love and work

On Friday May 10th, our Uncle Allen Sharp left this world quite unexpectedly leaving a gaping hole in the fabric of our family.  The days following went by quickly, were filled with many faces asking for answers, and left us feeling achy, hazy.  I remember bits of pieces of those days...

To be quite frank, I have no great words of wisdom or answers to the questions we all feel after an event like this.  All I can tell you is that it sucks - probably the most difficult experience of my life.  I am pretty sure I went through all 7 steps of grief in the first five minutes and have continued to grow through them in each and every five minutes following.

So instead of some quaint offering that would only act as a band-aid for the pain, I thought I would share some of the lessons I learned from my Uncle Allen.

1.  Love - love your spouse, your family, and those friends who think they're family!  My uncle loved his wife - how many construction-type men do you know that willingly go shoe shopping with their wife just to spend time with them?  That's love in my book!  He was a man who was taught to do everything to the best of his ability, and that standard was not compartmentalized into work.  He was also insanely loyal and generous to his friends and family!

2.  Work - if you are able, you should work and work hard.  Like I said, no half-hearted, piss-poor job would satisfy him.  Do it right the first time - don't cut corners and take the simplified, coward's way out.  He had a low tolerance for ignorance also.  If you don't know how to do something, then ask someone who does!  Uncle Allen was the type of person who could do anything he set his mind to, and he could get almost anyone to do exactly what he wanted to do.  Candace and I joked about him being in the mafia - if you wanted something done, you went to Uncle Allen.

I know that is only two lessons, but I think those are the two things he did really well.  I also think that if we can strive to do those things well, then we will have lived a good life at the end.  I don't know why or pretend to understand why God chose that particular Friday, but I have to hold tight to what I know of God - that He is good, that He has a plan.  Even if parts of that plan make me angry.  Not so much angry with God, but angry that death exists at all.  Times like this make me long for God's promises of no more tears and no more death.

Finally, the lesson I learned more through his death than his life.  Life is fleeting, much too short to hold a grudge.  Those things that we were angry about on Thursday didn't really matter Friday morning and should not matter in the weeks and months  to follow.  Sometimes, I think tragic events can be the very thing needed to shake us from our stubborn complacency and help us see that now is the time to forgive.  You cannot do anything about yesterday, and tomorrow is not promised.  So love the people God has placed in your life and do the job He has entrusted you with today!

a girl and a unicorn

Okay so the past two weeks have been so very busy as it seems that everything is happening at the same time! But during this time, I found a little inspiration from two of my favorite shows - "Glee" and "The New Girl."  Last week's episode of Glee was titled "I Am Unicorn"! I won't give too much away because you need to watch it, but one of the characters gives the other one a pep talk which begins the phrase "you are a unicorn."  (Paraphrasing here)  I know what you are thinking, no one wants to be called a unicorn - it's a little weird, but hang with me for a minute.  This character goes on to say that a unicorn is something or someone with magic inside them that is not afraid to let it out as a unicorn without that one horn is just a horse like every other horse.  I think we all have something special or magic or whatever inside of us, but we are afraid for whatever reason to let the magic be seen.
Last night, we were watching "The New Girl" with Zooey Deschanel whom I absolutely adore.  Anyway, Zooey's character Jess is asked by her roommates to suppress who is she is in order to be a date for one of them to a wedding and make the ex jealous.  Now Jess is usually completely original and goofy, and the suppression only lasted a little while.  At the end of the show, Jess tells her roommates that she is and will be exactly who she is!  She let her magic and personality be seen - she is a unicorn.
So often, some sort of idea on television will strike a chord with me and I end up dwelling on these things. Just a little heads up, that is exactly what happened with this which will hopefully make sense to someone else out there!  I suppose my first thought was "would people see me as a unicorn" to which my initial response was no, and if no then why not.  After some searching, I think I may have something of an answer.  When I was in eighth grade, my favorite teacher told the class that we did not need to tell people how smart we are because then people will expect too much from you.  Now I don't know the context of why she said this, and I adore this teacher because most of the things she said still have a profoundly positive effect on me today.  However, I think this may have had a profoundly negative effect on the girl I was in eighth grade.  I think this along with many insecurities and the hostile environment known as middle and high school began a long process of suppressing who I really am. I am a nerd, school always came easy to me - I like to study and find out new things and I like to share what I find.  Not in a snobby, i-know-this-and-you-don't kind of way but I-know-this-and-you-should-to way!  So for someone to say that I needed to keep this in sent a powerful message to me at a young age, but as I have grown up and become more aware of the person God made me to be, my ideal has changed.
I believe that God made us all unique with a specific purpose to fulfill.  I also believe that we all have some kind of magic or story inside of us that if we let it show makes us all  unicorns.  But we have let it out, don't keep it all in.  Be that unicorn and be proud of who God made you to be.  Don't keep the magic inside and be content to look like the cookie-cutter expectation that society throws at you!  I believe that the only people who have ever changed the world were unicorns in their own way - people with magic inside them that were not afraid to let it show! 

Elizabeth Elliot and "I Got This"

Okay so this week has been insanely busy and crazy and hectic and it's only Tuesday, and I didn't get to do an accessories' Monday post.  I promise to make it up to you - well the two of you who read this!

I did want to share what I have learned lately!  First a little backstory - Candace and I went to a Bible Study that one of the ladies in our church does once a month.  This is serious stuff - homework and everything!  I must be honest - the nerd that I am was a little excited about the homework.  I like researching and getting into things on my own.  I have a theory that you truly can't "own" something until you have wrestled with it and gotten your hands dirty.  By owning something I just mean taking a little piece of information and studying it and forming your own opinions and your own response to this information.  So everyone was given a few words/phrases to look up and wrestle with, and then each of us were given a different Christian woman to "google."  I must admit that google is my obsession - you can find everything there!

So one of our phrases/ideas to study was the Sovereignty of God.  Now I am a nerd, but I will never understand completely every idea in the Bible.  However, that does not mean I am going to sit idly by and say it is too difficult.  Shelly gave us a list of verses that deal with what God is Sovereign over.  **This is a little free tidbit, sovereign means that God is "Most High" - most high over what you might ask.  Well... maybe you should google or ask Shelly for her favorite handouts!** Anyway one of the verses was Luke 12:6-7 which tells us that God holds that sparrows in flight and knows the number of hairs on our heads therefore we are not to fear because we are more valuable than sparrows.  (Love this) I like to call this little nugget and the idea of God's Sovereignty the "I GOT THIS" idea because I kind of feel like this is one of those messages that He knows I need sometimes.  I like plans, and I like to know the plans, and sometimes most of the time I like to make the plans especially if the plans pertain to me and my life.  So yeah that whole idea of surrender - I struggle with it. Front Street.  So I kind of have this scene in my head where I approach this male person with my plans as to how my life should go - to which He turns His head and tells me, "I got this!"  Every book I read plays out like a movie in my head so naturally this happens when I read the Bible, but when I read certain parts of the Bible I kind of take it into my life and language like a conversation between me and God.  It helps - try it.

The Christian lady I was assigned to google and get to know was Elizabeth Elliot - knew her story but not much else!  So I googled her and what pops up but a list of quotes - one of my favorite things!  And she obviously understood the "I got this" idea a little much better than me and was able to apply it practically to her life as her life is fascinating and tragic yet hopeful and joyful.  I thought I would leave you with a couple of her quotes ( I must say she is pretty high on my list right now)

"The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of christian, but the fact that I am a Christian makes me a different kind of woman."

"If my life is surrendered to God, all is well.  Let me not grab it back, as though it were in peril but would be safer in mine." --"I Got This!"

truth, honesty, integrity

Every now and then, I get somewhat caught up in my own thoughts which would quite interesting if you could be in head and see the path that the thoughts take. Let’s just say that my thought process is a little off from everyone else’s, but that’s okay. So anyways, most of these thoughts are reflective thoughts – what I would change if I could, what haunts my memories, and the very few times when I say and do exactly what I mean to say and do. It is in these times of reflection that I am most often caught off guard and completely amazed by how awesome God is. Today I was called out on some of my crap. But not like someone pointing out flaws just to make you feel like crap, instead it was done in a “Godly” and kind manner. Now some of you may not be seeing the connection between being called out and God’s complete awesomeness, but bear with me, I am getting to that part.


The completely awesome part was that my heart and my attitude were prepared for such an event. I have been studying the names of God through a wonderful Kay Arthur study called Lord, I Want To Know You that takes you through the names of God in order to learn about the character of God as each name depicts a specific character trait, and it is one of the best studies I have ever done. (Soap Box moment – I love Kay Arthur because it is an insanely effective mixture of truth and grace, studying the Word and difficult life-altering questions.) Off the soap box for now, but the past few days I have been learning about “Jehovah-rapha” which means God our Healer. This lesson opened me up to some of the things that needed healing in my heart and my life. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem and there is a reason so many people never fully recover – they never admit they have a problem because it can be excruciating. But that is my process right now – admitting problem areas and receiving healing. And if admitting problems is difficult then receiving healing can be just as piercing because accepting healing means letting go of some of that pain a little more each day. It means looking and acting differently, it means releasing the crutch that has been the rationale behind every failure.

Being in this mindset means I was able to take the constructive criticism as just that and in the way it was meant – as a means of bringing it to my attention so that I can go about changing behavior. God has been doing wonders in my heart, and it is my prayer that you will be able to see all the changes. This will probably be the most difficult part as this is one of the areas I struggle with the most – letting people in enough to see -  me. I am in the process of accepting that healing for my broken heart and laying it down at Christ’s feet every day and not picking it up again. I want people to see me – the real me. The girl who is more tender-hearted than anyone really knows, who hates the idea of causing ANYONE real pain, the girl who doesn’t always feel beautiful, who never really feels like enough. I want you to see the girl who is most likely too smart for her own good, who genuinely loves to make people smile, and the girl who cares about and loves people more than I like to admit.

The meanness, the sarcasm, the attitude, all of it is my crutch – my front so that you won’t get close enough to hurt me. I suppose someone or something convinced me that I would never be enough so I decided to stop trying and built this wall that screamed I didn’t care what you thought so you wouldn’t get close enough to discover the truth. The truth is I want to love and be loved, I want to be enough, and I want to be somebody’s exception. This is me on front street with my heart wide open for all to see.