choosing authenticity

So, I am sorry I have been so bad at this (blogging that is), but it takes a certain kind of inspiration to get me to write. To be honest, I haven’t felt very inspired lately. Then I read this. I set the free download as my desktop. I read it everyday. I am trying to do what it says. It is so much harder than I had thought it would be, but I feel good about it. It is much scarier than I thought it would be, but I truly feel that it will help to make fell better about the person that I am (not who I am supposed to be). So, I challenge you to choose authenticity and see what happens in your life.

i will never fully comprehend…

…well there are lots of things I will never fully comprehend. But right now there are a few that come to mind.

The one that baffles me the most right now…

A family friend,only 43 years old, went to the doctor Thursday with a headache. He died yesterday. Bacterial meningitis. A wife and a teenage son remain to pick up the pieces and live a new life. I just don’t understand. My heart breaks for them. May God be with them.

This song has been a favorite lately and helps me with some of those things that I can’t fully comprehend…here are the lyrics and the video.

Broken by Lifehouse

The broken clock is a comfort, it helps me sleep tonight
Maybe it can stop tomorrow from stealing all my time
I am here still waiting though I still have my doubts
I am damaged at best, like you’ve already figured out

I’m falling apart, I’m barely breathing
With a broken heart that’s still beating
In the pain there is healing
In your name I find meaning
So I’m holdin’ on, I’m holdin’ on, I’m holdin’ on
I’m barely holdin’ on to you

The broken locks were a warning you got inside my head
I tried my best to be guarded, I’m an open book instead
I still see your reflection inside of my eyes
That are looking for a purpose, they’re still looking for life

I’m falling apart, I’m barely breathing
With a broken heart that’s still beating
In the pain is there is healing
In your name I find meaning
So I’m holdin’ on, I’m holdin’ on, I’m holdin’ on
I’m barely holdin’ on to you

I’m hangin’ on another day
Just to see what you will throw my way
And I’m hangin’ on to the words you say
You said that I will, will be ok

The broken lights on the freeway left me here alone
I may have lost my way now, having forgot my way home

all you need is love…

My friend Elisabet is getting married in January and being that she used to be my roommate and is one of my best friends, she knows how much I love photography! I can’t remember how it happened…either she asked..or told…or I suggested…but I took her engagement pictures a couple of weeks ago. Well, not just hers, but her and her awesome fiance–James. So, here are a few that I love!

James and Elisabet–you are perfect for each other and it was so fun to be able to do this for you!

You both are just too cute…oh, I mean you look manly James–not cute!

Thanks friends!

A “must have” for all Christmas lists!

This made my roommate and I fall over in fits of hysterical laughter the other night. It may even have made me pee a little…well maybe not, but that would have been even funnier. I am also frightened that I will be finding one of these under the tree at my grandmother’s..she has a t.v. shopping problem…we’re looking into a 12 step program!

I hope you enjoy! And don’t forget to have 1– or 12– of these on hand for your next bonfire or football game!

the great pumpkin…

Last night I carved pumpkins and watched Charlie Brown Halloween shows on TV with Ally…such a great evening. We had so much fun. Never mind that I almost cut myself multiple times or that I almost ruined my “design” more than once or that we got orange goo everywhere or that I was so into it that I let a few four letter words slip–we had fun! We reminisced about when we used to carve pumpkins as kids…such great memories. This year will not be filled with costumes or with trick-or-treating, but we do have some pretty cute pumpkins for our deck, errr should I say, balcony. Have a very happy Halloween!

before...

the knife got stuck... : (

yummy

that's what it's all about!

After pictures will come later…we couldn’t get good pictures last night!

come on, get happy!

So, recently I have noticed that I let stupid things bother me and I sometimes just choose to be in a bad mood…no more of this! It is a waste of time to spend precious moments being unhappy. Now I am not unhappy with myself or my situation in life or anything like that…I have just found myself, at times, being unhappy for no good reason at so…

Things that make me happy at this moment in my life…

1. family-even though we are all crazy, i would argue that i have one of the best, if not THE best, family ever

2. friends-you are all pretty amazing…thank you!

3. mittens…with finger flaps..or glittens as we decided they were called Sunday night at youth group

4. lime green plates that i eat my breakfast off of…a little thing…but they make me really happy

5. mars cafe coffee and the cups they come in…white cup w/ bright and beautiful red sleeve with a wonderfully designed logo…nice choice of text…if you know me you know that type makes me super happy

6. beautiful, moving, amazing, life changing photography…check these websites out if you have time

tara whitney

amy doerring

jay reilly

7. PAPER…I know..huge dork, right? i absolutely LOVE paper…mostly scrapbook paper, but I also love stacks of yummy colored cardstock.

8. eric hutchinson’s album: sounds like this

9. carving pumpkins-which i will be doing tonight with ally

10. vanilla bean noel body cream from Bath and Body Works…not a fan of vanilla, but this one is almost divine

11. sweatshirts and sweatpants…wish i was wearing them right now!

well, back to work! now i am really happy..for real…what makes you happy?

this is real life.

So, I stole this title from my dear friend Liz. I don’t think she will mind.

Liz, this post is for you my dear. (Kinda weird to put it on my blog..but that is where I am drawn.)

I just read your “this is real life” post and my eyes are wet with tears for you and your family. I could not help but find similarities in your story and mine. This is a little out of context, but my story took place at the end of this past May. My hope is that you can find comfort in the fact that I have gone through exactly what you are going through right now. I will always be here for you and will always be praying for you.

……………………………..

Let’s start at the beginning. I am the oldest of 14 grandchildren on my mom’s side of the family. The next grandchild is about 5 years younger than me. So, I got my grandparents and great-grandparents to myself for 5 whole years…let’s be honest…I am the favorite. I have always been super close to my grandparents because I was lucky enough in to grow up with them in the same town. My whole family is very close and you need to know that to understand how hard this was on all of us.

Some of my favorite, most cherished, and most vivid memories from my childhood have my Grandpa Paul in them. It is hard for me to imagine family gatherings and life in general without him. No Grandpa Paul sneaking to open his presents with the kids on Christmas morning…no 4th of July birthday parties…no inappropriate, lewd comments, or dirty jokes at the worst possible times…no more hilarious stories about how naughty he was as a kid…no more “Meggys!”…

He had bone cancer and his meds started making him really sick in April of 2007. I was a senior in college and getting ready to go to Tanzania, Africa for a month to study. We were told that he would probably not make to the end of May. So, I went with my mom to his apartment in assisted living to say my “goodbyes.” This proved to be the hardest thing I have ever really had to do. He was in his underwear when we got there…so Grandpa…he was pretty out of it, but he knew who we were. He sat up in his bed and talked to my mom and me…well, really we yelled…he never liked to wear his hearing aids… I told him I was going to Africa and that I was taking the camera lenses that he gave me along…This brought him so much joy and I will never forget that smile…ever. We got ready to leave…I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of knowing that you will never see someone again..but it is gut-wrenching…I leaned over and hugged his frail body and couldn’t help but think about the belly that he used to have…the one I used to love to pretend was a drum….now there was a skeleton that was being eaten away at by cancer covered in loosely draped skin. What followed next almost made my knees buckle…he began to cry. He said he wanted so badly to come with me and to be able to do all of the things he used to do…this is when I thought, “He needs to go Home, he’s ready to go Home.” He needs to be with Jesus and with my great-grandma again.

Well, while I was in Africa they took him off his meds. I got home and he was still with us. He was a completely different person…he was my loving, happy-go-lucky, inappropriate, joking grandpa again. We got him for another year.

This past May I received a call from my mom and she told me that they decided it was time for him to go into Hospice care. This was hard for all of us because we knew it meant the end was near, but we were all so thankful that God had given him to us for an extra year. About a week and a half after he went into Hospice I received another call from my mom while I was at work. She said that I needed to come to the hospital after I got off work because he only had a day or so left.

It was a Friday. I got to the hospital in my home town and my entire family was there. This was perhaps the greatest and most beautiful I have seen. It was a very sad time, but it also one of my favorite memories. If you know me or my family, you know we are a little loud. At one point my 10 year old cousin came into the room and said, “I can hear you guys ALL the way down the hall!” We spent the evening together laughing,  taking turns holding grandpa’s hands, making him comfortable, sharing stories, doing puzzles, being a family…then it was time to leave.

The nurse said that he was in the early stages of death so it probably happen sometime the next day. My mom and my aunts stayed at the hospital with him. At about 2am my dad woke me up because my mom had called to say that the end was near…much faster than we had thought. He was gone when we got there. His warm. lifeless body was in the bed, but he looked so peaceful. It was sad, but it was a blessing all at the same time. I leaned over and whispered my thoughts to him one last time, kissed him on the cheek, and sobbed. I think it was my cousin, Bo, who hugged me after that extremely difficult moment. Thank you for that Bo.

The next few days were filled with funeral preparations. We went through pictures and scrapbooks (my grandpa had pried the “s” off of one so that it said “crap book”…so him). I learned so much about my great-grandfather and my great-grandmother in those days…it makes me wish I had asked them more questions while they were here. One book had a series of telegrams between my great-grandpa and great-grandma during World War II. It was so neat to see the love they had for each other represented in a few short phrases.

Grandpa-I am so happy that you are with grandma now, but know there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about you…both of you.

……………………….

Well, that was much longer than originally intended, but cathartic at the same time. The tears are streaming down, but they are filled with happy, loving memories…not sadness. Thank you for listening…reading…

whole new worlds…

So, recently I joined a book club. It is a group of about 15 twenty-somethings and we all get together and discuss a book, drink wine, and eat food. (Alright, so the first month I didn’t exactly finish the book…)

But for November we are reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I want to make sure that I finish the book this time so I began reading last night.

Tonight, I am reading while lying in bed, and I can smell the book…that new book smell…you know? Glue, paper, ink… It transports me back to the days of childhood when I could devour a book in hours.

(So much different from most things I read for college…besides Austen and Shakespeare…oh, and my Norton Anthology of British Literature, of course…if you’re reading this Dr. S. –and in that case: don’t check the grammar )

I was one of those kids that liked the indoors… I LOVED reading. Books used to have to be pried out of my hands so that I would sleep.

I still LOVE reading. I love the fact that just by opening a book…by thumbing through page after page of paper….you can be swept away to some place completely different from where you are…worlds where a little boy can be a wizard…where a teenage girl can have such a powerful, real, non-physical, transcendent love with a vampire…where best friends can find a pair of pants that fits each and every one of them…where children can travel through time to find their father who has been lost for what seems like forever…where you can give a mouse a cookie, but he will, most assuredly, want a glass of milk…where a man can come to earth, give his life, and take away my sins, though I will never deserve it…I could go on forever…

I love the intimacy of having a book– a new world where ANYTHING is possible– in my hands. I love curling up with the characters in my book and going on a journey. This is perhaps why I have such a hard time finishing books. I become attached to the characters and the places in books to the point of not wanting to let them go. Really. When I do finish a book, I have to mourn the loss of those people and their world…unless there is a sequel…and then I have to hope that it is all that the first adventure was.

So…back to Jacob Jankowski and the world of Water for Elephants…after the first 27 pages it seems to promise a wild and wonderful journey…

I’ll let you know.

getting “me” back…

Well, I am a terrible blogger…to say the least! But I am going to try harder this time and maybe I will love it!

To be completely honest…last time I tried to start this (back in April) I thought I had a good grip on who I was. Pretty much after I started this blog I kind of became un-me. If that makes any sense at all. How could I write a blog about me and how I was comfortable finally being an artist, when I totally wasn’t even sure who “me” was? I was depressed, my great-grandfather passed away, my sister was leaving for college, and I was not sure I wanted to be in the job I was in…I wasn’t sure what in the world I wanted to do with my life. I thought I had to have “it” all figured out. I didn’t have ANYTHING figured out. Is that to say that I know who “me” is now and that I have all of the answers to life’s most puzzling questions? Well, not EXACTLY, but at least I feel like myself again…as for the answers, I may never have them and I am learning that that is OKAY! Live for today..right? So here goes…

I began to get “me” back sometime around the beginning of August. I am a youth director at an ELCA church in Des Moines, IA and at the very least–I felt like a fraud. As I said, I was not in a good place for most of the past spring and summer. I was not trusting God and I most certainly was not listening to God. I had pretty much walled-off that part of my life. I was scheduled to take my high school youth on a mission trip to Boston, Massachusetts.

17 high school students, 1 associate pastor, 1 church staff member, 2 parents, and myself…on a train for 30+ hours…headed to “be like Jesus” to people in Lynn, Mass. (a suburb of Boston)…our mission was to love on people who needed love (How in the hell was I going to love on these people when I didn’t even love myself?)…sounds fun right?

Well, I was not excited. But it’s my job, so I went. Everything started out fine. We survived the train ride (with the help of some motion sickness medication). The first couple of days we did tourist-y stuff in Boston and then we headed to Lynn to begin our week of service through an organization called YouthWorks!

We were joined by youth and adults from four other churches on the east coast. My youth (and, let’s be honest, me) had their eyes opened to a whole new way of life and the week hadn’t even begun. We were divided into smaller groups called “crews” to go to our ministry sites the next day. The groups consisted of youth and adults from various congregations. The first day left much to be desired. Our expectations were not met and I was having a hard time getting my youth to understand the multitude of blessings that they have in their lives. After many tears and prayers and doubts that God was even present (of course I know God was present but..), the next day was AH-mazing for our group. Very emotional. Very eye-opening. All around FUN! Other adults and groups from my church were not so lucky. More tears. More prayers. But not as many doubts.

Then it happened…Earth-shattering, ground-breaking, wonderfully fantastic ..(all of the other cliche expressions that could be inserted here) answers to my prayers….GOD showed up in BIG, BIG, BIG (OBVIOUS) ways.

The students in my youth group had their hearts break for the people of Lynn they had encountered. They had their eyes-opened to the many blessings in their own lives. They had their minds stretched to capacity as they questioned injustices in this world. They experienced the unimaginable, mysterious, undeserving mercy and love of God. They were transformed in these days and I hope they will never be the same.

More tears. More prayers. NO doubts. God was alive and present EVERYWHERE. This time all of these things were accompanied by unfathomable happiness. Through my experiences and theirs I was transformed…I was “me” again. God is so great and God is why I am “me” again. My life is full and I am living for NOW, not for thirty years down the road!

I started the school year with a new attitude and I began working out again and I feel AMAZING!!! Thank you GOD! (Also, thank you Erik and Ellen and Jake for your amazing influence on my life [and my faith].)

I am even creating again and loving it! (Thanks Liz!) Examples to come…I promise.

well, this is me…

Reading other people’s blogs has been an addiction for me lately. So, after some encouragement from a few friends here is my new blog. I am not sure how good it will be or even how interesting, but it will be 100% ME!

A word on the name…

finallyartfulme

I have loved to create and had an absent-mined artist’s brain for most of my life. I was that kid that always wanted to sit inside and color. No kickball for me (that couldn’t possibly have been because I have no depth perception…ya think?)! I buy paint and markers and paper and fabric like it is my full-time job…it’s not, in case you were wondering! I LOVE design and photography and most recently, scrapbooking. I pretty much love anything where I can create something! While I love to create, I have not fully embraced the fact that I am an ARTIST until recently. I am also just becoming comfortable in myself and who God created me to be. That is how I came up with the name.

It makes sense to me in so many ways. Here’s two…

finally artful

finally me

I hope you enjoy!