Do What You Love and Do It Often - Part 2

“Do what you love” sounds glib and unrealistic sometimes, doesn't it? There are so many things we do every day that we don’t love that fitting in things that we enjoy feels like a waste of time.

1. Problem One with “Do what you love and do it often” is that we don't know what makes us happy. 
2. Problem Two is that doing what we love doesn't seem important.

Photographer's Reflection, a photo by Bien Stephenson on Flickr.

I am in the middle of writing a novel. Actually, I have been writing it since November 2010. NaNoWriMo has turned into NaNoWri21/2Years. I enjoy writing (sometimes), much most of the time I push it to the back burner because there are so many more useful things to do.

Message in a Bottle

I wondered how a camera's sensor reproduces the world around us, both in shape and color. Then I looked at a plastic water bottle and noticed how it reflected the sunlight and the hazy blue sky and the shadowy interior of my car. 

water bottle, a photo by Muffet on Flickr.

That was an epiphany. 

I realized that not only can a camera reproduce the world, but quiet lakes, eyeglasses, and water bottles do too. Every time I look in the bathroom mirror I'm seeing a reflection of the world around me—my bathroom, perfectly reproduced on a sheet of silver-backed glass. 

So I ask myself, why doesn't everything reflect? And then another epiphany: everything does reflect. Everything my eye sees is only visible because it reflects light.* That green tree isn't inherently green; it's actually everything but green so that it reflects back green light and that's why I see. A strawberry is red because it's reflecting back red light, etc. So every blade of grass, every coffee maker, every fire hydrant, every necklace, is just a reflection—

the world is a reflection. 

What I Learned From Death

Some of us are touched early by death, others have to wait.

When I was about eight years old I knew a woman named Rosemary Thorne. Tall and white-haired, she loved to create little wreaths out of twigs with dried flowers, and she loved photography, even if she was terrible at it. My clearest memories of her include one afternoon when I read a story aloud to the cozy, cluttered afternoon sunlight of her house. I can only imagine how broken and childish my reading must have been, but she smiled and seemed to enjoy it. A little while later she succumbed to the cancer that had tortured her body for years. My mother watched by her deathbed, and I looked on in frightened wonder.

Beauty in the graveyard, a photo by amalakar on Flickr.

Ms. Rosemary taught me to never lose an opportunity to bless others. I cried for days after she died, because I had only read one story to her. How many more opportunities were there to help and do good to this darling lady? Now I'd never have the chance again. That was probably a result of an overactive conscience, but it made a huge impression on me. 

The Word for 2013

Perhaps you've heard of naming each year of your life with one word or phrase that encapsulates what you hope for, expect, and seek. For example, I christened last year "Adventure," and it lived up to it! I took an exciting trip to visit friends, went out of my comfort zone more than once, applied and was accepted to Capernwray Bible School, took the 40 Day Challenge to show solidarity with the poor, finished my college studies, and took a journey of gratitude by counting 1,000 gifts.

To this year I give a new name: Discovery.

Letter to a Perfectionist

One of my greatest regrets in life is being a perfectionist. Maybe "perfectionist" is a nice way of putting it. If you've ever been called

• nit-picky
• bossy 
• a "good girl"
• a control freak
• or a micro-manager

you might be in this boat with me. Whatever this malady is, it's kept me from living a life of joy, freedom, and abandon to God. I've been fearful, stressed, anxious—never rising up to my own expectations or letting anyone else get there either. I've set goals for myself that bring me nothing but grief and disappointment.

As 2012 dies a quiet death I've decided to pitch out a bunch of miscellaneous papers that have lingered around my room for months. I came across this letter to myself, written one night after a soul-wrenching conversation with Mom that probably had something to do with me freaking out over college studies. It was probably past midnight, I was crying, and these are the words I scrawled down, raw with pain and regret.

The best skaters have wet bottoms.

Me + Sports = Disaster in the Making. Let's just say that I'm not the most athletic person you've ever met. However, in my personal challenge to make my life more of a daring adventure and add some zest to the everyday, I recently took the opportunity to go ice skating with some friends. 

Lesson #1 of a life with wings: take every opportunity, even if—no, especially when—it means going outside your comfort zone.  

Untitled, a photo by brklynn on Flickr.

We went to an small outdoor rink in downtown Bentonville, not far from the starry glow of Christmas lights on the city square. We strapped on our bright blue skates and got out on the ice amid dozens of other people making the most of the winter night. My friends are far more accomplished than I, so while I clumped along trying hard not to slip, they were gliding across the rink (as the hours went on and I was invigorated with a s'more latte from the coffee shop, I did get to feeling more confident).

Many of the skaters were little kids, but there were also a few people with enviable skill. They swished around and around with their hands in their pockets, twirling a little here, making a lap going backwards...it was fun to watch but also a little disheartening.  

I've gone ice skating twice in the last 6 or so years, and I have yet to fall down. I might be proud of that—it shows that I'm not a complete lost cause—but on the other hand I realized something that night that applies far beyond the world of ice skating. 

Some of the best ice skaters out there were sporting wet spots on the backs of their jeans.   

10 Life Philosophies

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.  ~Jack Handey

Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive.  

~Mel Brooks

I have a simple philosophy:  Fill what's empty.  Empty what's full.  Scratch where it itches.  ~Alice Roosevelt Longworth 

For some reason, human beings want to live life well. Most of us aren't happy sloughing off and letting the years fly by unheeded; we feel the need to be proactive and enthusiastic and wise and right. So we develop mottoes and mantras that seem to condense the "method to the madness" of living. 

I thought it would be interesting to compile a list of ten different "life philosophies." I know that it's hard, if not impossible, for a one-liner to sum up someone's entire attitude about life, but it seems to be a popular way for people to target their mission, goals, purpose, etc. Each of these approaches has its pros and cons, and each one offers a different perspective on this big, hairy mess we call life. 

Maybe this will help you formulate your own personal philosophy. Maybe it will make you realize that life philosophies are actually quite stupid. Whatever it does, it should be interesting! 

On the Finish Line

Here I am, almost done with college. I started writing this blog as a homeschool girl, trying to spread her wings, learning to live. Now that identity that I've claimed for so long, a girl schooled at home, is about to disappear forever as I submit the very last assignment of my very last college course.

Can you remember a milestone like this in your own life? Maybe when you felt like you were jumping off a cliff into nothing?

I love making plans and goals, dreaming about the future, imagining possibilities for the years to come. I expect to travel overseas and attend Bible school next spring, but beyond that it's nothing but a dense fog. Career, home, relationships, ministry...I feel as if I've got my whole life ahead of me, but I can't possibly see beyond the next few months.

But isn't that how it's supposed to be?

When You're Feeling Overwhelmed

Why do bloggers stop posting? Why do they post less and less often, eventually falling off the map and leaving readers wondering what happened to them?

I don't think that it's a lack of interest. After all, we bloggers love to write or we wouldn't have started these things in the first place! No, I think it's just that life gets to be too much. Other things take precedence, we can't do as good of a job as we think we should, and so eventually we stop writing altogether.

Lately, I've been overwhelmed. 

With the last semester of college underway, a family vacation coming up at the end of this week, and approximately 3,000,000 other things that have to be done, it feels like every moment is spent keeping the monsters of fear, anxiety, and stress at bay. 

At times like this we have to reevaluate our priorities, and sometimes things get moved to the back burner. Like blogging regularly.

And that's OK.

If you've been feeling overwhelmed lately, take it from me: the world won't end if you give something up, whether temporarily or permanently. 

Part of living a life of purpose involves deciding what to focus your energies on. You can't do everything well. When Paul said "I can do everything through him who gives me strength," he didn't mean that he was attempting to juggle a full-time job with a full-time ministry, plus a family and a golfing hobby. He worked where God wanted him to work and "threw off" the other things that hindered (Hebrews 12:1).

So take some time today, or this week, and figure out where to focus your energies. Discover your strengths, then work in them. Remember what Edmund Burke said, "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." Don't get overwhelmed, get prioritized.

What has been overwhelming you this week? What can you put on the back burner?

Photo edited from Gas Stove Burner 12-28-09 -- Dec282009_1399, a photo by stevendepolo on Flickr.

Surrendering Dreams

I don't usually respond to posts on other blogs, but this is an exception. One of the Altogether Separate community members recently sent me to a post by Miss Raquel over at the God's Daughter blog. She told the story of a fellow Christian blogger who died in May, leaving a striking legacy behind him.


In the last blog post that he published, Joshua Steven Eddy wrote about the need to surrender everything— even those beautiful dreams that we hold close to our hearts—to the Lord. His words were inspiring:

To surrender a precious dream is a fearful thing, but to pursue anything but the full measure of the glory of God’s love is a wasted life.

About two weeks after he wrote this, Joshua was killed in a hiking accident. 

Masks and Vulnerability

You know you're probably wearing a mask if someone asks you to strip it away.

I'm sitting around a campfire with some of my best girlfriends. We're lighting up the night with crackling flames; laughing, swapping stories, roasting marshmallows so big they nearly fall off the stick, trying to keep our voices down low enough to not disturb the neighboring tents.... We're using Ungame cards as conversation starters and going around the circle, sharing things we'd never dare speak if the darkness wasn't cozy all around us, hedging us into a circle of comrades.

Then my friend gets a card that gives her a free question; she can ask anyone anything she wants. "Abby, what is something that you've never told anyone?"

My Prayer For Old People

I visited a friend at a nursing home today, and cried all the way home. It wasn't that my friend was suffering so badly—she is in pain and discomfort but has a beautiful spirit about it all—it was because of the other people I saw in there, the people with nothing but their own souls.

Their minds are gone.

Their bodies are deteriorating.

They have lost the things that we think make us human: beauty, talent, promise, wit, creativity, future. 

And what remains? Their heart and soul, quietly beating while the rest of us bustle around and try to care for them, wondering what on earth we'll do with them until they finally give up and die. And the truly frightening thing? Many of us—perhaps most of us—will be there too, one day. I might be one of those women in a sanitized hallway, crouched in my wheelchair, gray hair thin and wispy, draped in smelly old clothes, eyes glazed, drooping lips and toothless gums smacking together in horrible incoherence.

It Is Unto the Lord

If my life is mediocre, it is unto the Lord.

If my life is extraordinary, it is unto the Lord

Warm, a photo by Casey David on Flickr.

What Do They See? What Do I See?

I wish that people could see all of the good of me and none of the bad.

I wish that people could see all of my talents and not see my downfalls.

I wish that people could see all of my knowledge and not see my ignorance.

I wish that people could see all of my love and not see my annoyance.

I wish that people could see that calm, productive, peacemaker side of me and not the flustered, lazy, argumentative side.

There are times when one looks at oneself and wonders, “What does everyone else see?”

Living Advice: Just Start

How do you craft a compelling life-story? You start by just writing.


Your life is a blank page, ready for possibilities. Sometimes we balk at putting pen to to paper, worry about spattering ink blots and breaking the binding. But what is an empty book? What is an empty life?


It's not worth living.


So go ahead--open your book and start writing. 
What is one thing that you can do today to begin writing a story that's worth living? 

Open Book, Blank Pages, a photo by DougitDesign.com / Doug Aghassi on Flickr.

Pain of Change

Today I was thinking about exercise--one of the few things I come close to loathing. Some people seem to get a strange high out of beating up their bodies and sweating and smelling and aching. I don't. I've been looking into the BodyRock.tv "home workout movement" (something that a friend of mine is passionate about), and found myself wishing for an exercise program that wasn't so hard and so long, and that didn't hurt so much.

Guess what: nothing is going to change if it doesn't hurt.

The reason exercise hurts is because it's changing something inside your body. If I want to change the size of my biceps or the shape of my abs or the look of my legs, I've got to hurt first. If you're not hurting, you're not changing. Maybe exercise doesn't hurt you, but something has to (self-discipline, prioritization, donating time, sticking it out, growing). 

One more thought, "We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing" (Henry Cloud). What do you want to change in your life, and how will it hurt to do that?

AmbassadorSummit_1372, a photo by lululemon athletica on Flickr.

Why Am I Not Better?

Click the photo to view larger:

Photo edited from play, a photo by gagilas on Flickr.

Text edited from Heart to Heart with Holley, Why We Don't Have to Try So Hard

Marinating in Insanity

y2.d40 | worry lines, a photo by B Rosen on Flickr.

I just heard this phrase used in the context of an interview* and was immediately hooked. The context was someone taking the leap from steady employment to entrepreneurship, and he was scared stiff thinking of all the terrible possibilities. What if this fails? What if I'm wrecking my future? What if my parents are right to be skeptical? He basted himself with the juices of fear for years. 

Then he took the leap. In a cold sweat, with the doubt of coworkers ringing in his ears, he turned in his two-week notice and leapt into the world of freelance design. The rest, as they say, is success. He is now doing very well for himself, is incredibly good at what he does, works with clients around the world (some big names, I might add), and spends $0 on marketing--it's all word of mouth from satisfied customers.

This isn't just a business success story, though, it's a wake-up call for all of us who have been marinating in our own insanities: the insanities of worry, doubt, worst-case-scenarios, and second guessing. What does marination do? The acids of a marinade break down the tissues in raw meat, tenderizing it, making it mushy. What will happen if you marinade in the insanity of uninformed, unnecessary fear? You'll break down. You'll eventually get so soft and muddle-headed that you won't be able to make any progress. Your wings will collapse before you even try to take flight.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

Dale Carnegie

Note to self: Get out there and stop worrying about what might happen.

*This interview was on an awesome podcast, Coach Radio, with Justin Lukasavige (coachradio.tv) and Charlie Pabst (charfishdesign.com). 

My Bucket List In Progress

A couple months ago I wrote a post about bucket lists, where I wrote about lifelong goals, living to the fullest, the magic of thinking big, etc. Well, I have since created a list of my own. 

In case you're not familiar with Heritage Makers, it's an awesome online program that gives you the ability to create gorgeous custom storybooks, calendars, canvas prints, greeting cards, invitations, and even personalized playing cards (watch the video introduction here). I used HM to create a 14x11 poster of my bucket list (see the image above) to frame and hang on the wall above my bed as a reminder of my goals.

I call this my "Bucket List in Progress" because it is by no means a concrete thing. I've listed such goals as "write a textbook" and "own a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel" that I may not want to do someday for a myriad of reasons. But this is an outline, a rough sketch, something to aim for. I intend to alter it every few years to accommodate new goals and cross out the ones I've already accomplished, honing it to a razor-sharp edge of intention. 

So without further ado I present to you my current bucket list, with goals listed in no particular order: 

The old streets of Saltaire Village, a photo by Paul Stevenson on Flickr.

1.       Keep it simple

2.       Stay under 130 lbs.

3.       Deep relationships

4.       Create a self-study program for lifelong learning

5.       Find or create work that I love

6.       Live in England

7.       Make a friend in every European country

8.       Fall in love

9.       Discover my reasons for living

10.   Work for myself

11.   Get good at tennis

12.   Ride a horse “in the rough”

Les Miserables West End, a photo by mart wegman on Flickr.

13.   Learn another language

14.   See a show on Broadway/the West End

15.   Learn to dance

Grayson.., a photo by Bruce Tuten on Flickr.

16.   Scuba dive in a coral reef

17.   Sleep in a British castle

18.   Own a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

19.   Spread the Gospel

20.   Always tithe at least 10%

21.   Become influential in a godly ministry

It is Finished, a photo by abcdz2000 on Flickr.

22.   See the Northern Lights

23.   Visit

•        The British Museum

•        The Uffizi Gallery

•        The Smithsonian

•        The Louvre

24.   Live at least six months in a foreign country

25.   Tour New England

26.   Live in my “dream cottage” (a white cottage on a New England beach)

27.   Create a lovely garden

cutting loose, a photo by SqueakyMarmot on Flickr.

28.   Become a semi-professional photographer

29.   Become a connoisseur

30.   Read the complete works of Shakespeare

31.   Discover my strengths, weaknesses, passions, and gifts

32.   Never take on a lifestyle of debt

33.   Be a major influence in a child’s life

34.   Prison ministry

35.   Become an expert

36.   Win a prestigious blog award

37.   Write a textbook or study guide

Flags!, a photo by Paul Kehrer on Flickr.

38.   Be a New York Times bestselling author

39.   Go to a Green Bay Packer Game

40.   Make mistakes

41.   Learn to not take offense

And what is your personal opinion of these goals? Do you have a bucket list of your own? Are you willing to post it for the world to see?

Fear of Naïveté

Naïveté: the state or quality of being naive; ingenuousness; simplicity

This word comes from the French language, and originally denoted a state of naturalness or innocence. At one time people used it positively, with no stigma attached. How about now? When you describe someone as naive you are usually condemning them for their inexperience, lack of knowledge, or downright ineptitude. It's certainly not a compliment. This change in meanings signals a change in mindset that has sunk so deeply into our brains that it is hardly recognized as an opinion.

I'm not certain whether or not this mindset is isolated in modern-day America or if it is common to most men in all places in all times, but it has certainly permeated many areas in our culture. This is the mindset of sophistication, characterized by a downright fear of  naïveté. We try to sophisticate everything: investing, relationships, education, art, generosity, fashion, careers, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Sure, there are a few lazy slobs who couldn't care less, but the prevailing theme in our culture seems to be that if it isn't complicated, isn't dramatic, isn't mature, then it's not worth having or doing. 

No simple, fun-loving, childish abandonment for us, no sir! No belief in a God we cannot see, no sir! No real joy in living in this wondrous world, no sir! We need to be sophisticated, we need to sexualize preteens, we need to invest in opportunities we can't even understand, we need to have the best and most expensive of everything. 

Innocence is way out of vogue.

What would happen if we weren't afraid to be natural and innocent? What if we weren't afraid to put up blinders and neglect the seedy headlines for once and indulge in a little childish wonder? “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." Our Lord calls us to humble ourselves, a novel and largely unwelcome concept. We are to be as innocent as doves. While not forgetting to also be as shrewd as serpents, we must realize that we are not called to be sophisticated, we are called to be childlike. The sophisticate is proud because he lives in a world he claims not to understand, the naif is humble because he lives in a world he knows he understands completely. Which one are you?

(17) impromptu adventures....the child is still in all of us, a photo by fishgirl7 on Flickr.