Holiday Grounding 4.0: Love is Near

Breathe, O breathe Thy loving Spirit, Into every troubled breast!
Let us all in Thee inherit; Let us find that promised rest.
-Charles Wesley, Love Divine.

Anticipation

We’re closing in on Christmas. Whether you celebrate the holidays or not, I imagine you will agree with me here: anticipation is in the air. This anticipation is not just for the gifts and festivities of the season’s climax; this anticipation is for a new year, a fresh start. 2016 has been quite an interesting one to say the least. Whatever your experience is, I want to applaud you for showing up and staying courageous and committed to the process.  It’s that feeling of finishing a long  book (preferably a hard copy), placing it ever so gingerly on the book shelf next to the host of other old companions you’ve learned from, and then standing back with a deep sigh of prideful relief as you admire your handiwork.

Homestretch

I feel the same surge of prideful relief as I round the corner and lock into that last stretch of a year lived fully. It’s almost like adrenaline kicks in and my feet seem to carry themselves over the finish line: the hard work’s been done and now what’s left is Christmas shopping. (Nope, still haven’t finished.)

We’ve been on a journey of Holiday Grounding this month. I know I’ve needed it, just like I need lots of reminders. With that said, I want to quickly point out those high level road posts—where we’ve been and where we’re going.  More importantly, I’d then like to talk about movies and the Beatles.  Here goes…

Comparison sucks

Comparison steals not only joy, but opportunity, creativity, and focus. “Winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners.” Remember that quote? I don’t know who said it, but they nailed it. The next time you find yourself comparing yourself to someone else this week, get grounded in gratitude. Pull out the old gratitude journal and immediately jot down a couple things you are thankful for. Game changer. Let go of that scarcity mindset and lean into this phrase: “I am more than enough, right this minute.”

Advent creates space

Advent is traditionally recognized as a religious observance, but I believe it’s a pathway of hope and anticipation for anyone who longs to create space for new, powerful gifts and opportunities. What are those unique dreams and desires you long to see become reality in 2017? Create space today for them by letting go of old stuffy attachments that no longer serve you then write down a better fit for the season you’re in. Give it a word, one word, and cling to it; let it feed your soul.

Generosity releases fear

It’s true. As we give out of our need, we align with the truth of something bigger and more powerful than fear: love. I’m not saying we ditch our boundaries and overlook needs; far from it. I’m saying acknowledge the feeling attached to whatever it is you need, risk uncertainty, and knowing that God is good and the universe is working in our favor, create that feeling in your life by paying it forward for someone around you in need. I’ve come to believe human frailty and suffering is one of the most elemental, binding forces.  Generosity opens up so much connection.

All you need is Love? Really?

I love the movie Love Actually. It’s my favorite modern Christmas classic. I love it for so many reasons, namely the dry British humor (I’m a frustrated Anglophile at heart), rockstar cast (Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, and Collin Firth, anyone?), and the collection of messy, real life stories all strewn together throughout the film. It’s a little raunchy, a little sad, quite comical, and very clumsy all at once. I watched this the other night with my sister, Lauren over a trough full of Pad Thai for probably the 27th time. It never gets old.

Lennon & McCartney

Why is this? Beyond obvious reasons aforementioned, my hunch is it tells a story of Love, perfectly imperfect, just like you and me. In the recesses of each storyline, we see a common thread, a choice, albeit rickety and awkward at times, to open up to a love that feels uncertain, risky.  I think Lennon and McCartney had it all wrong. Sure, All you Need is Love is a masterful, catchy tune…one of my favorites, however, if love is indeed all around us, and we choose not to see it, embrace it, and lean into it, we might as well just Let it be and take that Long and Winding Road back home— we’re going Nowhere Man. (See what I did there?)

Get Still

We’ve been on a journey this year and it’s all coming to a head in the next several days. One of my most valuable gifts of 2016 has been sharing a bit more of that journey with you through this blog. I swear most weeks I’m writing because I need to hear every word of what I’m saying. Taking our own advice is often the hardest thing to do.

Choose

Today, as you wrap up any preparations, cooking, and shopping, please join me as I get still and choose Love. Love is right where we are, deep inside our hearts, and no one can take that away. It might get messy and it might get lonely- that’s okay. The choice is still ours to make.
We have amazing things ahead on this journey.  For now, I pray the season’s beauty overtakes you: the lights, the laughter, the complexity, all of it. I pray you will find peace in the fact that you’re not alone, ever. Lean into love, friend, it’s there, waiting for you, and it will not disappoint.  Have a very Merry Christmas!

Love & Gratitude,

katie

xoxo

Holiday Grounding 3.0: Generosity of Spirit

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

I never start Christmas shopping until the week (or day) before Christmas.  I know, ludicrous.  I literally have an emotional and mental block against starting any earlier.  Call it procrastination, call it laziness, call it stupid, call it whatever you want— I’m cool with it.  I love a hard deadline and have always been drawn to excitement and adventure with a heavy dash of adrenalin.  Practical and organized are not typically words people use to describe me, quite the contrary actually.   Lead with vulnerability, right?  I’m also very cool with that.

Liturgy

That said, if you’re looking for a holiday gift guide, keep looking, this will surely dissappoint.  If you’re looking for a strong shot of reality to take the edge off all the holiday frenzy, I’m your girl.  I want to look beneath the liturgy of commerce, all the glitter and lights, and recover a far more beautiful and valuable thing.  Your friends and pocket books will thank you.   Let’s get grounded in generosity of spirit.

Gifting

This week, we continue building out the Holiday Grounding series and I’m super excited to explore the practice of cultivating an inner generosity, which sometimes manifests in the form of a pretty package.  Gifts are a significant aspect of the season, and there are two sides of that coin, like most things in life.  If the stuff of gifts sits on the throne of this Advent season, the giver and relationship become obsolete.

Have you ever received a gift and thought to yourself, “hmm, this is so random, I have a feeling this is an unwanted trinket of old excavated from the back corner of a misfit toy closet and i’m now the lucky recipient.“ It sounds bad, right?  Ungrateful, cynical, and well, totally fair game because we’ve all done it!  Chances are, the giver of that gifted object wanted you to feel special, valued, so they scrounged up something quickly to wrap, give, and communicate that thoughtfulness.

Love Language

In those instances, I feel so much love because there is no ego behind the gift.  It’s simply about the act of generosity, the heartbeat of that exchange—that is the gain.  What about you?  What do you love about receiving a gift?  Is it the wrapping job, the contents, the monetary value, or perhaps the intention behind the gift?  We are all so unique and there are no wrong answers. Gift giving is a love language in and of itself and how many of us communicate feelings.  There is nothing selfish or surface about speaking this language as your mother tongue.

Song

I love receiving gifts with a story behind them that were meant just for me.  Perhaps my most treasured gift I’ve ever received is a song my husband wrote and recorded for me last year.  Besides being a brilliant work of art, truth and vulnerability bleed through the lyrics, instrumentation, and production.  It cost him nothing, yet is worth its weight in heartfelt gold—it reminds me I’m treasured and deeply loved.  Leave it to a song to paint passions and cut to the core of our emotions.

Reality Check

That’s lovely and sweet for sure and I’m grateful beyond measure.  Here’s the deal though: for most of my adult life, the holidays have been incredibly painful as I’ve walked through loads of dark, chronic depression and anxiety, only heightened by the unrealistic expectations of all that is “merry and bright.”

Rat Pack

Gift-giving felt vapid, rote, even obligatory.  Sure, I still enjoyed the hustle and bustle of shopping and wrapping all to the velvety soundtrack of Frank, Bing, and Nat, yet my weak and wounded voice couldn’t fully join in.  None of it really mattered, though it was a welcomed distraction.  I’ve shared bits of that journey in previous posts, yet I feel it extremely important for you to know that this whole idea of holiday grounding, generosity, what have you, comes from a very sensitive and real place of pain—bleak days seen through a  hopeless tear-filled stare.

Certainty

Generosity transforms need into plenty.  I saw this growing up in my own family as we experienced some stark financial stretches.  It never mattered, my parents always gave out of their place of need, without hesitation.  I saw miraculous provision appear time and time again due to this lifestyle of faith.  Mom constantly delivered to neighbors, offered prayers for hurting friends, and they gave resources freely, whether in plenty or in want.  Though there may have been financial lack at times, there was always abundance and generosity of spirit—a certainty that faithful giving always manifests a healthy return.

Ruthie

Many of you are staring felt needs down these days: need for connection, community, belonging, health, acceptance, provision, peace, perhaps even hope to get through the day.  I know that feeling all too well, especially this time of year.  You may have finished your shopping back in August, but you don’t care, all you can see is your pain.  A couple of months back, my beautiful friend Ruthie Lindsey shared her inspiring journey through immeasurable physical pain and relationship losswith us on the blog.  Her poignant words bear repeating:

“If we lead from a place of brokenness, insecurity or bitterness, that is exactly who they will think we are.  But, if we lead from a place of love and wholeness, with compassion and strength, they are able to see us for who we really are.  I started to speak out loud the beautiful things I saw in people, places and experiences I was having.  I was looking for it and I was speaking it, and what’s so amazing is that as I was looking for beauty all around me, I was reconnecting with my community.  

The more I made myself get out of my bed and connect and love people, the less I was noticing how much I was hurting.  The very nature of pain is selfish and pulls our focus inward.  When I focused my energy outward, when I was doing things that were life-giving, things that I loved, I wasn’t thinking about my pain.”

Clarity

What do you desperately need to receive this season?  Clarity as it relates to our needs and desires is clutch.  I need healing in a few places of my life that feel very broken and unsettled.  I don’t know what that healing will look like and what form it will come in, yet I’m committing to a simple practice of generosity that sees the world around me through the lens of beauty and possibility rather than hurt and unresolve.

Name the feeling

This practice starts with intention.  What feeling is at the root of that which I long for and need?  Is it healing, or love, or worthiness?  Is it confidence, or chosenness, or validation?  In my case, it is relational healing, so that is exactly what I will give away in whatever capacity I can.  I’ll step into those shoes of empathy and see the gorgeous potential in everyone I encounter.   Like attracts like and that healing will come, I believe that.

Oil & Canvas

Maya Angelou rocked my world with this one so I’ll leave you with it today as a reminder for us to dig down deep into our unique brand of generosity.  She reveals, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  Without a word or a deed, we have the power to be the reason someone smiles today.   Your essential self, your brand of generosity, is so special and the world needs to feel it.  That’s the most valuable gift the season.

Sure, that swoon-worthy oversized abstract oil painting I stumbled upon last week in Ed Nash’sBelmont gallery blows my mind.  However,  oil and canvas don’t exactly do it for me when what I’m really needing is a hug and to know I’m enough.  Slow down, simplify, and give freely from your place of need—it’s a most courageous act of faith and a magnet for the rich favor awaiting you in 2017.

Love & Gratitude,

Katie

P.S (I haven’t forgotten about last week’s homework! How’d you do??  The suspense is killing me… please email me, I want to hear all about it.)

xoxo

Holiday Grounding 1.0: The Comparison Conundrum

Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.

-Mary Oliver

I spent Thanksgiving week traveling up the coast of California.  It’d been a while since I carved out some space and time from work to rest, refuel, and get inspired.  Bustling cities and new scenery are food and drink for my constantly grazing right brain.  Beauty feeds my soul and feast I did all the way from the stunning beaches and glamorous people of Malibu to the magical cliffs and redwoods of Big Sur to the charming European-influenced smattering of architecture, shops, and restaurants in Carmel-by-the-sea.

Sacred

I’m still processing the aesthetic overload of cultural flavors, seascapes, energy, color, and well…just beauty.  Beyond grateful, I’m also spiritually rejuvenated.  I always feel closer to God when I travel.  There is a sacred gravity in the vastness of creation. It seems the face of God is nearly visible for me in nature, diverse people groups, and artistic expression.  The ocean speaks to me of this as well, that gorgeous beast of a force.  I’m reminded that love is so big and powerful, the more I open myself up to it, my tiny universe will grow and expand to absorb its Divinity.

Panic

After a much delayed flight back to Nashville and one heavily scented Uber car from the airport, (think Bath and Body Works Warm Vanilla Sugar overkill) all the way home, I hit the pillow and was out fast and deep,  fully satisfied from the week’s wanderings.  I woke up and decided it was the perfect grey coffee shop- kind of morning, so I ventured out for a drive to grab a very late  breakfast at my favorite local joint.  Strangely, I started to  notice this icky panicky feeling rising up in my chest.  About halfway out of the neighborhood my body and brain resounded an unlikely bleating alarm: HELP!

Christmas Vacation

I’ve had my fair share of anxiety before, yet this was completely out of the blue and barking on the heels of a restful week away.  Trying not to judge it, I kept on driving so as to allow it to just come and go.  It kept rising strong.  I looked up in frustration and beheld a very large, very sterile looking house  in front of me resembling a cross between Lord Farquaad’s castle in Shrek and the Griswold’s in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.  I did a full-on 360 head turn in slow motion only to discover each and every house around me completely lit up with blow up Santa’s, candy canes, and trees gloriously dressed in red bows and perfectly spaced white lights.

Too Much

Holy Mother!  The holiday race had begun and I was apparently still stretching (alone) at the starting line.  I was pretty sure we had a few strands of lights tangled up in the basement, and I bought a cute life-sized gold wire reindeer from Home Depot last year that nodded its head and lit up at night but our dog attacked it leaving it a mangled mess.  Who has the time to do all of that decorating, anyway? And the day after thanksgiving?  Apparently everyone!? I felt I’d shown up under-dressed a day late to the ball, and my lovely mother taught me to never dress down.  This festive extravagance was overwhelming.  I’d likely still be climbing out from underneath a week’s worth of laundry until Friday at best with my impending deadlines and catch up from the week away.  I was officially suffering a full-on holiday over-expectation attack.

Space & coffee

Okay, okay, I realize my story may sound ridiculous; first-world problems at best.  I finally drove off, the pity party died down, and I talked myself off the cliff after my second cup of coffee and a large helping of perspective.  Here’s the deal though: the catalyst of this anxiety is relative, however, the cold hard truth underlying is one size fits all and may be worth trying on.  Comparison and short-sighted vision were vying for the precious joy I’d gleaned while away on holiday.  Gratitude flooded my heart just an hour earlier, and in an instant, I was ready to forfeit everything in the name of Clark Griswold. Oh, hell no.

Green

Comparison is ALWAYS and in every form a total waste of time and emotional energy.  Period.  I love the Theodore Roosevelt quote, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”  Nailed it.  For all you Enneagram nerds out there, and further, for all you Enneagram fours (The Romantic/Individualist), comparison to others and resulting envy is a familiar pitfall to be aware of.  As a flaming four, I know this struggle all too well.  There’s this insidious coaxing inner dialog that insists the grass isn’t just greener on the other side, it’s sprouting up pure gold over there and what’s in front of me today is a waste of time.

Gratitude

The quick and failsafe exit strategy out of comparison prison is the ever-ready pathway of gratitude.  Remember the homework assignment from last week? Revisit last week’s post if you need a refresher on gratitude journals and do yourself and loved ones a favor: start one.  The minute I stepped out of gratitude and the boundaries of my truth and intention, I slipped into that old familiar chaos of comparison—NOT a good look.

Zoom Out

Then zoom out like one of those fancy wide-lens movie cameras on wheels you see in the behind the scenes.  (I’m sure there’s a proper name for them.)  I witnessed the power of this kind of perspective with new pristine clarity on my road trip up the coast.  I look back at the pictures I took certain points along the way and sure, they’re pretty.  Yet they’re mere snippets of the grand overture that played in my heart as I witnessed the mix of atmospheric changes, crashing waves, bursts of light, laughter, and conversation weaving it all together.  It was a most enchanting soundtrack; a long, unforgettable kiss of space and time.

I’ll Pass

So friends, this season when the comparison temptress calls and lays on her thick irresistible charm and beckons you to look outside of your truth, tell her you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.  Remind her where you’ve been and where you’re going and kindly inform her who’s in charge here.  Tell her how grateful you are for the unconventional twists and turns, the roadblocks, the free and fast stretches of open highway, and all those detours and gains—they have graciously led you to the place you are now.  Explain this curious notion ofacceptance and abundance: we can actually rejoice with those around us who thrive and succeed because the universe is a beautifully loving place and there is more than enough to go around.  Finally, thank her for her time and efforts: the offer’s attractive, yet you must respectfully decline.  Bid her farewellfor now, you’ve got a story to keep writing.

Let me know how it goes. 

Love,

katie

xoxo