We Create Better Stories By Making Better Choices

This is Shyla painting the story of her day as a dj.  I love her. This picture is everything to me.

I am going to begin this entry by stating that the last few days have been significantly challenging to me.  Sometimes God pushes us forward into our stories, further into areas where our gifts and the new chapters of our lives begin.  I am guilty of letting an old plot go on for way too long--an expired plot line that plot goes something like this: "Julie started 500 new projects and community endeavors and then got overwhelmed so she just quit."  I am an AMAZING actor in this plot line because I have acted it out 12,000,000 times.  I have become so good at it that any other plot *feels* frightening to me.

In the last few months I have been offered several professional gifts that I have literally been dreams to me over the course of the last 4 years.  And then good things happen in my life and I decide for myself that I am going to fail before I even begin because I *know* the story line of the failure but crave the plot line of success.  While  it is good to know how failure feels in life, it should never be an outcome that we learn to expect when we are avidly making the choice to live out our spiritual gifts in God's big blissful, broken, beautiful world.  We can create better stories for ourselves by making better choices.

So tomorrow I am going to wake up and I am going to say a prayer of gratitude, call my mental health professional, and make avid internal choices to not let the lies of yesterday dictate the present day's gifts.

Below are a few links from the last few days that I have been watching that have let me feeling hopeful and trusting as God takes me into the next chapter of my own grass roots endeavors:

An organization and blog all about hope, story, and not letting your past define your destiny:

To Write Love On Her Arms

Jamie Tworkowksi, fournder of To Write Love On Her Arms tells the story of why we need each other and why story matters in relationships in a broken world.  His talk begins at 2:00:36.(Click the link underneath the photo)

Jamie Tworkowski's Fourth Estate Leadership Summit