2k14 Lessons & Resolutions(ish)

(Blogged while listening to Wild Wild Love.)

As I look back on the entirely crazy and largely fantastic year of 2014, I've compiled a list of lessons/wisdom/ironic anecdotes that I have gathered over the past 12 months. May they inspire, convict, or simply entertain you. Also, may they remind me throughout the year of the value of growth and the ability to find humor in every situation.

1. God > Family > Friends > Everything Else...
2. Change is normal, change is inevitable, and above all, change is good. To resist is foolish and futile, and to blame someone for natural growth is unhealthy.
3. The fastest way to grow and mature is to put yourself in an alien environment far outside of your comfort zone and [humbly] make it work... Read: spend an entire summer as a Yankee, post-college camp counselor in the south.
4. Drive like I have my pregnant best friend in the passenger seat (even when she is safely at home munching pickles and singing along to Pentatonix!)
5. Make a life playlist. Seriously. I create a new playlist in my iTunes for every season of life or special trip, and add songs that are important to me at that time. Then later I can hit "shuffle" and enjoy a musical time transport. (Wake Me Up will always bring me back to France...)
6. Good friends know you will drink all their coffee and wine, and they invite you over anyway.
7. Changing life goals is okay - if you didn't pursue your past ambitions, they wouldn't have led you to your current dreams. 
8. Being a morning person isn't so bad, in fact, it is quite good for you. (I am a reconditioning night owl.)
9. Death is holy business. Joining journeys with someone who is dying puts living in perspective, and gives new reverence for the gift of breath within our bodies. For believers, death is a natural, progressive part of eternal life. As humans we have lost the art of dying "well". I have been privileged to witness two close relatives live a good life and die a good death. Because of their example, I intend to live and eventually die well. 
10. Sparkle and light your own fire. You are wonderful.
11. "Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman." {Coco Chanel}
12. Recognize the difference between someone who likes you and someone who "wants" you.
13. Find the perfect combination of professional and classy, then apply to all areas of life.
14. Be alone, not lonely. 
15. Love yourself. You would only be more awesome if you had a mermaid tale. 
16. Challenge the status quo. Don't be antagonistic for the sake of being an ass, but at least within yourself seriously contemplate your assumptions. 
17. Observe a Sabbath. 
18. Singleness, seasonal or otherwise, is fantastic! 
19. Challenge inequality. Social justice is a life-long calling. 
20. Never burn bridges, (unless those suckers are clearly evil, unhealthy barricades!) You never know when you could run into someone again, or who may recall you as "that Christian" they once knew... Make sure you represent yourself and the Christ-in-you well. 
21. Live courageously. All good things are wild and free. 

There are so many more thoughts I could add or stories I could tell, but this late at night I begin to ache for my bed, (mostly because the sooner I sleep the sooner I can wake up and drink coffee!) 

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him..." {Romans 15:13}, and feliz 2015 to each of you!

The F-Word

The F-word. It's scary, abrasive, and attention-grabbing. It always gets a reaction. People have strong feelings associated with the F-word. Some abuse the word, others don't understand it. Some people believe the word shouldn't even exist. Most people have heard the word, and many are afraid to use it, in case they are misunderstood or considered offensive.

The word I am referring to is, of course, feminism.

Webster defines feminism as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities; organized activity in support of women's rights and interests". Well that doesn't sound so bad. Actually, that sounds like something everyone should believe in, right? I mean, if this is the definition of feminism, shouldn't we actually be asking those around us why they aren't feminists?

But feminism still gets a bad rap. Now whole blogs could be (and have been) written on why there is such anti-feminism out there, but I'm not all about just regurgitating information - so here.

In an inspiring TED Talk video, the role of men in feminism is highlighted and championed. "We need more men who have the courage and strength to start standing up and saying some of this stuff. Standing with women, not against them, somehow pretending this is a battle between the sexes and other kinds of nonsense. We live in the world together." So clearly, this isn't just a "women's issue".

Feminism is about equitable treatment for all human beings. I use the F-word. I am a Feminist. I want my dad, my brother, my mom, my male and female friends to be feminists. I sincerely hope you are a feminist too.

Frankly, there's no good reason not to be.

Worry Lines and Insatiable Joy

Tonight I discovered something that I had never noticed before - I have worry lines. They are there, hovering between and just above my eyebrows, slight creases furrowed from twenty-some years of life.

That is twenty-some years of worry carved into my forehead. [With probably a little sarcasm or skepticism thrown in there, I notice those expressions are similar, at least on my face.]

I have not spent twenty-some consecutive years constantly worrying, no, I would say my life has been relatively free from over-anxiety. It is amazing, then, how single occurrences of worry, segregated episodes of doubt can mark you so permanently.

But then again, so can joy.

A single moment of unmitigated joy can imprint itself on your heart and change your life forever.

“I call it Joy. 'Animal-Land' was not imaginative. But certain other experiences were... The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. 

It is difficult or find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton's 'enormous bliss' of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to 'enormous') comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what?...Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse... withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased... In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else... The quality common to the three experiences... is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. 

I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.” ― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

Joy can be insatiable. Worry may stain the forehead, but joy saturates the bones.

I want to breed joy in my life. I want to sleep more, criticize less, pray constantly. I want to eat good food, read great books, listen to music that lifts my soul. I want to take long walks and have surprising adventures.

I choose joy.