tracks.  We were given more than that from the day we were conceived and it's time that we accepted the ability to move past ourselves.

We need to change like we are fearless.

We need to grasp renewal of the mind daily.

Like a watch you put on to remind you of the time.

Put on a watch that ticks fearlessness instead of minutes.

We were made for more than fear.

So go and get your fearlessness and jump into change like it's a pool of tropical water that was waiting just for you.

What if social media was more than just a representation of what we wanted people to see?  What if we actually expressed our true selves and then sent each other full grace and full love in return?

What if there was a "Giving Love" button?

What if there was a "Sending Grace" button?

What if there was a "Forgiveness" button?

What if there was a button you clicked that hovered over every text, photo, video and emoji that was called "Transparency" and when you clicked it, you actually saw what was underneath all those words, that face, that moment, those sounds, that icon?  

Life has a timeline and we forget this in our very caught-up-with-our-phones type-of-world.  The instant connection has a way of messing up our sense of forwardness.  We either are thinking about now, or scrolling back through the images and posts of 'before'.  

That 'before' has a way of skewing our identity and making us believe that there is always another person with a better post, another picture from our past that says it better, another tweet to retweet and another pin to find that may D.I.Y. us into a better place. 

Someone is always going to be out there, sitting on their own experiences and ready to tell you what you have to brace yourself for.  They are ready to tell you the worst of their timeline because that's what is easier to do now.  We live in a 'high lights' world where the only moments that we allow ourselves to dwell on are the ones with enough reposts, likes, thumbs up or hearts. What about the other moments?  The ones that went unnoticed, untagged, unhearted, unpinned and unsaid?

Remember those days?

That time you did something and never tweeted it out, because it was too shameful?

That time that quote was posted on his wall that meant everything to you and nothing to anyone else, yet liking it wasn't an option you had?

That time that a picture was deleted off of Facebook because the memories hurt too bad?

That time someone made that quick comment beside you and you felt your heart lurch to the ground with despair?

The time you stopped uploading because the uploads were fake and you knew it?

Remember those days?

Those are the moments in our history that speak for the forward motion of how dates and days actually work.  They are all inclusive and don't hide, don't lie and don't pretend to be naive to the present, the past or the future.

If social media was turned upside down, we might actually see something worth sharing, worth reposting, worth responding to.  It might actually be a representation of realness and wholeness.  

Because you can't get wholeness in your life unless you get real first.  And real isn't hiding the trauma, the depression, the anger, the desperateness that lives on the inside of the posts.  

Real is exposing it.

Real is pressing a button under it that says:
"Sending Grace"   "Sending Love" , Sending "Mercy".

Because if I am honest, I am no more or less closer to the place you are in, than you are.  

That's the reality.

That's real.

We are all but one step away from wreckage.  One step away from destroying our lives.  

And social media has a way of allowing us to hide from this truth.  What if we just turned it upside down and shook things up a bit?

Could you handle it?

It isn't that we should lay down and be doormats to the loving process.  It isn't that we should take our beating hearts and throw it across a field like a football and expect it to be caught.  And it isn't that we should take our good intentions and heartfelt words and expect the wind to take them where they should go.

It isn't that.

It is something else.

We love wrong all the time.

It's not that we wanted to.  Not that we planned to.  It happened the way loving wrong does.  It slips out of our hands and we don't notice until someone else finds and shows it.  Sometimes, we stay in all that denial.  It couldn't be our love that was left there, we wouldn't do that.  We aren't that kind of wrong loving type of person.

It doesn't change the truth.

You left love where it didn't belong.

How do we recover from all that wrong loving?

Wrong loving is only healed by right loving.

Loving the brokenness.

Loving the healing.

Loving the way God has to piece back together all the broken pieces of our mistaken places.

Do we deny the real?

No.  Because wrong loving is as real as right loving.

Never accept the words "but it wasn't real."

It was.

And you bled that real on the floor and that ain't blood stained denial.

That's blood stained reality.

I hear too much of the doubts of a recovery process.  It's bleak, they did too much.  They are broken too bad.  I can't look at them this way.

WAKE UP!

LOOK AT THEM.

LOOK AT YOU.

Look at that brokenness straight in the face and don't break eye contact.  That is beauty, that is love, and that is real.  You can't deny that real, once we give it a good acknowledgment, because the more you look, the more you see yourself reflected in their eyes.  

We are all just as broken in different ways and Loving it Out, means to stop the judging, stop the criticizing and start the loving.

Love them for their mistakes, love them for their darkness and you will find that as you love your soul heals faster and changes in a way that makes your movements in life like a dance.

And we dance in right love because thats what dance does, it dances in the light of glory and grace.

Loving the Right means Loving the Wrong.

There isn't enough time spent on the ways in which we need to rest.  Need to heal.  

We are walking hearts who experience any manner of things in the run of a day.  It's not to say that we can't handle it, but it is to say, that we play possum to the amounts of blows we take.  We keep on going without a deep moment to process. 

And sometimes life happens and we get blown out of our reverie and healing is but the only thing we have left. It's painful.  

There is a process and a waiting for healing that doesn't seem to make sense to our instant-living type of lives.  The process of healing a broken heart can, in the midst of it all, be the most torteourus recovery.  The process of healing our bodies can be, in the midst of it all, an intricate complex journey.  

Yet there is a process that needs to occur for the healing to take place.   

We need to break first.  In order for us to recover, we need to submit our bodies, our spirits and our hearts to being broken and that is often the side of ourselves that we hate to see.  That we are fragile and capable of falling to pieces.  It's humbling, scary and almost unbelievable.  

But thats the truth of it.

We break.

We break, because we were made to reach for healing not just once in a while, but everyday.  We are everyday broken and everyday need to grasp for the healing we need.

This may be hard to swallow because it seems like an ode to the broken, the lost and the physically undone.  But it's for you.  The strong, the invisible, the confident and the happy.  Because you need this too.  Believe it or not, you need to let it be healing.

I say "Let it be healing" because I mean the any manner of things that you run into today, this week, this month, this year.  Let this be the time that you don't shy away from facing what you aren't strong in.

Healing occurs slowly, and we can only know it has happened once we look back.  So while you inspect your brokenness do not be discouraged, for seeing a break, a tear, an open wound, a scab...whatever it is you discover, you need to let those things stay open to the process one day at time.  

So let your moments, experiences, and circumstances open you up to the rest of the healing you need.  

It's an everyday thing.

So let it be healing. 

We are going to let out some of those unpretty words you got there in your hands.

People have words hanging in their closet that they dust off for rainy days to remind you of things you thought you had sorted.  It's not that they knew they would use those words at you, it's not that they dusted them off and said "this is just the kind of kick in the face type of thing I want to say to her next time."  Seriously, they didn't think that hard about it, but, it's still a thing isn't it?  That when you feel like you got it handled and settled someone always has to show up and throw some more of those unpretty words your way.  

Whats worse?  They have no idea that's what they did.

Some people are born cynics.

Some people are born motivated.

Some people are born worry warts.

Some people are born free spirits.

All people are born.

Since you were born and you might actually want to live a life that isn't weighed down by anothers words all tumbled out because they thought they were helping, sharing, communing...

You can say 'no'.

It's hard sometimes.

Saying 'no' to words that were well meant but ill regarded.

It's not that you want the person to zip up their words, but you want those unpretty words to change.  Because those words seep into your skin like water to your spirit and they feed you.  

You notice the 'It was rough', 'It wrecked me.' and the 'It's okay."  when actually, your spirit needs it as 'It was real', 'it made me' and 'it will become clear in time.'

But you can't tell words to change.

You can't blame anyone for your word needs.

But you can say no.  And it won't be pretty, it won't come out smooth and pretty as you imagined it, because whenever you need to keep the positive going, there is never an easy way to do it.  It's like turning on a bright light after being in the dark for too long.  Your eyes can't adjust fast enough and you are left blinking.  

You are blinking.

They are blinking.

Ouch. 

So accept that it can't be an easy process when you are fighting your insecurities and your negative monsters.  

You know what YOU need, and just because someone else thinks you need some good ol' fashion 'This is how it is' talk, you are the only one who knows if and when you need to hear it.

And us listeners who see that another is affected by our narrative, we need to back those words up! 

We need to back up and breathe because the last thing we want to do is send someone off with a version of our words that didn't leave them with truth that softened and not truth that stung.

Truth doesn't sting it heals, so the truth of your story should be to heal and bring salve to a wound.  Words have power and we can't be so concerned that someone isn't 'getting it', when really...it's us.  

Our communication, our narrative, our words that we think are just normal, may actually have a side to them that are unpretty, unwelcome and unhelpful.  

And if truth words heal, then our receivers should be healing along with us as we share.