Micah 6:8

Look what I made!

I saw this idea on Pinterest (if you don’t know what this is you should check it out because it is a super cool way to spend way too much time looking at pictures of delicious food and fantastic craft ideas.  If you want an invite, let me know.).  The one I saw on Pinterest was one a mom made with her baby’s hands and feet prints and I thought it would be cool to do this with my own hands and feet.  

It may look pretty simple (and really it was), but it really took more skill and work than I was anticipating.  First I had to figure out what kind of paint to buy, then I had to choose the colors.  Making the hand and foot prints was much more difficult than I thought it would be…when was the last time you covered the bottom of your foot in paint, put it on a canvas, and then tried to wash your foot off in the sink without getting paint everywhere?  Well, it’s actually pretty difficult. 

There was something very therapeutic about getting my hands and feet all paint-y…the paint was cold and a little slimy and made me feel like I was back in preschool.  I think we all need to get out hands and feet messy more often.

Then there was painting the words…  My mom was gracious enough to give me a little refresher course in cursive writing.  I forgot how some of the letters were formed (3^rd grade was a long time ago!) and I went through a series of touch-ups on the letters trying to get them just right.

It’s not perfect, but it sure has some character.   

But in all seriousness, I love this.  I love that my hands and feet are on this.  Whenever I see it I will be reminded of this verse from Micah 6:8:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. 
   

And what does the LORD require of you? 


To act justly and to love mercy 
   

and to walk humbly with your God.

More importantly, every time I see my painting I will be reminded that it is my hands that must act justly, it is my heart that must love mercy, and it is my feet that must walk humbly.  God has called me and each of us to follow God’s will, to act as God has called us to act, and to bring about a more just world.  God has pretty high standards, and I need to be reminded of these standards. Often.  Hopefully this painting will help remind me and convict me of the importance of doing all that God requires of me.  

Stop with the excuses.

Today I decided I’m going to be a writer.  Yes, I’ve said before that one of my dreams is to be a writer (and get paid for it), but today I decided that I am indeed going to BE a writer and I’m going to be a writer now.  I’m not going to quit my jobs to be a writer (at least not anytime soon), but I am going to write.

You might be wondering what made me decide today that I’m going to be a writer now.  Well, today I got to meet one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott (I can’t really say that she is my absolute favorite author because it’s a three-way tie for my favorite author).  I’ve written about Anne here on my blog before, but as a refresher Anne Lamott is an incredible person and writer.  I love Anne’s writing because she writes about the beautiful as well as the messy aspects of faith and life and she does it with humor and brutal honesty.

There were a few pieces of advice that Anne shared about writing that really helped me decide to be a writer:

There will never be the perfect time to start writing.  I can wait until I have a well-paying full-time job, I can wait until I get settled with a husband and a family, I can wait until I have an incredible life experience to write about, I can wait until I’m retired, or I can wait until ________________ happens in my life.  The point is I can wait and wait for the perfect time, but once X happens there will be another reason why things aren’t perfect for me to write.  So, as they say, there’s no time like the present.

We each need to give ourselves permission to write.  I have really struggled with finding the time and reason to write and I think it’s largely because I don’t give myself permission to write.   I doubt that I am a good writer (I’m certainly not the best writer ever, but I do have some skill).  I rationalize that there are far more important and urgent things to do than write (and many times there are).  I tell myself that I don’t have anything important enough to write about.  I tell myself that no one will want to read what I write (at least no one besides my friends and family).  The only person I need to get permission from to write is myself.  Anne suggested that getting permission from ourselves is like calling up a really good friend.  Sometimes we may have to call every morning to get that permission, but what kind of friend wouldn’t give permission to do something we love and long to do?

Don’t be afraid to write bad first drafts.  Anne said she only writes one kind of first drafts: bad ones.  The blank page often paralyzes me and I’m usually afraid to write anything down without it being in perfect, creative sentences.  But if Anne Lamott writes bad first drafts and her writing ends up like it does in her books, maybe I too can overcome imperfect first drafts.  (However, this piece of empowering advice also means that second and third and forth… drafts will be necessary.)

Write what you would like to find.  Someone in the audience asked Anne if she would ever write a book about meditation.  She said “no” because there are already so many good books out there on meditation.  Anne said her best books are those books that offered something that no other books out there offered.  I haven’t quite isolated exactly what it is that I want to contribute to the written world, but I have a few things in mind. 

Stop with the excuses.  Just stop.  This pretty well sums up all of Anne's advice, but encompasses anything else that might stop me from writing.

So here’s what I’m going to do: Write every day.  Even if it’s only for 30 seconds.

Thanks Anne for the encouragement and advice.

Today was a perfect day for...

...drying clothes outside!!!

I got this new collapsable clothes drying rack for Christmas.  In the dead of winter (even in this lame winter we had), it seemed like it would be forever before I could use it.  Most of the time during the winter I hung my clothes up to dry in the basement, but it took forever for my clothes to dry and it just didn't have the same feel of hanging clothes up to dry outside.  But now the weather is just great for drying clothes outside.

On Sunday my dad helped me install a pipe connected to our deck that the collapsable rack fits into.  So I can fold up the rack and take it inside when I'm not using it so it doesn't get all dirty.  And it works super!  It is easy to set-up and it holds a LOT of clothes.  I did a very large load of laundry and I could have easily fit at least one more very large load.  The really cool thing about the design of this rack is that I can hang laundry on the inner part that I don't want the neighbors to see.  Even though it got pretty windy today all my clothes stayed on the rack (I don't know if this can be attributed to the clothespins or the rack- either way I was pretty happy to come home and not have to collect my clothes from around the backyard).