To Sum it Up.

Sometimes I feel like my mind cannot stop running. It's constantly moving with one thought leading to the next, almost so much that I can't hold onto to a thought more than a few minutes before I've taken myself down pointless and unproductive spirals. I find myself dwelling on the worse situations, insecurities, fleeting ideas, and crashing into creative road blocks. 

Thoughts are precious. I'm finding the things I should dwell on are usually the ideas I forget and the things I shouldn't dwell on are always the things that I remember. Part of this simplistic, minimalistic lifestyle is minimizing your mind. It's so easy to get so lost in our thoughts that we create our own chaos and we can't take a moment to stop, breathe, and recognize a sustainable thought. 

One of the ways I've tried to practice this is just by trying to take a thought or feeling and trying to capture it in a phrase. Something relatively simple and easy to remember, but something I can hold onto, write down, recognize my thoughts that came along with it. Then I can decide if it's something worth dwelling on or something I can move on from. 

Give your mind a break. Allow yourself to process. It has AMAZED me how much it has changed my attitude and perspective when times get rough. 

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. " Philippians 4:8

Live Everything.

Live everything. 

I've been trying to practice this mindset for the last several months and honestly it can be a shockingly hard thing to do and do you know why?

Pride.

I would love to throw up a phony smile and a few laughs here and there to come off like I'm completely okay, but seriously what good does that do? I fool a couple of people maybe, but why? 

I have never seen the great need and goodness to be so authentic with my emotions, my heartbreak, my desires, or my questions until now. Each and everything I experience should be fully lived out because they deserve to be. I deserve it. If I'm angry one day, well then I'm going to be angry. If I'm sad another, then I'm going to be sad. Each of course should be done completely appropriately. Don't go carving nasty names into any cars or anything like that. Take your experiences seriously. Live them out authentically. All the hurt, anger, joys, questions, loves, mistakes are all apart of the life process. Each one is a stepping stone into the new seasons of your life and those should be loved and cherished. And yes, even the painful ones. 

There is such a sweet freedom we get to have in the Lord and I think part of that freedom is to live our lives exactly as they are because He loves us exactly where we are and places us there for a reason. 

Love the process. Love where you are at. Experience it. 


Here's a little quote by Rainer Maria Rilke that just has been a sweet reminder to myself the importance of living this out. 

"have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903