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Mothering is…

May 11, 2012 in Life Lessons, Living Your Values with 1 Comment

Mother’s Day weekend brings into focus each year a moment in time where Mother’s are to be celebrated. Today I prefer to challenge each of us to look into our hearts and ask “who mothers me?” Mothering is a serious business, the care and nurture of a heart, whether grown under yours or not. My life is filled with women who have chosen to love me, despite me, and to pour into my heart and life with out requirement. Mothering is a way of life for many. Motherhood may bring to mind in the advertising world a woman with an apron, toiling in a life of self-less effort in a household, or a perfect scene of peace with children in one’s arms. Motherhood can be those scenes and many more…

In my journey I see mothering that looks like choosing to love others even if there is rarely a known return on the investment. Children come into my life as children or as adults who have child like hearts seeking self love and approval. Young mothers need help understanding how to mother. Students and clients seek mothering as they step out into strange new worlds of entrepreneurship. Step mothers often take on the roles of their children’s natural mom and choose to be present when others cannot be. Foster care, neighbors and friends reach out to hearts near them, often when who they reach out to may not particularly appreciate the care and safety they offer. Mentors and educators often go well past their requirements to support young minds and hearts as they grow.

Mothering is to me, the choice to look into the hearts and lives of individuals and to love them as they are, and to be willing, when then are ready, to help them grow. I am thankful that God has placed so many mothers in my life, and gives me so many opportunities to love others as well!

Margins in Daily Life

May 10, 2012 in 31 Days of Pursuing Peace, Life Lessons with 1 Comment

My friend Lucy Ann Moll is leading a six week, once a week series on REST. LucyAnnMoll.com is one of my favorite go to places to drink in community and check in with my heart. This week she wrote about margins in your daily life. It is an area I have been focusing on as well. Creating more specific margins of peace in my life. As a high energy, creative soul it is easy for me to allow myself to swirl my life into such a tizzy that it doesn’t stop spinning for hours. Plate juggling is something I have learned to do well in handling many projects and tasks at once as though there is some honor or glory to do so. The cost has too often been exhaustion, neglect and eventually relationship damage. I grew up believing if you worked hard enough you could have it all, but it turns out that all isn’t what it is cracked up to be.

During the early part of the year I worked with Allyson Lewis’s The 7 Minute Solution launch. Her book focuses on how to have a more meaningful life through focusing daily on five things before eleven a.m. and systems of time management that can help you protect and engage in a more meaningful life. I believe in the work of that book and I diligently used Allyson’s planner for the first quarter of 2012. I had to get tickled at its simple lines for the hours of work, for my life appointments would take 4x as many spaces to keep up with what I do in a day.

That was a clue.

When the going gets tough on my time schedule, I am the first one to suffer, nurturing my family is second ball I drop, and if life gets hard enough on one project, my other clients may have less immediate access to me for a day or three. The going was getting tough too many weeks in a row oh say since 2009.

The reality?

It wasn’t even about business or financial success. It was about being enough.

Despite degrees, experience, awards and accolades, a happy marriage and children who are approaching adulthood without destruction, I was still in some sort of climb to find some unknown, un-named accomplishment that would make up for my inadequacies….all of them.

Margins against the less than glamorous parts of my humanity….like being twice divorced….or not being Barbie physically…or or or…

This year of seeking more meaningful life and daily peace has led me to refocus what it is that matters about what I do and why I do it…it’s will be most likely a lifetime quest. It’s hard to look into your life and not like what you see repeating, but in the honesty of that moment change can occur…and while it is not always permanent, new habits have to be learned, choosing to change and acting on it can happen in a instant…what a gift that is, that we can choose to learn, to change, to be and act differently….and start becoming the person we hope to be.

Finding Enough

April 15, 2012 in Basics Matter, Life Lessons, Making It Mine with 2 Comments

The last few weeks I have been traveling all over the United States working with clients. The role of a hybrid strategist is something akin to Nanny McPhee, The Boss, and Mary Poppins all rolled into one. I work with individuals who lead successful lives and businesses. My role is to make those lives and businesses work as smoothly as possible whether it is figuring out supportive systems at the house, or strategic systems in branding and business.

The common theme all clients and our own home face is finding enough.

You cannot live where you haven’t found home. Perhaps success to you is gathering for dinner those you love, having enough money in the bank to choose the food you eat without thought, or a certain number in savings. Life has a funny way of trying to tell you that where ever you are, it is not there yet, that you are not enough.

I beg to differ.

The source of many individuals’ unhappiness is that they are striving for an unknown end. “Enough.” Les and I have faced this giant and we have refaced it several times. You see, for us, enough has a definition now. It is based in knowing that the only day you can truly count on is the one you are living this moment. Enough is what is before you in the next few hours before you sleep…without borrowing the issues of tomorrow and next year or decade. Pragmatically we’re into being good stewards of our resources, but tomorrow is tomorrow, and cannot take over today’s significance in our lives.

Finding enough is very personal. What comforts and gives my soul peace may not be what you were built to know or do. God may have instilled within your heart a very different purpose and therefore a very different “enough.” My enoughs involve a personal peace with my surroundings and relationships, it involves knowing and acting as though people are more important than things. It means that money is a tool, not proof of importance or significance. It means that at the end of the day I’d prefer people over things. Finding enough is a journey each heart mst take for itself. It cannot be defined for you. You must find it on your own.

What are the moments you have found enough? A few of mine are the moments I hold a child close as they sleep in my arms. Choosing to be fully present at a friend’s time of need, such as when their parent dies and someone is needed to simply clean the kitchen and be present. To know that a need was met for a family struggling, when pizza was a glorious meal for date night at home so someone else could eat in theirs. It’s knowing that taking the time for kindness is never wasted.

What are your “enoughs?”Have you thought of your world in that way lately?

Seeing Past Looking…

January 22, 2012 in A Joyful Place Called Home, Basics Matter, Life Lessons with 0 Comments

I love that my husband Les is not daunted by a wife who asks for $10.00 while yard sailing (because she always forgets her purse on Saturdays) and then smiles knowingly when I come back with something that most likely won’t fit in our vehicle that moment, yet expects it to. I love that when I sit for dinner in our home, or lounge with our family that love is made visible throughout my home by the items Les has loved back to life…including me.

It matters.

The gift of shared vision is not one that came naturally to Les. I suspect ten years ago he had never refinished anything in his life. His idea of fixing something involved a purchase and a receipt. His love for my vision to do and have for others awakened in him a joy in making things happen as I have…and what a joy ride its been to see it in our home, as well as in peoples’ lives.

Chairs that are purchased for $2.50 each may not have any value to you. Sometimes the folks you pass by on the daily journey don’t either…they, like my chairs, may be so covered in grime, scars, and dirt that you simply don’t see the beauty they are….the unique creation they exist as. It’s not always about refinishing either…often its simply about encouraging them to share their story…which unfolds in such a way you are no longer captured by their trappings but by their heart, experience and story.

What are you seeing where you are today? What is the vision you use? Is it purpose driven? Do Driven? Or are you open to allow that which is there show up in your picture in a more meaningful way. Each moment we exist there is so much lost in our own directed living…perhaps that is the joy I love about Saturday morning yard sailing with Les…its unpredictable…its unordered…you cannot predict what God will drop into your world that day…whether its the heart that needs to be heard as they empty mom or dad’s home…or the struggle of a young couple trying to “do better” for their children and selves as they fight for their familyhood…

What do you allow in your life?

Who do you allow in your heart?

The memories are touchable in my home….as a visual tactile learner that isn’t surprising…but I know things are simply with me until someone else needs them more, then they, like they came, are hauled away often in a too small car to a new home to be loved by someone else’s family….and I walk back to the door with a smile on my heart and know that soon I’ll ask Les if I can borrow his wallet again…

and He smiles…and knows we’re starting all over again…

I love this man named Les and how he’s taught me to love past what I can initially see…

What’s in Your Hand…

January 3, 2012 in 31 Days of Pursuing Peace, Life Lessons, Living Your Values with 0 Comments

Many years ago I attended a church service at First Baptist in Springdale, Arkansas where Ronnie Floyd was or may still be minister and a gentleman named Alvin Slaughter and his brother were special musical guests. It was neither my church home, nor my plan to be in attendance, but it simply came to be that night. Alvin is a powerful musician who obviously loved his gifts and shared it willingly. He sang song after song as he shared his testimony of being homeless then journeyed with God….to a new place.

One of the songs talked about letting go of what is in your hand and that when you can let go of holding it tightly…God blesses it and multiples that release to empower whatever is before you to be enough….a Biblical message…jars become filled…shouts become enough to crumble walls…and fish multiply, more than once whether in baskets or in water….

The song stayed in my head for years…I probably still could not sing it line per line, but its teach, the meat of what the message said has forever changed my heart. Alvin’s voice and imagery has repeated in my head now for some 16 years….daily.

When we release what little or much we have to God…it.is.enough.

He’s simply waiting for our all.

Have you thought about giving your all lately? Most of us think a portion is tough enough, but God seeks our all. He created us imperfect without Him, he told us from the beginning he wanted to lavish us with his love. He created Eden…yet it wasn’t enough….as mankind, we wanted more…we wanted control…

Look where it got us.

What is in your hand today? What are you trying to hold on to? What areas of your life do you think you must control? How is that working for you? I can tell you that in my life, the fingers kept getting pried off my areas with a crow bar and when I can let go long enough to go…it.is.simply amazing….before I even realize the fall I so feared would ensue, but simply lifts me to a different level and proves to me that He is trustworthy…

even when I fail. make poor choices, trust blindly in people not God, or live my usual messy life…not to mention kitchen or laundry realities….

What’s in your hand? What are you holding onto that God wants?

It’s your choice….hold onto it, or release it to the one who created you and the world you live in…

What’s in YOUR hand you’ve been hesitant to let go of control?

Moments & Memories…

December 31, 2011 in A Simple Joy, Leading, Life Lessons with 1 Comment

The past few months a stage was set to experience learning while flying. Perhaps you’ve had the same moments, that moment of realizing that you are living your moment, being what you are capable of being, and having a meaningful glimpse of what you have worked hard to achieve.

Skills were yours to engage, the burden and years preparing were not for naught
Moments to remember came like gang busters or waves of perpetual tides
Joy was present in every moment of the reason you were engaging

Then you realized, it wasn’t the opportunity that was present and changed your vision, it was that you changed your opportunity.

We choose our lives. We follow our hearts and inner callings of the Holy Spirit, or we choose to blindly lead ourselves to a place that we rarely should go.

There is a season for each part of our lives….and in my best life, there is respect, diligence, rigor, loyalty, steadfastness, good stewardship, boundaries, love, and joy in each of them.

In reflecting the last three months, I learned many experiential lessons:

Without adequate advance preparation and peaceful engagement of working together, there is little to gain in pushing forward with new territories, projects, or people….you can have the right skills, but without a thorough understanding of the needs, priorities will not happen.
Relationships take time, trust is not always returned even when given….not every friendly person is friendly, not every harsh one is harsh
Strategy comes in many forms…but the ones I prefer to focus on is always a win/win/win scenario for all- no exceptions.
It is God’s love through our hands that makes the difference, all humans are imperfect, but His love matters.
Regardless of their passion, purpose, and precedence….trust is established slowly…be cautious in whom you blindly trust
Success will be just as difficult as starvation if you do not identify what it looks like and how to handle it
It’s more important to be who you are, even if they don’t get who you are…help is help if it isn’t asked for…remember your gifts may not be welcome.
When others don’t choose to share your vision, methods, or excitement…it doesn’t affirm its correctness or wrongness, but only their/your experience
God puts amazing people directly in front of you if you’ll simply allow Him to be in charge
Preparation is respected in God’s order…but the order of God first matters more than any preparation you believed mattered.

This quarter, the last one of 2011, has been a meaningful time. 2011 was a year filled with amazing experiences both personally and professionally. I am thankful to have lived through and engaged the life it taught me. God is God and in short…I am not…but I see his Glory through the work of others and its an amazing view…and every now and then…for a brief moment..I get to be a part of His plan and become aware of how amazing the intricate details were that laced us all together.

What a joy!!!!

What have you learned this year?