An Intro to Something New- Behind the Scenes: Episode 1
Hi Friend,
I’ve felt the calling for awhile to create a personal blog where I do my daily journaling. I love my paper journal, but often as I look back through my entries, I can’t help but think there’s so much in there someone else might find useful! That being said, I also want the freedom to talk about my favourite clothes, makeup, trends, and everyday life stuff I don’t feel is super appropriate for my coaching blog. I started to create a whole new blog space, but as I thought about it, decided instead to incorporate my personal posts into my existing blog and to just identify them as part of a personal blogging series. This way you’re free to peruse the “extras” all you want, and I’ll feel like I’m somehow keeping the personal stuff separate but still share my mind and my heart with those who are interested- just me, writing without a strategy or a plan about day to day life and what’s going on in my mind.
So welcome to email one of us gettin’ personal- Behind the Scene: Episode 1. And consider this your fair warning that if you’re not interested in the dilly-dallying of my brain, you’re welcome to just step out and move on- I won’t love you any less!!
So- today is Ash Wednesday. If you’ve been around here for any amount of time you know my belief system is Christian. I try to keep my coaching blogs as non-partisan as possible when it comes to faith, but sometimes I feel like I can’t really be fully authentic in this space if I don’t share the spiritual part of my life as well. Our spirituality is such an important part of who we are, and I consider my faith and spirituality to be a sacred part of who I am.
So back to the topic at hand. Today is Ash Wednesday. I’m at home today. It was supposed to be an office day, but Harper went to my mom’s, so I cancelled the babysitter and now I’m having a slow morning getting organized around the house a little bit and spending some time with my new Lenten devotional (which I haven’t dove into yet!) and now my laptop I guess!
As kids, my siblings and I were always encouraged to “give up” something for Lent. We often gave up (or attempted to give up) things like chocolate, shopping, etc. Over the years I’ve attempted to keep up this tradition even though I’ve rarely been successful at holding off with anything for the full 40+ days of Lent.
Two years ago, I did a She Reads Truth Lenten Devotional that gave me a much deeper insight into why we give things up for Lent, which is considered to be a form of fasting. I’ve also come across articles and blogs here and there about the actual purpose of fasting, which goes much deeper than just limiting the amount of meat you eat or the number of heavy meals you eat during a specified period of time. I won’t go into the nitty gritty here- I’ll leave the research up to you if you’re curious. What I learned gave me a new perspective on sacrifice and fasting and I’ve headed into the past two Lenten seasons with so much more intentionality.
This year I’ve done a lot of contemplating about how I want to approach my Lenten fasting. I thought about how I spend my time and knew immediately that Instagram is something I really enjoy but that I spend far too much time on. What I don’t spend as much time on as I wish I did? Prayer and devotions. And not just reading through my daily reading in whichever devotional I’m working through, but actually spending time contemplating what I’ve read, spending actual time in prayer consistently each day, and then also spending time getting still so I can be open to receiving what the Holy Spirit has to say to me. In my coaching business I encourage getting still to be able to hear the voice of your intuition, and my personal belief is that this voice inside is the voice of God.
SO- Lenten intention #1: Dedicated Instagram time- I will forego Instagram in the morning while I drink my coffee and will instead use that time for my prayer and devotions. It’s honestly a great opportunity to be more intentional with my social media time instead of checking in 65 times a day. I feel like lunchtime and just before supper are good times for me to luxuriate in catching up on everyone I like to follow because those are low-energy times of day for me, so I don’t feel like I’m giving up doing something meaningful in order to stare at my phone, lol.
When I was thinking about the parts of each day I struggle with, I immediately though of evening/bedtime with my kids. Most days I dread bedtime. I’m usually running around still trying to clean up supper and fold the laundry I’ve thrown on my bed and get everyone’s stuff ready for the next morning AND have quiet time (my brain is SO done by evening). My kids have other ideas though. They ALL want to snuggle- and there are three. So not EVERYONE can sit beside Mom. And they fight. They fight over who gets me, and all I want is to go hide in my bedroom! Then inevitably someone forgets they wanted to do something or they need to get something for show and share ready or they forgot to have dessert (heaven forbid!) and they’re in and out of bed. Their new thing is that they ALL need to listen to a sleep story or an audiobook to fall asleep. Well we have ONE ipad we let them use and so I usually end up letting one of them put an audiobook on my phone while another one listens to a sleep story on the calm app and then once Harper falls asleep (she’s the youngest so she always falls asleep first, haha), I run and move the ipad to Stella’s room so she can listen to her audiobook once she has to put down her REAL book. Oy. ANYWAY. Evenings are chaos 100% of the time and 90% of the time someone (or everyone) is crying about something. I hate it.
SO, Lenten intention #2: my kids are old enough to understand traditions and meaning. They also LOVE reading together and any excuse to be touching me, lol. So I’ve committed to keeping suppers simple over Lent so I can sit down with the kids and do some reading, bible reading, and prayer with them in the evenings. It also gives us good “talking” time, which is vital right now with a pre-teen nine year old emotional, hormonal daughter!! This is time that is really meaningful to all of us and really isn’t that hard to do- it just requires some extra intentionality.
When I was thinking about how we always used to default to giving up chocolate or sugar for Lent and how fasting is really about doing something really HARD, not just some willy nilly dietary restriction you choose for lack of any better ideas, I thought about REALLY fasting. Lately I’ve been craving simple foods. Light foods. I emotionally eat big time. I never thought I did, but seriously I’ve eaten Doritos for lunch two days in a row and I know it’s because I’ve been feeling kind of anxious and shaky. Like why do I even buy the damn things?!?! Yeesh.
ANYWAY, this led to Lenten intention #3: instead of fasting on Wednesdays and eating no meat on Fridays like my faith-based planner suggests, I’m going to take it a step further. No cabbage soup diet or juice fast or strictly broth for 40 days, haha. But just lighten everything up. Keep my food light so my soul is light. Take some thought out of what I’m eating so I can put more thought into mindfulness and prayer. I have no idea if that makes any sense at all, but for right now I plan on doing green juice or fruit for breakfast. Broth-based veggie soups for lunch since I have trouble eating cold salads in the winter. And light, veggie based meals for supper. No “rules” per se, but eating with the understanding that I desire to spend more time being intentional with my soul than with meal planning or feeling sick because I ate Doritos for lunch (because that’s real life, friends!).
We’ve got dance competition in Prince Albert this weekend, so I’m making a big batch of veggie soup in my instant pot and plan to order some juices from Freshii to pick up tomorrow afternoon. My plan is basically no not just eat chips and drink coffee the entire weekend! hahahaha- the struggle is real.
Before I wrap this up, let me very VERY CLEAR about something.
None of these intentions have been created from a place of self-hatred or self-loathing. I don’t believe I am “wrong” and that I’m going to “fix” myself by creating weird restrictions. I actually believe I’m pretty ok just the way I am, but my hunger for deep spiritual connection is strong and that’s not a connection that just happens. It’s like any other personal development- you have to create an environment to nurture it. I feel so full of love and gratitude for beautiful traditions that allow me to question myself and serve myself and my spirituality on a deeper level. And I love the opportunity to help my children develop intentionality as well and foster deeper connections with them where there’s less yelling (#guilty).
I hope you’re having a great Wednesday today. I’m going to go taste my soup and make another cup of coffee and make myself presentable to head into town!
Sending you lotsa love!