Inspiring and hilarious read about FOMO.

Dad’s letter to his little girl {can’t. stop. crying.}

Breaking up with Athens – love this blog post about my favorite place.

Beautiful poem/story inspired by 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:9

Just bought this skort from ZARA and can’t wait to wear it everywhere!

Why you should clear your schedule.

How to have a great week!

“Big hips? You don’t have time to worry about big hips.”

104 ways to boost your energy

Have a beautiful day. xo!

Definitely download Everest, Happier and Juice today!

Everest is an iPhone app that I use to track my goals and create steps to take to accomplish them. The app features a Challenges section where you can view categories of challenges curated by other app users. For example, under the Adventure category, a few goals are: climb your first rock wall, go on a weekend camping tip and hike a national park. This section is my favorite because it allows me to set goals and dreams that I didn’t even know I wanted to do beforehand. I also highly recommend checking out the Everest Journal, which features inspiring stories and interviews. Bonus: the company is based in San Francisco! Here’s what the app looks like:

Happier is a beautifully designed iPhone app that allows you to share and collect little life moments that make you happy. The app encourages you to share three each day and place them into different categories. My top categories are being outside, family, learning new things and being grateful. It’s an awesome way to document the little things you are thankful for each day and it’s really cool to go back and see the specials moments you’ve experience over time. Writing down and consciously recognizing things that make me happy and thankful is something that’s really important to me – and this app makes it way easier. Here’s what the app looks like:

Juice is an app that encourages healthy change. The app was created by Mindbloom and allows you to rate and track your sleep, exercise and eating habits each day. Each week you’ll receive a report that shares your activity patterns affecting your energy. My favorite feature of the app is the library of tips related to exercise, sleep, nutrition, mood, relationships, balance and stress from dozens of top healthy experts. One tip I loved was “build in fun activities into your schedule” and the app gave examples like: host a game night with friends, ask friends what funny things have happened to them recently, ride roller coasters, act like a kid! Here’s what the app looks like:

People don’t determine your worth.

Your body doesn’t determine your worth.

Society doesn’t determine your worth.

Your past doesn’t determine your worth.

Your future doesn’t determine your worth.

Your talents don’t determine your worth.

Your shortcomings don’t determine your worth.

Your relationship status doesn’t determine your worth.

Your clothes don’t determine your worth.

Your occupation doesn’t determine your worth.

Your mistakes don’t determine your worth.

You are worthy.

You are valuable because you exist. Not because of what you do or what you have done – but simply because you are. 

— Max Lucado  

{Amazing artwork found on Etsy by artist presentbydesign - need to purchase ASAP!}

Hope you enjoy as much as I did! xx

Dear Cutie-Pie,

Recently, your mother and I were searching for an answer on Google. Halfway through entering the question, Google returned a list of the most popular searches in the world. Perched at the top of the list was “How to keep him interested.”

It startled me. I scanned several of the countless articles about how to be sexy and sexual, when to bring him a beer versus a sandwich, and the ways to make him feel smart and superior.

And I got angry.

Little One, it is not, has never been, and never will be your job to “keep him interested.”

Little One, your only task is to know deeply in your soul — in that unshakeable place that isn’t rattled by rejection and loss and ego — that you are worthy of interest. (If you can remember that everyone else is worthy of interest also, the battle of your life will be mostly won. But that is a letter for another day.)

If you can trust your worth in this way, you will be attractive in the most important sense of the word: you will attract a boy who is both capable of interest and who wants to spend his one life investing all of his interest in you.

Little One, I want to tell you about the boy who doesn’t need to be kept interested, because he knows you are interesting:

I don’t care if he puts his elbows on the dinner table — as long as he puts his eyes on the way your nose scrunches when you smile. And then can’t stop looking.

I don’t care if he can’t play a bit of golf with me — as long as he can play with the children you give him and revel in all the glorious and frustrating ways they are just like you.

I don’t care if he doesn’t follow his wallet — as long as he follows his heart and it always leads him back to you.

I don’t care if he is strong — as long as he gives you the space to exercise the strength that is in your heart.

I couldn’t care less how he votes — as long as he wakes up every morning and daily elects you to a place of honor in your home and a place of reverence in his heart.

I don’t care about the color of his skin — as long as he paints the canvas of your lives with brushstrokes of patience, and sacrifice, and vulnerability, and tenderness.

I don’t care if he was raised in this religion or that religion or no religion — as long as he was raised to value the sacred and to know every moment of life, and every moment of life with you, is deeply sacred.

In the end, Little One, if you stumble across a man like that and he and I have nothing else in common, we will have the most important thing in common:

You.

Because in the end, Little One, the only thing you should have to do to “keep him interested” is to be you.

Your eternally interested guy,

Daddy

Photo found here

For cooking often five meals for five picky eaters.
For braiding and curling and straightening and rebraiding my hair.
For singing at the top of your lungs while driving a minivan.
For driving those 24.2 miles every day, two times a day to take us to a Christian school.
For watching countless basketball and soccer games and cheerleading competitions and cross country races – and for always cheering the loudest.
For believing in the power of transformation and the miracle of metamorphosis. The theological term for that is faith.
For caring about my friends, for investing in their lives.
For constantly advocating for me and praying for me.
For helping me pick my homecoming dress and my dorm room curtains and my flight to California.
For dealing with my mood swings, my brown-turned-black-turned-blonde-turned red hair and my bad attitude.
For putting us three girls above yourself and your wants and needs day-in and day-out.
For instilling a love of reading in me. I love that we now read the same books!
For consistently challenging me and encouraging me.
For dinners together and coffee dates together and just sitting there together.
For cleaning our socks and finding our shoes and brushing our hair – often all at one time.
For your “lets do it!” attitude and openness to adventure.
For pretending like you weren’t mad at us when we stepped on and broke your antique table or disappointed in us when we broke your heart from bad decisions throughout adolescence.
For waking up in the middle of the night to soothe me, to cradle me, to sing me to sleep.
For getting through toddler temper tantrums and teenage attitudes and quarter-life crisises
For reminding me of “the other side” of the story or argument.
For exemplifying Christ’s love and grace to me and everyone else.
For being an active participant in each of our lives – for not being an “on the sidelines”-kinda of mom
For soothing me with Nikita ate my American Girl dolls hair and when Rugby ate my Nine West pumps
For pretending not to cry when I packed up a few suitcases and moved across the country.
For taking us to the library, to the park, to the pool, to grandmas.
For for those long drives to Athens to pick me up for four years straight.
For your enthusiasm and excitement even for the little things.
For extending your life to those around you, for literally and figuratively giving the shirt off your back to anyone and everyone.
For living inwardly and upwardly and outwardly.
Thank you for being my safe place.

I’ve caught myself getting more emotional as I get older and I started crying at CVS reading Mother’s Day cards earlier this week. A little embarrassing, right? Thinking about packaging up all I want to say to my mom and how I want to thank her doesn’t seem quite possible. I’m so filled with joy and gratitude thinking about the delicate places I’ve been over the past 24 years and how my mom has been in each and every one of those places with me, through and through. I can confidently say that I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am without my mom. A mom never quite stops doing her job – it didn’t end when I went to college or when I graduated or when I moved across the country. It hasn’t ended now that I’m an adult and don’t need her to pick me up from school or brush my hair or tuck me in to bed. She’s still an active participant in my life but in a deeper, adult friendship kind of way and for that I’m so thankful. Our relationship is so valuable and sacred to me that it often brings me to tears – and it is right now.

Thank you Momma, for being you.

Dear Patient Girl,

There will come a time when you can’t really even remember why or how you were so hurt and devastated. It will even become difficult to try to recreate the memories and the pain of the memories. Someday you feel complete healing.

Suddenly, the parts of your life that used to hurt so much will simply be short chapters in your rich life story. Where once you thought that devastating experiences were THE STORY of your life, you will see that they were actually only just the set-up and the build-up and the lead-in of the real story.

There will come a time when your hurts no longer define you or consume you, when they are just sprinklings of the big picture, the big story of your big life. There will even come a time when you will see how necessary those parts were to your story, that nothing else could have made sense without them.

You will see. Be patient with it all. Every good story has opposition, tragedy, and the overcoming of it all. YOUR STORY is a beautiful big rich story. Embrace all of the parts of it and see them in their proper perspective.

You are the brave heroine. You are the main character. You have such a beautiful, beautiful story and there are so many incredible chapters still to come.

Keep being brave. You are so loved.

this quote from david levithan’s book every day filled my thoughts as we watched the sunset over the beach at big sur. we caught the sunset through the trees while walking down this sandy path in between the parking lot and the beach. it was the perfect time of day – when day finally hits night, when the sun and the sky become one yellowy, pink and orange glow. we sat back and took it all in. it was one of those special moments hard to explain but has that power to stick with me for awhile. happy tuesday!

more big sur photos here and here.

3 pounds.

That’s all it took to send my thoughts into a tailspin. Two seconds with my feet planted on a scale was all it took for my entire day to feel ruined.

You know the thoughts that started. I considered the wine, the candy, the burritos I’d had over the past week. I remembered the day when I met a friend for ice cream instead of exercising and the mornings I just couldn’t rouse myself out of bed for a run. I grabbed the back of my thighs—you know, the place we’ve all grown up learning to squeeze and hate—and vowed to live and eat differently. Spinach, no carbs, lots of water, and for heavens sake lay off the dessert.

My thoughts spiraled in that crazy place. You know the one. The place where you know you are crazy, that you are not the fattest, grossest person to ever grace the planet, but you can’t stop the thoughts. Suddenly, everything looks big and swollen and you notice the double chin that really isn’t there, but you’re just sure it is.

This crazy zone is the same place we go when we have absolutely nothing to wear. If you are married or you at one time lived at home with your dad, they give you that look that says: “Hey sister. Calm Down. I’m starring at a closet full of clothes and there’s at least 10 outfits on the floor right now. Why don’t you just breath.” But you can’t breath or calm down because you have somewhere important to be with absolutely nothing in that dreadful closet that remotely will fit the occasion. And it all just feels crippling.

Loving our bodies can be one of the hardest parts of womanhood. We’re taught to hate and to hide what God has given us. I think it’s good and maybe even freeing to admit out loud that we often feel like a number on a scale, even if we know that number doesn’t define us. It’s healthy to admit we struggle with comparing our bodies to our friends and hoping one day we’ll win what feels like an endless battle.

I love a story Anne Lamott tells. Her friend lay dying in a hospital bed, body filled with cancer, and Anne was visiting her before a book signing that evening. In what became a pivotal moment, she asked her friend:

‘Does this dress make my hips look big?’ Her dying friend looked at her and said, ‘Annie, you don’t have that kind of time.’

Big hips? You don’t have time to worry about big hips.

Beautiful, especially considering the recent events in Boston that made us all consider the terrible brevity of life.

I struggle and I know you struggle too. Your body is not a problem and you are not a number on a scale. The truth is I’ve grown significantly in this area and learned to love my body over the years and maybe you have too. But in some ways, it will always be a fight not to succumb to hatred of our bodies in stride with culture. And that’s ok. Our job as redeemed women is to keep fighting to focus on what really matters, instead of allowing hateful thoughts to steal the joy of living, loving, creating, and embracing—all the beautiful parts of life.

The world needs women–strong, brave, and beautiful women willing to love the forgotten, the outcast. Women willing to bare the burdens of our sisters and let them know it’s going to be ok.

I don’t have time to let 3 pounds or big hips or a week of dessert to occupy space in my mind. And I hope you don’t either.