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Hi Friend!
I hope you and yours had a wonderful Easter weekend!
We soaked in a super special worship service on Sunday morning, were witness to some very awesome baptisms of special friends and celebrated the resurrection of Jesus!
And a few days before that, we celebrated our Evie’s SEVENTEENTH birthday!
I just had to re-read that sentence after I typed it.
Because just staring at that one word – seventeen…
Well it feels CRAZY to me.
Nonetheless…crazy feeling or not – it’s real.
It’s happening and I will have more words to say soon…
About what it feels like and the nuggets of life lessons I have been gathering up, as our nest evolves with life – that is raising 3 teenage daughters.
Let’s just say…I have a lot happening in my Mom heart right now.
Good stuff, tender stuff, real stuff – more on that soon. I promise. Because if there is one topic I love to write about…it’s about the gift of being a mother to our three girls.
These Mini Taper Birthday Candles make any cake (or peanut butter pie) feel extra festive!
I had fun putting this little floral bouquet gift together for Evie as a fun treat, linked all of the goodies and mini foil balloons on my Amazon storefront HERE.
And smack in between all that celebrating of both Evie and Easter?
Our family snuck away for a few days to enjoy the girl’s Spring break, in our favorite sandy place…
And if you’re wondering if Winnie enjoyed her first encounter with mother ocean??
The short answer is –
Yes.
Yes, I believe she did.
Sweet girl tried to outrun a seagull flying along the water’s edge.
The seagull won. 🙂
This special stretch of East Coast beach is the holder of some of my most favorite memories.
In fact, Shawn proposed on the beach here, and this is where we have introduced all three of our baby girls’ toes to their first ever dip in the Atlantic Ocean.
Yes, this beach is not only a historical place…
But, a healing place.
Because these waters have been known to wash up fresh waves of motivation, much needed renewal, craved for clarity, and tender whispers of wisdom…
Just when I needed it most.
Today on the blog, I’m sharing some of those sacred and secret God whispers that I never shared before and have collected both during recent beach visits…and also times tucked into the dailyness of regular life…
These are thoughts that have helped me re-group and find fresh hope and renewed motivation, and gently show me how to find motivation when life feels heavy, painful, loud, chaotic, stale or simply stalled.
I share these with you, in hopes, that they may support your seeking and re-find your footing, if perhaps you are walking through a painful emotional season, or if you feel like you have simply lost touch with your regular rhythm.
These two personal God whispered phrases that I am sharing with you today have helped me so much…
And, I think…maybe they may help you too.
Friend…so you know –
I write not because I have the answers.
But, because the practice of writing to you is an act of obedience to what God has prompted me towards…
And also?
Writing is my personal practice of tracing my own interior map.
It is a route to find my way home when I am feeling untethered…in hopes to become familiar with my own personhood – again and again—much like in “How to Be Yourself by Remembering Who You Are.“
In other words?
I don’t write because I hold the answers to life’s questions…
I write because I have questions.
So many questions.
And so?
These posts…they are simply proof of thought as I have read the practice of writing being described.
“I had thoughts and I am demonstrating that I had them.”
– Stephanie Duncan Smith; Senior Editor for HarperOne
So today, as co-companions aiming our hearts towards living life to the fullest, I am sharing two proofs of thoughts, whispered to my heart, as demonstrated in my own life, while in my continued pursuit of motivation to connect with my truest sense of self.
Follow me friend.
How To Find Motivation When You Don’t Feel Like Starting
I imagine friend, in all of your days of being a human…
Odds are you have encountered those days, or perhaps string of days or weeks…
When you just feel flat.
When motivation feels like a million miles away.
When the horizon of life is hazy, blurry and undefined.
When the pain of a situation has left you paralyzed.
When circumstances have caused you to want to shrink yourself down…
Making yourself small…
Smaller…even smaller.
And in the process of shrinking…down to small and smaller…
It has this inevitable way of shrinking everything else down with it.
Those interior landmarks of our heart that we used to carry within us, they become fragile and smaller too –
Don’t they?
Your joy, your laughter, your smile, your lightheartedness, your silliness, your energy, your peace, your patience, your gentleness…your motivation – it all starts shrinking down too.
Eventually, that distant and small corner we thought was the best place to curl up in…so small…so invisible…so not a big deal…to duck down into, just for a little while..
Well, it starts to feel cold and maybe even kind of scary even?
Taking Control Of Your Thoughts
Friend, last July as I settled into our annual 2 week beach retreat, in desperate need of soul replenishment and heart refreshment, after wrapping what is always a demanding and hectic Summer lacrosse season…
I found myself eager to re-engage with what is always a grounding and life giving practice for me, while at the beach…
Solo, early morning beach walks.
Nothing fancy.
Just myself, the ocean, salt air breeze, bare feet in the sand, tank top, shorts, Air pods and iPhone for listening to music playlists and podcasts.
Last July, I didn’t realize it at the time, but what I eventually realized was, that I was still carrying around some pretty heavy emotional baggage and pain, left over from the previous Summer.
And, it didn’t occur to me, as I started out my early morning beach walks, and hit shuffle on the same playlist of songs labeled “Summer 2024” that I had listened to on repeat over and over, the previous Summer, that perhaps what I needed to hear, was not loaded in last year’s, Summer playlist.
I started to wonder why the words to the songs, now turned up in my ear buds were not delivering the same ballad of emotional strength that had been my inner soul anthem, just the Summer before.
I started to question if I was missing something.
If I was not tuned in enough, quiet enough, to receive the inspiration that had washed up, during the same early morning beach walk routine as the previous Summer.
And then?
Then, I felt it.
In one swift whisper of thought, my heart laced around a fresh extension of love.
Even now, as I type I can feel the tears begin to swell and my cheeks and nose are tingling with fresh emotion bubbling to the surface…
God whispered this grace:
“Stop having a dress rehearsal for pain I have already healed you from.”
And there it was.
I had come back to my favorite place.
My favorite stretch of sand, expecting that I was bringing the same girl back to the ocean’s edge and expecting to receive the same waves of inner emotional strength for forward motivation.
But this time…
She was different.
She was already healed.
Friend, that whisper, that grace of truth tucked into my soul, I knew it was special the millisecond my brain waves received it.
Might you need to wrap your heart around it too?
Try placing your name before this sentence:
“……..Stop having a dress rehearsal for pain I have already healed you from.”
If you’re like me…then we have this thing we do, don’t we?
We overthink.
We rehash conversations.
We go back over the details.
We scan for what we missed.
We pore over the ripple effects.
We rise up in freshly kindled emotion.
We relive what has already been lived – for the good, or the bad.
If you’re struggling to feel motivated or to feel inspired again…
Might I suggest, go back to the beginning?
Is there something you hurried past?
Is there a brushstroke of time you fast forwarded through, so as to not feel it?
Is there something that got buried down, because it was too hard to look at, straight in the eye?
Is there a pain that needs tending to?
A heartache that needs healing?
What I have come to realize through God’s grace is, if I’m struggling to feel motivated about something, perhaps it’s not the thing that needs doing, that is the issue that is holding me back.
It’s the thing under the thing.
For myself, I’ve come to believe this –
Motivation is healing….matured.
I think part of why sometimes we don’t feel motivated is because motivation is a long term commitment to the emotional health of yourself.
And it’s that commitment part that gets tricky for us in our modern and distracted world.
I love how New York Times, best selling author, Bob Goff encourages us in his book, Undistracted, to-
“Keep our eyes on our own paper.”
You can see his book here: “Undistracted – Capture Your Purpose, Rediscover Your Joy”
Keep our eyes on our own paper, just like we used to be told by our elementary school teachers while taking a test. Don’t look left, don’t look right.
Stay focused on what’s in front of you and watch your motivation grow.
For myself what I have come to learn is this –
If I want to live a motivated life, I need to live an un-distracted life.
If we want to live a motivated life…
we need to live an undistracted life.
For me, motivation is found in following the breadcrumbs that God gives me.
Motivation is found in doing the small steps, over the long haul.
No shortcuts.
No hacks….
Just the showing up instead of giving up and engaging with what is right in front of us…
And somehow in that process…
God heals what needs healing and then…He motivates what needs motivating.
And if I know God…
He delights in the business of gently draw us closer, guiding us towards a path to experience a wider engagement with joy and peace inside our hearts.
How Do You Find Motivation
A wonderful therapist once told me this:
“You have to act your way into a new way of feeling, you can’t feel your way into a new way of acting.”
That was 20+ years ago and it continues to bubble up as truth over and over again in my life.
Motivation wanes.
Feelings fluctuate.
Feelings are not facts, and motivation is not a constant, sometimes they do require some bossing around.
The Answer To The Question: What Should I Be Doing Right Now?
And here’s that second God whisper that tickled my brain while on a long run (for me) recently that helped me to have discernment on what it is I should be doing right now…
Because, for me, sometimes the hard part of motivation is simply knowing WHAT category of life needs my motivation and attention first…
In other words…
When I was chatting with God about where my focus should be and what really needs my attention and in what order…
He wrapped these five words around me…
maximize what you already have
Friend, I am going to let that phrase wash over you…
Like a wave on the shore…let it take shape in whatever way it is meant for you…and for me.
Because the truth is…
We each have a lot.
We have ourselves.
We have God.
We have today.
Here are a few very simple tactical ways you can put into practice the idea of :
“Maximizing what you have”
how to maximize what you already have
Have a gym membership? Go to the gym, take a class, engage in the membership you pay for.
Have a church nearby? Join the bible study or women’s group they offer.
Have Audible or a book app on your phone? Listen to a new book while driving or cleaning.
Have children? GO SNUGGLE THEM. Scratch their back or read a book to them.
Have a dog? Take them for a walk.
Have neighbors? Invite them to take a walk or grab a cup of coffee.
Have co-workers? Bring in doughnuts next week, just because.
Have the Bible App on your phone or your Bible? Read it every day.
Have eyes? Close them and pray.
Have the night sky above? Look up and admire.
Have a morning to catch the sunrise? Go catch it.
You get the idea friend. 🙂
And just think….the sun had not even rose yet, on silent Saturday, when I captured this.
We are so blessed to have so much at our fingertips…
Sometimes stripping things down…maximizing what we already have…
Clearing away the distractions, keeping our eyes on our own paper…
And deciding to stop having a dress rehearsal for pain you have already been healed from…
They all have a way of putting us back on the path that is meant and assigned to each of us.
For you, for me.
For healing, for motivation.
For our next move…towards the light—just like in “How to Look for the Light Walking in the Dark“.
Living on a prayer,
Heather
