I confess I haven’t been writing much, except for journaling, which surely counts, right?
But my heart and mind and spirit warm at the thought of words and Brave Girls in the same sentence. I hope you are writing. I hope you are writing out your dreams and believing you can have them.
When I see the happy colors and lights and ruffles of The Brave Girls new warehouse home, it tickles something inside of me to be all I can be! Then the next little voice of the critic, the ”I can’t do it voice” interrupts and says, ”No you can’t. Give it up, that belief in you.”
What do we do when we’re battling those voices I call the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? The Good Voice welcomes us into who we are. The Bad Voice usurps those positive vibes with derogatory, limited mind jargon. The Ugly voice takes on a manifestation all its own when the Bad Voice’s message moves down into it dark mind tapes and to where they predominate.
We long for the good voice–the Good voice is the one that welcomes us into our own lives, to ask us to bless those visions that peek into our very nature. It is the voice of joy and light and possibility. This voice is the place of our becoming–sometimes we aren’t sure what that place will look like but we KNOW, fully KNOW it wants to be.
And I’ve found, it’s okay not to know, but it’s not okay to deny the calling. I guess I thought all my life that I couldn’t do it, that I couldn’t be that creative gypsy spirit that I am. I thought that space was created for someone like Melody or Kathy, someone who has organizational skills, marketing skill and savvy that I don’t have.
But the voice is determined. It will not be denied. It demands that I listen and watch and look and become and be and delight and believe and call forth the determined spirit that matches the creative gypsy one.
I must push to see that vision happen-–that gypsy spirit find her container. That small step made upon that promise is the start of my journey on my own yellow brick road. Being on our personal yellow brick road means that at then end of it we find our own Kansas, our own home, our own truth.
Today, I must believe this can happen in me. I know that because I know how I feel when I see others doing what they love and think that maybe even I could do that in some way--own a little store and make it glittery and fun and refuse to hear the voice saying, ”Oh, no store is like that.”
I realize God gave us these creative impulses for a reason. He gave them to us so we can honor them. How that will happen, what it will look like, I’m not sure, but I’m more ready to take the baby steps and keep stepping those chubby baby feet and wiggly toes toward the honoring of my imaginings.
I want you to honor your imaginings too. I want in this huge world of yellow brick paths fir you to find YOURs and realize YOURS and come home to YOURS.
Why?
Because you are supposed to and because deep within yourself you know that more than you’ve ever known anything in your life before.
I’m here to say, ”It can be.”
Be willing to begin to fly your flag–what does it look like, what words does it have, what colors beam from it, what is its story. When we’re willing to fly the flag of self, we’re able to claim the treasure of our own soul—becoming the very person we were meant to be all along.
Maybe we can be accountable to each other; maybe we can help each other, maybe we can take baby steps together toward our goals.
We can’t allow ourselves to be in the pit of dark without reaching again for that light above us. It is our redemption. It is our hope and honoring it brings us one step closer to finding it.
Right now, I’m watching a minister from Huntsville, Alabama, render his sermon. Recently, I haven’t been a lot about ministers or sermons. Some of my days of late have been dark with filtered light eking through here and there–-that light is a promise telling me to keep moving toward it, to keep doing it anyway.
This minister mentioned a commercial slogan for a well-known cereal. The slogan is "Taste it for the first time again.” When I heard that slogan, a brighter light seeped in, the light of truth.
We must be willing to taste the glory of who we are, and taste it for the first time again if we’ve let it fall by the wayside of the world’s critical voices and meandering as well as our own Bad Critic’s words.
When we allow the Bad Critic to have reign inside us, it eventually leads to the frustrated Ugly voice that encourages us to spiral down into a darkness where we were never meant to live.
As the minister suggested this morning, Taste it again for the first time. Taste the delight of who you are again for the first time and enjoy the fullness of that taste, the richness of that taste, the possibility of incorporating the TASTE of YOU in your every moment.
I’m here to ask you to do that. I’m here to ask myself to do that. Otherwise we are settling for a tasteless life–-a life catered to the palette of others–a life we weren’t meant to live.
See what the flavor of your life is–-write about it–-make a flag of your self to honor it–and wave that flag until you get there.
You WILL get there. And so will I.
