Blog: Beauty through Boldness
Posted: April 1, 2011
Humans seek pleasure. Most people believe that this essential pleasure will be found in a marriage relationship and that it will ultimately fulfill their soul craving for acceptance, understanding and of course…love. This powerful, plan was created by God and He said that “it was good.” Something has gone awry, or has it? For the next few months I will be writing on K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple sweetheart) simple, yet powerful steps to build the kind of marriage that God intended us to enjoy. Marriages can indeed be the joyful, fulfilling relationships God intended them to be. I was married at nineteen, a young clueless woman, thinking that my husband would make me happy and enrich my life. I had no one to mentor, or teach me as to what it takes to build a marriage. I went through years of resentment, pain and feeling I had made a dreadful…
Posted in: Beauty from the Inside Out, Beauty through Boldness, Expectations, Good Marriage, Hope, Making Wise Choices, Overcoming Struggles, Pain Pleasure, Resentment
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Posted: March 26, 2011
We are obsessed with knowledge. Then why, to recapture an old phrase, are we “going to hell in a hand basket?” I won’t list all the statistics and atrocities; but you know from your own area of influence what I’m talking about. We seem to be getting smarter but yet insensible. The answer is really quite simple. Knowledge without action = zero. When we come to an intersection in life that begs action, simply knowing the right answer but not doing anything about it perpetuates more pain, rejection, disappointment, anger, and resentment. As Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” You can talk about writing a book year after year, but if you don’t hit the SEND button on your computer, you will never know if you will be a published author. You can speak endlessly about being a better mother,…
Posted in: Beauty through Boldness, Encouragement, Fear, Finding Truth, Forgiveness, Friendship, Hope, Making Wise Choices, Overcoming Struggles, Resentment
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Posted: February 25, 2011
These words made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Loneliness is ignorance. What an irreverent and accusing comment about one of the most painful and heart wrenching human conditions. This citation (which came out of a commentary) had such a huge impact on me that I chose to study it in greater depth to try to understand the author’s point of view. It has been a startling revelation. Loneliness is in fact ignorance. We were created to be connected to our Heavenly Father and to other people; that is the only way we can function in this world if we want to live fulfilling, joyful lives. Nature abhors a vacuum and will do anything to fill it. Water flows into any empty crevice. Fires explode with a vengeance when it has produced a vacuum. When you and I are hungry we need food. When our souls…
Posted in: Beauty from the Inside Out, Beauty through Boldness, Encouragement, Finding Truth, Friendship, Hope, Making Wise Choices, Overcoming Fear, Overcoming Struggles, Resentment, Uncategorized
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Posted: February 18, 2011
January is an insane month in the gym; people are falling all over each other in the cycling classes, racquet ball court, on the cardio machines and pumping iron. There is a tension and a determined resolution to get in shape and become a “new you” after the Christmas over-indulgence. I can only surmise that many of those people looked in the mirror on January 2nd and were horrified at what they saw. With their new runners and their fancy new Adidas bag, they are off to the gym to make that much needed dramatic change. It is only February 18th and right now you can shoot a canon in the gym and you wouldn’t hurt anyone. What happened to all the enthusiastic people who wanted their new bodies? I can just imagine the language in their head, “I had no idea it would be such hard work; I’m too…
Posted in: Beauty from the Inside Out, Beauty through Boldness, Encouragement, False Belief Systems, Finding Truth, Friendship, Making Wise Choices, Overcoming Struggles
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Posted: January 29, 2011
The feeling of being barefoot and squishing sand between my toes evokes a giddiness of freedom. If I nudge near the ocean just near enough to get the occasional splash of gorgeous, turquoise sea water, and the sun warming my cheeks; I feel like a child again. Free to frolic, run, laugh and giggle. Being barefoot in the sand unleashes a brazen abandon that I find in no other place. I cannot get this freedom when I wear shoes. It is blatantly unrealistic of me to think that I can frolic in the sand and not expect to get sand in my shoes. Those irritating grains of sand that will find that little crevice and rub away at me until I either take off my shoes or leave the beach. Annoying, hurtful and disappointing! An unrealistic expectation is like an irritating grain of sand-a silent thief that will rob us…
Posted in: Beauty from the Inside Out, Beauty through Boldness, Expectations, False Belief Systems, Finding Truth, Hope, Making Wise Choices, Overcoming Struggles, Resentment
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Posted: January 21, 2011
I yearn to be radiant. Not the kind where I walk into a room with the perfect outfit, a forced smile and all the right answers; but a radiance that has the effervescent glow of something more powerful, beautiful. I crave a radiance that does not scream my obvious striving, or cover my messiness and grittiness. I am helpless to attain this but I am on journey and quest to find it. Every morning I start by talking to God about my plans for the day and off I go to embrace the day with a smile on my face. Grittiness sets it. I get irritated, people let me down, and I compare and feel insignificant and wonder if I will ever get it right. I’m not the only one; I hear weary sighs and laments from people everywhere. Demands and expectations have clogged our days and we lose sight…
Posted in: Beauty from the Inside Out, Beauty through Boldness, Encouragement, Expectations, False Belief Systems, Finding Truth, Freedom from Busyness, Hope, Making Wise Choices, Overcoming Fear
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Posted: December 11, 2010
On of our favorite activities is whitewater rafting on the Flathead River, Montana, in June when the water level is high from the snow run off. After slipping on our wet suits and unsightly water shoes, we all grin at each other as we sit and wait for the guides to finish giving us our instructions. “Beware”, they say, “of a sucking, swirling mass of water that churns like a rotary beater. Especially be aware of the eddy called Could be Trouble.” As we start out, I make sure my feet are tucked tightly under the ropes as we all begin to paddle furiously to guide the raft through the boiling water and away from the swirling eddies. Then I see it and my heart starts to palpitate. Black, angry water that is swirling, boiling and the roar is deafening. I know we have encountered the most dangerous of…
Posted in: Beauty from the Inside Out, Beauty through Boldness, Making Wise Choices, Overcoming Fear, Overcoming Struggles
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Posted: September 19, 2010
If you are a task driven person, with a huge sense of responsibility, the words “May you build a ladder to the stars and stand on every rung” have the potential to evoke negative emotions in you. Yet when I hear Bob Dylan’s famous words of his song called “Forever Young”, it spurs me on with excitement of all the possibilities God has given us in this great country. Bob Dylan released this song in 1974 on his album called “Planet Waves”. These lyrics were written by him during the era of the Vietnam War; a time when the fear of nuclear war loomed heavily in people conversations. People were afraid! Yet in spite of this unsettled time in history Bob Dylan reminded us to reach higher and seek out opportunities to experience life in a way that would remind us of God’s blessings. We are still afraid! I hear…
Posted in: Beauty through Boldness, Encouragement, Making Wise Choices, Overcoming Fear, Uncategorized
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Posted: June 4, 2010
A balanced life is over-rated. Before you call me a fanatic and burn me at the TIME MANAGEMENT whiteboard; I want to ask you. “So how is time management” working for you? Over the past ten years we have been saturated with “how to” steps for managing our most precious commodity – time. It wasn’t until the day I threw my palm pilot into the garbage that I realized I had become a slave to time management. With all the time balancing, de-cluttering, workshops, fat day timers, Microsoft calendars and every piece of technology known to mankind to help us with our 24 hour days, we are still rushing, sighing and feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. A balanced life sounds like a wise, wonderful concept; but what happens when all of our best laid “one hour increments” in our day timer fall behind and we fall apart? In a question…
Posted in: Beauty from the Inside Out, Beauty through Boldness, Freedom from Busyness, Obligations and Offenses, Overwhelmed and Undervalued
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Posted: May 21, 2010
“Why would you try; you might fail and end up looking stupid.” Those words have the potential to be burned into our subconscious like a non-writeable dvd. Each morning when our feet hit the ground, the power button gets turned on and the brain kicks into action, taunting us by whispering ancient, crusted worthless lies. One thing we battle almost every day is a powerful, invisible false belief system that is steering us off course for what God designed for our life. This false belief system is a deeply ingrained habit of seeing the world through a set of lenses that was formed by our perception and interpretation of external events and words. These influences came from our parents, neighbors, siblings, teachers and other people that were part of our day to day activities. They are false because most of them are manmade rules and perceptions and they don’t line…
Posted in: Beauty from the Inside Out, Beauty through Boldness, Overcoming Stuggles, Uncategorized
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