For the longest time, I’ve imagined myself waking up early to sip on my coffee as the sun begins to peek over the hills. I imagine that I sit at the kitchen table with a plethora of highlighters, pens, and post-it notes, as I do my daily devotional. I was extra hopeful for this when I recently started a new Bible reading plan, called the Bible Recap. But if you have any foresight at all, you might guess where this is going.
What I didn’t imagine was being on the elliptical, wiping the sweat from my face, soaking in the word of God through the audio version of the devotional, but this is where I find myself… trying to catch my breath. For the longest time I had this perfect vision, but my devotional wasn’t getting read, because I thought if I was going to do it, I had to do it perfectly. So I’ve accepted that there might be some sweat stains and body odor while consuming God’s word, but at least I am consuming it. I am still working towards devoting more time to sitting in God’s word and I’ve got the highlighters in my Amazon cart, but until then, I’m going to keep completing the devotional in whatever form gets it in me. I share this to remind you that it doesn’t matter if it’s the picture-perfect image you imagined – that goes for planning your child’s first birthday party, to cleaning the house, to what your relationship looks like. It is going to be messy, sweaty, and probably smelly (especially if you have a husband like mine). What does matter is how you carry intention into each circumstance. Don’t let the image of perfection keep you from living in your purpose.
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I’ve been on a healing journey the last 5 years; at least that’s when I started seeing my therapist. My healing journey looked a lot like developing healthy relationships, managing trauma-related symptoms, and attempting not to be so dang anxious. I don’t know that healing ever stops, because there will always be reminders of the pain or new challenges to overcome, but I do think you can reach a point where you finally just relax. Goodness it feels good to just relax. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pretty up tight and don’t always physically relax nearly as much as I should (I’m still working on the anxiousness), but the tenseness that I’ve carried in my shoulders has eased. The triggers, the flashbacks, the desire to contol a relationship, the intensity, the fight or flight, the dysregulation, all of that crap has eased. It feels like for most of my life I was never able to catch a full breath, but now I’m learning how to breathe and how to do it deeply.
When working with clients, I often refer to a red scale and a green scale. The red scale is the behaviors that we don’t want to see. The green scale is the behaviors that we want to add in and see more of. Most clients come to me because they are deep into the red scale, so we work on decreasing those red scale behaviors. Once decreased, we get to really focus on adding in those green scale behaviors, such as spending time with social connections, volunteering, and picking up a hobby. It’s really hard, for example, to focus on learning how to play an instrument when you are still in fight or flight and just trying to survive; learning an instrument feels pretty insignificant. It’s a beautiful thing when my clients get to the point where the color of their scale is turning. It’s a well-earned pivotal moment. These folks have fought for their lives, mastered skills, and finally have the brain space and emotional availability to add in enriching engagements into their lives. This is the season that I currently feel like I a walking in. A season where I am reminding myself that I am safe and secure and can begin to actively introduce purposeful enrichments into my life, such as taking the time to be creative again. So I say all of this, to share with you my phrase for this year. “Walking Free” in 2023. To me this means being able to walk out my freedom; even though I will still encounter challenges, those things no longer have ability to velcro themselves to me. I know that I am still free! As I thought more about this year and what this phrase means to me, I thought of the popular Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” I particularly like verse 4, “…though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…” This is the perfect example of what I mean by “walking free.” There is no longer anything to fear, because I am now empowered and know who I am, but also whose I am. God has always been with me, comforting me… that I am sure of. There is now a peace that I have, no longer carrying the weight of pain that would taunt me. I have no intention of ever picking it back up. I want to encourage you today to continue fighting your way through the red scale, if that is where you are finding yourself. Once you reach the green scale, I invite you to take a deep breath with me and for the first time rest in the peace that you have found. Join me in walking free in 2023. “I’ve dreamt of this day since I was 5 years old and had my stuffed animals sitting at their “desks” in the living room; I can’t let anxiety overwhelm this moment”, I mumbled to myself as I was getting ready for bed the night before I taught my first college course as an adjunct faculty member.
I remember walking into this old, white house that had been transformed into offices with a red sign out front that read, “School of Social Work.” My mom and I searched for this building, which sat a couple of blocks off of campus, during my tour at Indiana University. It always amazes me how spread out things seem when the area is unfamiliar, and tracing a map to figure out where you’re going only seems to make the distance feel further. Now that I no longer need to stare at a paper to get me around campus, I realize that this house wasn’t so far away after all. I pushed open the wooden door that had paint peeling and heard a bell ring, alerting the staff that someone had just entered. Little did I know, I walked into what would soon be my office space just a year later when I would get hired on as a work-study employee. My mom and I squeezed into the back, corner office where I took out my list of questions to ask to a man with wild hair and a scruffy beard who would be one of my instructors throughout undergraduate school. Now I get to teach the class that he once taught me. I got used to hearing that gold bell ring as students and staff entered and exited that old house. I was usually making scans of textbooks, mailing out recruitment packages, or helping input grades for the professors. Being a work-study student for the school I was a part of felt like looking behind the curtain in Oz. It gave me perspective, understanding, and anticipation for the day that I would finally be able to teach in my own class, only this time the students wouldn’t be as fluffy as my stuffed animals. It is always such a weird feeling when things come full circle. When the things you once dreamed of are now your reality. I’ve found though that the dream often consists of more stress, less sleep, and way more emails (why are there so many emails?). As I was preparing my course for the semester, I continued to have waves of anxiety wash over me and try to pull me into the undertow. So many thoughts about if I had all of the assignments correct, if my PowerPoint looked presentable, and how in the world am I going to keep these students focused for almost THREE HOURS!! Then it hit me. I cannot and will not allow anxiety to consume what should be excitement for something that I have always wanted. All of the assignments are not going to be perfect, the PowerPoint will probably have a typo, and I have no problem filling up time by talking, at least that’s what my husband tells me. It was then that I took a deep breath and got to celebrate how it feels to step onto Indiana University’s campus as an instructor. Once you get into the routine of your new adventure, it feels peaceful. There is satisfaction in looking back and seeing just how God aligned every step to put you exactly where you are right now. I encourage you to reframe your anxiety into excitement about where you are. You are likely living a life that your younger self longed for, whether it is having a family, getting to cuddle your pet, cleaning your house, or going to your job. You have worked hard to get where you are. Take a deep breath and get excited about it. Sometimes it sucks when therapy actually works. Okay obviously I love therapy and I'd like to keep a job, but hear me out. The other night I found a stretch mark on my stomach. My initial reaction was to go into the fetal position, sit in my sorrows, then drown myself in chocolate ice cream, but I physically couldn't do that, and here's why. I have been working hard at challenging my negative thoughts that my brain wouldn't even let myself feel bad about my body. It was actually quite annoying, because for some reason we get some sort of comfort when we sit in our sorrows and I couldn't do that. My brain instantly started acting all healthy on me and was like, "Hey, your worth is not defined by your body." "You are a grown woman and this is NORMAL." I mean I'm happy that my trauma brain is starting to straighten out it's wiring so I'm not anxious and depressed all the time, but man, let me sit in my sorrows a little. Let me explain something - our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors all affect each other. If I have a thought that my body is ugly, I feel depressed, then I eat all of the ice cream. It then keeps cycling. So next I think that I can't believe I ate all of the ice cream. This makes me feel ashamed, and then I isolate myself from others. It keeps going and going and going. It's so important to interrupt this cycle, and one way to do this is to challenge our negative thoughts. Negative thoughts can also be referred to as cognitive distortions. For example, finding a stretch mark could be considered magnification because I wanted to blow that way out of proportion. The first way to challenge your negative thoughts is by tracking your negative thoughts. You can practice mindfulness activities to develop more self-awareness of your thoughts, and then start jotting those thoughts down. After you jot them down, begin correcting them. To correct them, you can identify what thought you would like to feel, and then write that down and post it EVERYWHERE. Challenging negative thoughts takes practice and patience, and before you know it, your brain will automatically start correcting itself like mine did. Just be prepared to have fewer pity parties.
Okay let's be honest... I'm usually the one getting served breakfast in bed. BUT sometimes I like to surprise Dave. I bought this adorable kit a while ago, and have been dying to use it, but the amount of times I'm awake before Dave is like ZERO. LOL But I finally got my opportunity to do this for Dave.
He is definitely the more giving one between the two of us, which often leaves me feeling like I don't do nearly enough for him. Because he does so much for me on the daily, I try really hard to make an attempt at doing things that will make him feel just as appreciated as he makes me feel, but I'm not sure I'll ever reach his level of amazingness. It can be so easy to get stuck in the normal routine of life that you lose track of the last time you did something thoughtful for your partner. I encourage you to do something different this week to let them know how much you appreciate them. I recently shared on my personal social media that Dave and I were able to pay off my car, but I didn’t share about how this was possible.
When going to church as a child, I always saw my mom drop a check in the offering plate as it was passed by. I’m not sure how much these checks were made out for, but I do know that it was a sacrifice. My mom, no matter how tight her budget was, always made tithing a priority. Through this, she taught me how to have faith and demonstrated how God will always come through. If you aren’t aware, tithing means giving a percentage (traditionally a 10th) of your budget to God. Tithing is discussed and modeled throughout the Bible and is an active reminder that everything you have belongs to God. I started tithing regularly as soon as I got my first job, which at the time, 10% wasn’t a huge amount of money from my Pizza Hut paycheck. However, everything increased with each new position I would take after quitting Pizza Hut. The cost of my adult responsibilities increased, my paycheck increased, which also meant that my tithe had to increase. Increasing bills and increasing tithes don’t exactly line up, because let’s be honest my increase in pay was not that much. There has been several times where I looked at my budget and thought, “Man, I could do so much with this money.” Especially when things were tight and I felt like I was barely getting by, but no matter how challenging it was, I continued to tithe. The amazing thing is that EVERY TIME I started to feel as though things were getting tight and I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it, an unexpected blessing occurred. I have gotten unexpected bonuses at work, random check reimbursements, etc. and I truly believe these blessings were timed the way they were because I was faithful in my tithing. Tithing shows a dedication and faith to God, and God honors that type of sacrifice. I don’t believe that you should tithe and expect blessings to occur, but I do believe that God will take care of His children. I’m sharing my experience with tithing because I fully trust God with my finances and believe that He will take care of me. I saw an example of this recently when I was able to pay my car off. It would have been so easy to not tithe and use that money towards paying off my car, but I believe that because I continued to tithe, I was able to pay my car off way sooner than I would have if I wouldn’t have. God has blessed my finances and I will continue giving to Him because I know He will take care of me because He is a good, good father. I had NO IDEA where to purchase active dry yeast, and who knew there would be so many yeast options when I finally located it. But these dinner rolls were amazing and a crowd favorite when I hosted dinner. They would make the perfect addition to your upcoming Easter Dinner, so I wanted to go ahead and share them.
Find the recipe in the Magnolia Table Volume 2 cookbook.
I was pleased to find a women's boxing/fitness class for a great price just a few minutes from my home. This class is a mix of exercise as well as getting to hit things... and what woman wouldn't benefit from that?
So be angry and find your outlet to cope with it. Click HERE if you live in the area and are interested in punching some things with me. :)
The Bittersweet Babes recognize February as Black History Month, but how can a group of white women appropriately celebrate black culture? The Babes all come from the same town; a town where there is not much diversity. A town where we were not taught or even encouraged to explore diversity. A town where we have witnessed racism from people as close as our neighbors and even our own family. We are aware that many of our followers may have come from towns similar to ours or even our same town, so how can The Babes best celebrate this month among a group of women who may have had similar backgrounds to ours?
The Bittersweet Babes have typically featured a guest each month that can speak to what is occurring for the month. So for September our guest was a veteran and for October we had a breast cancer survivor write about her experience. But something about asking a black woman to write about Black History Month felt unsettling. Maybe it was because so often black individuals are asked to educate their white friends. Or because we knew we had a responsibility to educate ourselves and others. At the same time, we don't want to come across as if we can even come close to fully comprehending the experience of black individuals, because we just can't. We will never understand nor experience the journey that black individuals experience. We will also not always get it right. We will try our best to do our research, educate ourselves, and advocate for justice, but we may not always do it 100% correctly. And I point this out because being an ally doesn't mean perfection. It means doing your very best while being open to feedback that can help you continuing growing into a better ally. So we are choosing to honor Black History Month by sharing an article that provides education on this month of celebration. We recognize that we need to continue to educate ourselves and believe that some of our followers may benefit from similar education. We hope that you enjoy this article and that it will encourage you to continue educating yourself and others. The Reason Black History Month Is in February We have all been there...feeling disappointed when others do not live up to our expectations. Sure, part of it could be that the other person didn't follow through on what they had committed to, but most of the time, it's because we have this unspoken expectation of what "should" be occurring. I use the word unspoken, because that is the danger zone. We cannot fault the other person when we did not communicate our expectations with them.
Before I go any further, let me back up and explain what I am talking about... PROJECTION. I define projection as putting our expectations or personal beliefs onto others while expecting others to uphold our personal expectations as highly as we do. This is actually what I spoke about in my latest podcast episode of Becoming Bittersweet. I believe there are three areas where we project our expectations onto others, and those are: #1: Responsibilities #2: Routine #3: Relationships To explain these a little bit further - #1 RESPONSIBILITIES When I think of responsibilities, I instantly think of having a group project in school, which I'm sure we all loved (sarcastic). Group projects or any group work in general can be so frustrating, because if you are a perfectionist (control freak) like me, you more than likely are expecting your group members to perform at the level that you would. Unfortunately other people have better boundaries and are less anxious, therefore leading them to not go above and beyond like we are expecting them to. Let me clear in that there is a difference in projecting our expectations and expecting others to hold up their end of the bargain. I am definitely going to be upset if my group member does not do the part that they are responsible for, BUT I should not be upset when they do their best at their part, but it is not up to my standard. That is where projection comes in. Other people's best will look different than your best... and catch this part... AND BOTH ARE EQUALLY GOOD. Oh this one is hard for me. When it comes to responsibilities and others, remind yourself that the other person is only responsible for holding up their end of the bargain. They are not responsible for doing it exactly how you would do it. #2 ROUTINE I am a scheduler, planner, and routine follower. If you don't identify as one of those, then this category may not affect you as much, however, for me, I have a lot of expectations around my routine. And when I refer to routine, I am meaning time. I often set expectations around when things need to be done, what time we are leaving, what day we are doing something. This has caused me a lot of frustration because I have learned that Dave moves at a MUCH slower pace than me. Much of my frustration with this has once again occurred because of a lack of communication. I am expecting that Dave just automatically adapt my routine, but that is not fair to him. His routine and pace is equally as valuable as mine. To help with my projection of routines, he and I are doing more communication about our expectations of time. For example, we will each share our expectation of when a chore around the house should be completed. We will also talk about our week and what we have going on, that way I am not disappointed if he isn't home by a certain time because I know in advance what his plans are. #3 RELATIONSHIPS And now the third area... relationships! I would say this is the BIGGEST area of projection. We have so many expectations of how our interactions should go with others, specifically our significant others. How many conversations have you had with your girlfriends or bros about your partner not meeting your needs or doing what you expect?!?! I can think of countless examples. By question to you would be: Have you communicated your expectations within your relationship? If so, take it a step further: Have you and your partner compromised on each of your expectations to come to a shared expectation? I do not have this perfect by any means, but I have learned how much more successful my relationships with others are when I communicate and compromise my expectations. An example for this one is my expectation of Dave and I to grow in a church together. I have to specifically communicate my expectations for this with Dave. Dave then shares his expectations of what his involvement with church looks like. Then we develop a shared expectation and begin fulfilling that. Whereas before when I was in a projection spiral, I would get soooo mad when he wasn't practicing his faith in the way I expected him to. So to wrap this all up, because this is really a complex topic: Expectations are not harmful and are actually good! Expectations provide us with hope and motivation, however, it is the act of projecting that causes damage. One way to help with projection is to discuss your expectations up front. Each person can share their expectations and then together come up with a compromise. |
MEET THE BLOGGERHello Lovelies! On my page, you can expect to read a lot about mental health, my faith, and probably some sarcastic comments about my husband. My passion is supporting individuals in having positive mental health by providing tips and identifying ways that faith can contribute to your healing journey. I also have my personal podcast, Becoming Bittersweet, where I provide space to reflect on the things in life that have led us to experience pain as well as the things that have given us great joy. I hope you feel empowered and encouraged when you visit my corner.
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