Wait ... I Need to Breathe too?!

So my brain is bubble, I've decided.  Bubbles are generally filled with nothing but air (side note: which is probably why my mom always told me to "blow my head up as it was deflated" when I was a kid...thank you for that mom).  However, my brain "bubble" tends to fill up ... and quickly.

This time of year is busy for the average Joe to say the least.  For my little mid-west family and I ... October through December is CHAOS!  Between every single one of my in-laws including my husband having a birthday in that time frame, you also have Thanksgiving and Christmas ... which of course means copious amounts of gatherings, parties and tons of time with friends and family.  Not to mention the amount of cooking, baking and candy making that's required .... *slumps from exhaustion*

All these events and "things to do" just start filling up my "brain bubble".  Now, I will admit that the filling up of my brain bubble is my own fault, but good golly, I LOVE hosting events.  However, if it were just hosting events and not worrying about what I have to do at work for year-end "things" ... I would be fine.  Or just the work things and not the events that I'm hosting... but "All work and no hosting makes Tasha hostile". ;)

But as I fill up my brain bubble, I have to work exceptionally hard to remember this one thing ...

BREATHE

This time of year is AMAZING!  Am I right?  Between family and fabulous food and friends ... all the celebrating and joy that is just spread across these few months is monumental and seriously salvation for my soul from what we endure the whole first 2/3 of the year.  But breathing is important, and we have to really learn to prioritize what is truly important and what we think we have to do/attend.  "No" is ok to say when your schedule starts looking more like obligations and less like "fun things to do".

So though I have birthday's and holidays and friends getting together and a mountain of baking and cooking to do ... I'm sitting here, writing you all, listening to Christmas music (shh... don't tell), and preparing to make cute little Christmas gnomes.  Sure, the kitchen still needs more cleaning, and the floors could use a good mopping, I could prepare more for the birthday party for tomorrow, OR I could enjoy these moments I have right now just listening to music, enjoying the sunshine coming through my window, while holding a needle and thread in hand creating something.  ... I'm not sure about you, but I think I'll go with that.

This holiday season, don't forget to breathe, enjoy and seriously just LOVE on those around you, including yourself.

God Bless and Happy Thanksgiving!

He Doesn't Make Mistakes

“Do not let “it” control you.”  Oh, the infamous “it”; it literally can pertain to or describe anything.  “It” could be fear, “it” could be lonliness, “it” could be a lack of confidence, “it” could be a sandwich ... who knows?  Whatever “it” is for you, the focus is to not let “it” control you.

A friend of mine shot me a text a while back asking if she could express a thought she had so she could get my take on her revalation.  She said, “You know how people say being brave doesn’t mean you’re not afraid?  It means you choose to act [brave] becasue something else is more important.  I feel like confidence is that way.  It doesn’t mean you don’t have self doubts, it means you choose to move past them because you see the value in yourself and that’s more important than your doubts.”  ... talk about a deep thought while I was on my way to work that morning.  (Don’t worry, I read the text at home and drove to work. DON’T TEXT AND DRIVE).   Anyways, the closer I got to work and the more I thought about what she said, the more I realized God was poking me. 

“... value in yourself... that’s more important than your doubts.”

Confidence is a fickle beast, it flys in during our high moments but is quick to flee at the first sign of conflict.  Sometimes our confidence, or lack there of, is derived from our experiances in life; what people have told us in the past or what we’vd told ourselves.  Confidence is a mindset that demands balance and a lot of maintence.  Confidence can also be quite transparent, thus making it quite difficult to find.  I know that when I was on my journey of discovering my own confidence, there were a lot of times that had me talking to myself; I personally think better outloud. 

Many times I would just repeat, “I am worthy, I am worthy, I am worthy...” until one day I was able to convinced myself.  But however many times I told myself that I’m worthy, that I’m valuable, I also need to remember that my value is from the Lord.  I am His creation, his masterpiece.  Just as Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” was his masterpiece and his “pride and joy”, we need to remember that this is how God sees us.

If nothing else, we need to remember to raise the value of ourselves not becasue we want to feel better about ourselves, which is also good, but becasue of who we are and what we are called to do.  Confidence doesn’t mean you will be doubtless and always feel 100% secure in who you are as a person, but instead means that you have the strength enough to stand up for what you know is right.  Having confidence means that you finally beleive that you are no longer just the “flaws” you’ve been telling yourself that you have, but instead are so much more!  Confidence means you know that you don’t deserve to be mistreated, but instead deserve to be loved and respected.  Though you may have flaws, no one is perfect and that’s ok!  We all know that there is only one being who is perfect and, WOW, we get to call him our Father!

So don’t keep doubting yourself but instead remind yourself that you are a masterpiece, not a mistake ... becasue you know who created you and I don’t know about you, but I know

He doesn’t make mistakes. 

The Inner Workings of a Knot

Many times I have been found silently staring out a window.  No expression on my face, no words slipping from my lips - just faraway stares.

"What you doing?"

*takes a moment to process that there are words coming at me*

"Oh, just thinking."

"Uh oh..."

I get that a lot when I tell people I have been thinking.  Sometimes for good reason, other times I feel a tad unjustified.  But it's who I am, I'm a thinker ... and it's terrifying.

Let me explain.

Now this is coming from a very personal place so go easy on me ... but I'm an introvert.  Sure I fake it till I make it sometimes in social gatherings, but man do I enjoy just sitting in my bedroom, no music playing, just the sounds of the fans blowing and the jingling of my two dog's collars as they settle in for yet another nap.   I guess the sounds of traffic too... I do live in a "big" city after all.

As an introvert, thinking is almost always going to be a natural side-effect.  I think about things such as what to make for dinner, what I should wear the next day to work, the new theme for the upcoming church newsletter; my mind is almost always planning/sorting something.  But sometimes, when I'm left alone, in the quiet, especially at night ... my mind doesn't "small talk", it deep-thinks.  Things like the meaning of life, did I really choose the right faith, will my marriage really work?, etc.  I contemplate all the possible outcomes and sometimes those outcomes are simply unbearable to imagine.  It's for that reason that I am having to take medication to help my heart cope with my mind.

My imagination is also a strong personality trait, if you will.  When my husband is traveling around from job site to job site which takes him all over the city, and it's late and I haven't heard from him for a while, my mind immediately goes to him being in a ditch, unconscious.  After about the tenth text I get a "Chill out woman, I'm fine" text, and all breath comes back to me.

Deep thought and imagination isn't always out to get me though.  Every now and then it's come in handy ... oh, who am I kidding ... it's helped me out a lot!  Art, for example; I love art...like a LOT!  I love colors and creating things.  I don't just love creating art, but I also enjoy admiring other's work as well.  I love to watch a piece of art come to life, to see the movement with the work I may be gazing at at the time.  Sometimes I'm even lucky enough to feel what the artist was feeling and imagine their expressions and movements as they created their masterpiece.

Deep thought and imagination has also helped me solve a lot of problems, knots for example.  When it comes to knots, there hasn't been many that I have come across that I wasn't able to untangle.  Ear phones mange to get themselves all kinds of tangled up and I have been able to untangle even the most obnoxious of knots.  And need I even mention Christmas lights... no, I didn't think so.  But I always seem to come out on top; Me - 1  Knot - 0.

Tonight even, I was attempting to close the blinds in my bedroom when I noticed a rather thick knot within the pull strings; without much thought I just started to untangle them.  I worked the problem backwards, saw how they came together and pushed them back the other way.  After a couple minutes, they were no longer bound to each other and able to swing freely... and those darn blinds were no longer crooked.

As I managed to untether the knot, I thought about life.  We make small decisions here and there; tonight I'll eat that cheesecake, I'll go to bed after I finish this chapter, if I go fast enough, I could totally beat that car, I'm not that drunk; I can drive.    Even something as small as  eating nachos at 10pm or hitting snooze just one more time.  We make multitudes of tiny decisions and then one day we realize we're in the middle of a place we had no original intention of being.  So we start working backwards; step-by-step we go back to the decisions we made and realize that we walked ourselves there ... one decision at a time.

So now what?

Here's my suggestion ... start walking.  I don't mean physically ... unless that helps you think ... I mean, start the change.  Instead of eating that cheesecake, take a bite and save the rest for tomorrow.  Instead of reading that one last chapter, go to sleep so you can be more productive and reliable at work.  Instead of pulling out in front of that car in the long line of traffic, wait patiently ... lives are at stake here after all.  And quite frankly ... you're ALWAYS too drunk to drive... so don't do it.

Turning those tiny bad decisions and intensionally making better ones, ones we know we should be making, we will finally get to the place we were initially aiming for to begin with.  I realize that it's easier said than done.  Just like the knot I unraveled this evening, the strings still showed hard evidence that they'd been bent, damaged and scarred.  We have scars from our mistakes but like those strings, eventually they'll straighten out, become like new; ready to take on the world.

Personally, I'm still very much in my knot; tangled and bruised (sometimes literally...I'm a tad clumsy) but I'm taking the first step.  For me, it's reading my devotions, praying more, being more intentional about forgiving those who've hurt me and loving those around me.  To judge less and encourage more ... to get to that place where I can be someone to be proud of.  I want to make a difference in this world, and though I'm not sure how... I won't stop until I do.

I hope that this starts your own personal journey to head in the direction that you know you should be heading.


God Bless & G'night everyone!  I'll talk to y'all again soon.

Grow Where You are Planted

“Grow where you’re planted!”

I’d been yelling that phrase a lot lately... at the dirt ... in my garden.  Little buggers, otherwise known as seeds, did not grow fast enough for my patience level (which is comparable to that of a 3-year-old learning calculus), but then one glorious day we had baby plants!  When I saw those adorable little sprouts, I jumped for joy then looked to my husband and said, “Those look like beans; I thought we planted snap peas there...”  Lesson learned:  Plant markers are a good idea.

Isn’t that kind of how life works too though?  We plant something (figuratively), wait for it to grow and then one day it sprouts, but hold on, that’s not what you thought you had planted...  Or let’s take it a step further;  God plants us somewhere and we think we’re going to grow into this beautiful sunflower (or strong tree, for you men) but when we look in the mirror we see a dandelion, which is still very useful in many medicinal ways, but not quite the sunflower you were hoping for.  (Well that was unexpected.)  So, instead of focusing on what you grew into, take that moment and focus on the fact that you grew; let God take care of the rest.

God’s plans are, in my opinion, can be the most elusive entity I’ve ever encountered.  So many times the Lord found me on my knees in some sanctuary, bawling my eyes out begging for His answer or His direction for my life.  My most relevant experience, I believe I mentioned before, was when I was moving here to Omaha from Salem, Oregon.

I was visiting a friend while she was still in college some years back, when she had to leave for class.  I had a couple hours to kill while I waited, so I decided to wander the campus.  Eventually I found myself in the chapel ... and then on my knees.  Alone, with tears streaming down my face, I begged God to tell me if I was supposed to move to Omaha or not.          
I was quite unhappy in Oregon and needed change for my life and the friends here were begging me to move back.  While I was praying, I lifted my head and felt the most overwhelming sense of peace and assurance that I was going to call Omaha my home.

That was ten years ago, and I’ve lived in Omaha for seven of those years, as of last month.  I’m happily married, my husband and I close on our first house this month and I just completed my fourth year with LCM.  I have my Thanksgiving Day “ministry” (which I just like that I get to eat delicious food with some amazing people), I was given the newsletter to create each month, and I’m working on redesigning the mission of my art ministry “heARTeffect”.

God has been so good and has made me realize that my plan had NOTHING to do with His plan for me here.  Not only did I get planted and grow here,
I flourished and prospered here.  I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life and it’s all because God took me from my roots in Oregon and transplanted me here.

Grow where you are planted ... trust that God has a plan for your life wherever it is He decides to take you, be sure to listen and most importantly, obey... don’t be the next Jonah. :)

Snowballs in June?

When I was 19 years old, I lived in my own little house.  It was tiny, but it was mine, all mine.  Unfortunately with my own place came my own responsibilities and those nasty little buggers called bills.

But one day it seemed my life was getting filled with a  slew of error messages; it felt like every little thing that could go wrong, was.  My sky light was leaking, my electric bill tripled and I couldn’t figure out why, I was fighting with my phone company, a hobo spider decided to take residence in my home (they’re about twice the size of wolf spiders here),  and my job was just giving me grief.  Overall I was miserable.  In tears I called my grandparents for guidance and that’s when they said, “It seems your life is snowballing”.  It took me a minute but I figured out what they meant; they were saying that all those little trials that I was experiencing were gathering up on me like snow would to a snowball rolling down a hill.  Those trials gathered and gathered until collectively the little issues were one overwhelming problem.  I was careening downhill just waiting until I hit a tree to  smash into a million pieces... and that’s exactly what happened.

One by one, I tackled the issues that were occurring; in the end I quit my job and lost my home but took that as an opportunity to start over.  I took all those little things that piled up and thought about what I learned from those instances.

Recently I had yet another experience with “snowballing”.  Between “fighting” with the federal loan service, changing my name and dealing with that process, figuring out what I want to do with my life and trying to find my husband and I our first home, etc., I kept reminding myself that God was in control.  I kept telling myself that this was all in God’s hands, that He hadn’t failed me before, so why would He start now?  But I would have had to start from square one if I didn’t have those previous trials.  I wouldn’t have known the mentality that I needed in order to make it through this “snowballing” session, if I hadn’t gone through it before.

Digging through Pinterest, which is a common past time of mine, I stumbled across a saying that I love.  It says, “All you need is faith and strength.  Faith that it will get better and strength to hold on until it does.”  This is in line with the verse found in James 1:2-4, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

I would not be the person I am today if I hadn’t gone through all the trials I had gone through.  The strength I now have, the confidence, the determination and dedication; many aspects of my character that were developed by those trials would not have come to pass if God hadn’t seen fit for me to be challenged by them.  Many times have I careened down a mountain side, gathering a multitude of issues and trials while in the middle fighting my way to the surface; to break it apart, make it smaller and more manageable, only to come out stronger and wiser through the grace of God.


Praise be to God for the trials we face.

I Have God. I'm Good.

How many times have we been going on through our lives where we run into issues or problems we feel are so overwhelming there is absolutely NO WAY we could make it through to the end?  How many times have we begged our wallets to have enough in them so we can pay our bills for the month?  How many times have we looked at our significant other’s while they are reflecting the same face of disagreement and anger and you just can’t take it anymore?  How many times have you sat there, head in your hands and just thought that there was no way you were going to make it through this trial, this heartache, this pain, this loss, etc.?  How many times...

I have God.  I’m good.

As some of you may know, I’m launching an Art Ministry called “heARTeffect”.

God called this mission onto my heart last year and I knew that this is why He created me.  I knew that this is why He lead me from the West Coast and transfered me to the MidWest.  

As I’m preparing to launch this dream of mine into full swing action, I have had a few “realists” (which I am one too so I certainly understand where they’re coming from) who want to make sure that I’ve thought this thorough and encourage me by saying, “Well, I hope it works”.  I do appreciate their concern and I know that they’re praying for me and my mission, but when I hear that phrase from concerned individuals, I think, “I have God.  I’m good.”  

God is the one who gave me this mission, God is the one that provided the idea, God is the one that is providing the resources, God is the one developing the idea ... I’m merely the feet of this mission.  I know that this mission will succeed the way God sees it to succeed when He sees it should.  It is all in God’s hands.  

Yes, I hope for early success and that all the resources and support that I need to fully launch this mission just instantly appear, but I just keep reminding myself and others...

I have God.  I’m good.

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”

Hebrews 11:1

For more information on heARTeffect, please come and talk to me or visit my website:  

https://gigtastic2287.wixsite.com/hearteffect

You can always email me at my ministry’s email:

heart_effect@outlook.com

Feeling Numb

The soft sand under my feet, the sound and sight of ocean in front of me ... I miss the Oregon coast frequently.  However, I don’t miss the feeling of numbness my toes would acquire if I spent more than five minutes in the water.  The Oregon coast is beautiful, but the ocean is not typically one you would want to swim in; at least not without a wet suit on.  I believe that most of you reading this article could probably relate to that feeling of numbness.  Maybe it was after a dental or doctor’s appointment, maybe there was when your hands went numb from gripping your freezing cold steering wheel in the middle of winter.  My point, most people know what it feels like to be numb in one way or another.

My cousin enjoy the sand

Depot Bay, Oregon

The wonderful man that I married last October read somewhere that if you hold someone’s hand it reduces their sense of anxiety and depression and replaces it with a sense of calm.  Since then he has made a considerable effort to hold my hand more often.  One night i was having trouble sleeping and he simply touched my arm asking to hold my hand.  I happily complied and then started to calm down and drifted off to sleep.  Not before making the realization (after about 20 minutes of holding his hand), I didn’t really “feel” his hand any longer; the warmth was still there but the touch wasn’t.


Adam hadn’t stopped holding my hand, he hadn’t abandoned me; he was still there, by my side, comforting and loving me ... even while completely zonked out and happily snoring away.  That’s when I thought, “Our relationship with Christ is kind of the same way.”  We know that God is there, that He still loves us, still cares for us, still is by our side and never abandons us; the Bible makes that promise clear.  (Deuteronomy 31:6, Deuteronomy 31:8, Joshua 1:5, to name a few).  But it seems the more He’s around the more we just become “numb” to his presence.  We know all that he promises but we seem to have taken it for granted.

Feeling numb to the presence of God is a real issue and one that is easily fixed ... we simply need to say our thanks.  We need to remember to thank him for all that He does;  for all that he has provided to us.  We need to remember to count our blessings.  I strongly believe if we just stop taking God for granted and the things he does for us and instead replace it with an abundance of thanks, this will thaw our numbed hearts and instead warm up our faith.

So join me in renewing our admiration for our creator by constantly remembering all that He has done, is doing and what He has planned.