Conquering THANK YOU Anxiety

I grew up writing THANK YOU's

It's just what we did...and what we should do!

NO ONE wants to send a gift & question, "did they get it?"

And everyone loves mail!

So, here are a few tips to take the anxiety (& WORK) out of your THANK YOU writing!

GET ORGANIZED

Update your address book...without doing any work!

• Sign up for Postable.com & you will get your own private link to your address book
• Post the link on FaceBook or in a mass Email then your friends and family will input their own information 
• Your address book remains private to only you! The link just allows them to get their information in your address book!

GET STOCKED

Pick an assortment of Cards YOU love!

• Start with a small assortment that includes 1-THANK YOU set, 1-BLANK/EVERY DAY set, 1-HAPPY BIRTHDAY set
• DON'T get scared of the pack price! Remember, when you buy one card at a time, you're spending $3-5 for 1 card! 

GET SUPPLIES

Take the "work" out of your thank you writing!

• Invest in a Return Address Stamp {Self Inking makes it even easier!!} 
• Pick out Stamps from the Post Office that you actually like! {my FAVORITE is the "Vintage Seed Packet" Collection}

GET WRITING

• Start with The Thanks: "I cannot thank you enough for my beautiful candle"
• Make it genuine: "Once again I find myself in awe of your ability to give just the right thing...."
• How will you use it: "I cannot wait to burn my candle this summer when I'm relaxing with my books."
• Talk about them: "Whenever I burn my candle, I will think of you & how we laugh together."

In Short, YOU CAN DO THIS!

True appreciation doesn't have to be long or labored, it just has to be genuine!

Reference your gift & their importance to you and that's what matters!

A Love Letter to My Home

Dear "Red House"

I have wanted to write this letter to you for a long time, but I just couldn't wrap my heart around the concept of it; the concept of really saying goodbye. I knew that leaving you wasn't an "I'll see you again soon," but a, "thank you for the time we shared" and it burned my eyes and choked my throat.

I wanted to tuck a handwritten note into your eves for only you to know, but I was raw & sore with goodbyes I could barely say. I wanted you to keep a piece of truth in your foundation so that no matter where time took you, you would know, that you ARE loved and always will be.

When I met you, you were so broken. You were abandoned and unloved, forgotten and cast aside. When I saw you, I knew, I knew I wanted to share my life with you. I wanted you to shape me and change me in all the ways that I would do the same for you. I wanted to love you whole as I knew you would do for me.

People might think I'm crazy for loving you so, but it's something I can't explain. You were home. You were the first time I had hope that I could plant roots. Where people saw dust and broken bones, I saw scabs that would heal & scars that would mend. You were my vision, dream home, and you became my reality.

Our first night with you was spent as a family of three on a mattress in your living room. We cuddled there nursing our first born through a high fever on memorial day weekend. You sheltered us then. 

We brought our second born home to you. You let me shape a nursery and dream a room up that I missed with my first. You answered this quiet little dream of mine that lived loudly in my soul.

You hosted our friends and families. You stayed up with me during the sleepless nights. We gave you your white kitchen and you gave it back to us. You shared laughter, arguments, and sorrows with us. 

If your walls could talk....

You let Christan protect you & give me my dream with his hand made white picket fence. You kept my babies safe while they laughed and played in your yard. You entertained us on the lawn for afternoon wine picnics with the neighbors. You were our office & our nest.

Dreams became REAL with you, within you.

So, my dear sweet "Red House" as our boy named you, I love you.

I will always love you.

You could not have inherited a better new family to love and to love you back. You are sheltering them as you sheltered us. They are shaping you as you are shaping them. 

You are no longer a house, you are a home.

With love, 

The family who will always know you as home

Unstitched

I use to think I was the most honest woman out there when it came to motherhood.  And to clarify, it's not because I wanted to be, I just didn't know how to be anything else.

I entered motherhood with so many questions, doubts, fears, and un-met expectations.  I was so fatigued form a near 28 hour labor that I have very few memories of my first son's birth. I remember seeing his face & feeling the sweeping relief that, "it was over." When I brought our son home, for the first time in my life I was over taken by the fear of being alone. I was in need of people to be with me at all times. I went in to motherhood with my walls down and completely raw. I had no qualms saying that it was hard, that I was tired, and I wasn't sure I ever wanted to do it again. Those first months shaped me and that was the honesty I took to the streets. 

Birth wasn't magical. Breastfeeding wasn't miraculous. My relationship to my baby wasn't this serene snow globe of perfection. 

Birth was brutal (& nothing I wanted to see). Breastfeeding was exhausting, isolating, and immensely overwhelming. I loved my baby in a way I couldn't describe, but I was also afraid I wasn't enough for him. 

So I talked about it. I wrote about it. This blog was birthed from it. My Lips In Stitches...a lifelong need to write because my journals were all I had & the reality of becoming a mother melded into this one place, one title with two meanings.

I stepped away from this place after I lost my second baby. 

That was a season that bore a hole into the core of my self-understanding. I berated my ambition & I could not embrace the loss that came on Christmas Eve. It was a dark & long season all while being blessed & good in it's own right. 

My fingers have been idle. My words have been mute. My desire to pour out dried up.

Time has passed. A LOT of time. I've woven in and out of this place but I always end up back here. I'm addicted. I'm addicted to the need to lay it down and walk away new. I toyed with the idea of another new blog. My husband asked, WHY? 

Good point.

I thought on it. 

WHY? 

Because I didn't want to re-share this old place. I didn't want to relive these old words. I was embarrassed. I was afraid that I could be judged for this place. I wanted to remain hidden to those who could reach me but be known to those I'd probably never meet. And I've been thinking on this...thinking on it the way you kneed bread...mundane, repetitive thought that eventually molds itself into a final product, or in this case a decision: I will write here again. I won't change the name or hide from the years that brought me here. I'll own this. I'll let the past and present mingle here and dance showing me what can unfold from my vintage thoughts renewed. 

I'll be honest here as I always have been & I will share. I will unleash the trappings of my heart and be free because of it. 

So, cheers. Cheers to the second volume of a place beginning to be unstitched!

Plans Change

Here are some things I have always known about myself

• I like to write.  It's like therapy for me. My moment to clear my head, my heart, & my space. It's where I share uninterrupted, expect no one to really be listening & yet have no problem if people discover it because I am in control of what I put out there. I can't be a victim to what I write. 
• I love to experience the world. Put me on a plane, on a train, in a car, near or far, I want to see what's out there. I love feeling this big in a world that is so much bigger. I find my place in that, I find perspective in it: it's not about me, it's not about circumstance, it's not about an individual, it's about a whole! 
• I've got some serious cracks & some awesome intention to keep gluing them back together. I don't stay broken, I am NOT defined by breaking, I am made by the attempts to try & to improve. 

So, given all of that, it hasn't surprised me that I have found my world uprooted from California and replanted in Oregon. Was it a lifelong dream? Nope. Was it on purpose? Not at first. Has it become a dream? Yah, in many ways it has. Has it developed a purpose? Yes. period. 

We had this plan. We would keep our jobs, keep our house, keep our son in preschool, keep the same friends and maintain the same life. Plans change. We lost our jobs, we were going to lose our house and we had this choice: stay put where doors were staying closed or be BOLD & dare to say, "We are moving north."

So, I think it was God's plan. Scratch that- I KNOW it was God's plan. Because when we said YES to something so terrifying, doors flew open. Do we have jobs yet? Oddly-no. But as it turns out, those are human perceptions of doors. God blew doors down for a place to live, a school for our sons to be a part of, a community for us to belong in, a church for us to find a home in, and friends to fill our hearts with. Did it take away the longing for the ocean we use to drive by, my dream fence my husband built or the ache for our friends, nuh-uh--we just happened to unfold. We found ourselves expanding. We now had new inlets to love and more outlets to pour from.

So we had this California plan but it changed into an Oregon one that looks strange, unfamiliar, and scary to those we put some miles between but if I could say anything to those who feel misplaced, confused, angry, or unhappy the change it would be this: Distance doesn't divide unless it's allowed to. Love doesn't stop unless it's withheld. Bonds don't break unless they are severed. Proximity doesn't change my love for you and that bond can be in the past or be a past, present AND future.

I'm God's Toddler

Writer's block is one way of putting my thought process into a phrase.
It's been MORE than what I can't get to come out of my fingers though, it's been what I can't get my heart to retain, my ears to hear & my will to obey. I have been utterly...defiant.

It's been quite a year. 2012 was ushered in with high hopes like most years are (no one starts them thinking, "I'm so excited for how much this is going to suck!") The months before it had their challenges but I was facing them, tackling them--I was down right conquering them! With a nearly-four year old & my 4 month old, I was facing getting healthy--emotionally, mentally, spiritually healthy. God was holding me & I was gripping him--He was my crutch and my guide through this place I was utterly and desperately alone in. That label "post partum depression" was a temporary tattoo on my wrist--I wouldn't allow it to be permanent. I would quite literally, survive it. I would very physically fight it. I would with every ounce of my core, I would emotionally face it.

10 months have come and gone & I hear whispers of God's voice now. I'm pretty sure what happened is what I tend to let happen--I ached for Him & needed Him and there He was, loving me loudly! He had me in his grasp and I wasn't going to let go...but then I got my feet on the ground. I saw myself in the mirror and I for the first time in my life could say, "I see myself! I'm strong! I did it! I am healthy!" I was PROUD of me (am proud of me!). In those moments, I slowly distanced myself from my NEED for him. I wasn't desperate anymore so I gave Him a hug and backed off a bit. He became a distant relative that I love, enjoy being with, but don't pursue daily...weekly...monthly...

Lay off...emergency appendectomy...another lay off...death...melanoma... the hits were coming now but I wasn't on my knees, I wasn't angry or yelling at God, I was just numb. I wasn't feeling like I had to survive & I stopped chasing Him. I could hear my heart saying, "go to Him" but then I'd tune out--I was resisting with excuses: I'm too busy. I'm too tired. If I had just an hour alone each day... The more I resisted & excused myself from the table with Him, the quieter He got & the louder the world got. The trivial things that are just a part of life became another check on the list of issues but I just wouldn't go to Him.

Why? Inside me I was letting lies mull & the scent filled my soul with a tale that I did not deserve His saving...again. I could hear my thoughts blister with failure as His daughter, feel the ache that I only went to Him in need, and the guilt that I was only here to burden Him. Last night, as I called out to my son to listen to me (for the third time!) I felt frustrated, "Why is my child choosing to ignore me?" but within minutes, I was kissing my child on his perfect nose and filling with awe because I love my son. In that flash, I felt it--that striking, stunning reminder, "I love you, daughter, even more than you love your own son!"

The numbness, resistance, & excuses are slowly subsiding. In one still, small moment His voice that hasn't stopped speaking broke through my avoidance: He loves me even when I ignore Him. He adores me even when I misbehave. I cherishes me even when He watches me making mistakes.

I need Him.

To Walk A Mile

This isn't a philosophical post by any means, I've just been lost in thought lately and struck by one of those quotes I feel like I can hear or say but I don't digest: 

"You can't judge a person until you walk a mile in their shoes."

I'm thirty now. How that happened I'm not sure, but it feels like a lot of life has been both lived and lost in three decades. It's now that I am a mom of two, married, facing life's beautiful and challenging realities that the depth of events is more impactful.

In the last year, I have been witness to four things that have forever changed my heart and my view of the stranger that stands next to me, the driver ahead of me, and/or the ones I hug & say I love you to. 

One of my dearest and most cherished friends lost her sister (also her best friend) in a tragic accident in Yosemite. Roe & Haley were inseparable. As my roommate in college for three years, Haley spent more time with us than most of the friends we had on campus. They were virtually inseparable and many of my funniest and special moments include Haley right beside us. Four days before my second son was born, I received the news that Haley was now an angel. 

I fell to the floor in disbelief and it took three long minutes before I found myself sobbing.

I wanted to RUN to Roe but I couldn't go anywhere.

I welcomed life while she said goodbye.

7/31/12 will be the one year anniversary of heaven receiving one of the most beautiful angels I will ever know.

Two months after my second son's birth, my aunt, a mother to three beautiful daughters under 21, lost her life.

She was a teacher to thousands that changed lives forever.

I looked at my cousins, 14-16-21, & I wondered: how were they going to do it?

I questioned how they were seemingly handling the grief so well.

The loss of her life was surreal for me.

I seemed to process both Aunt Jean and Haley at one memorial.

Two families I love would now forever be changed.

Through all of that loss, I was celebrating this beautiful baby boy who had come in and completed our family. I looked at him and cherished him. He was tiny, perfect, & so loved.

I saw him and how fragile life is.

I looked at him and saw every joy & every fear, every excitement & every anxiety.

This little boy was innocent, untouched by the world and I wanted to put him in his crib forever.

"Don't go anywhere, sweet boy. Stay here and I will make sure no harm touches you."

Most recently, my husband's family suffered an unbelievable loss as his 16 year old cousin was murdered. She went to get a soda and had no idea she would never go home.

A young Christian, star athlete, and member of the FFA, her impact on a small 700 population community rocked the state of Oklahoma.

She left behind a mother, father, sister & brother.

Yesterday, that sweet family from Oklahoma was visiting us in California.

While we walked with them on the beaches, I stared at all of the Summer vacationers that walked by. I looked at our family as people brushed passed them and was struck,

"They have no idea what kind of loss these people carry with them. If they knew, would it change how they looked at them?"

It made me look at everyone, lost in my own world of noise cancelling waves, I stared at people wondering, 

"what is your story? what have you celebrated and what have you survived?"

I brush past life daily getting lost in the mundane or the struggles forgetting to soak in the people instead of the stuff, forgetting to put aside exhaustion and routine for the spontaneous. Forgetting.

I wish I could say I would forever be changed by this moment of clarity but I know, I'll slip back into ME thinking about what's hurting and challenging ME,  what do I need, what do I want,  what am I hurting over instead of looking at the hearts of my neighbors, strangers, family & friends.

This world is a broken one. 

His heaven is a perfect one.

I just want to love on the journey HOME.

I talked to Monday

Hello, Monday!  I feel like resting in your vastness for a moment and linger here with you.  You know, for a day, you seem to carry a lot of mixed emotions. You're a new week which is fresh with a new beginning but depending on the journey, you feel old and heavy--something I want to cast aside. Today though, I'm just choosing to stay awake and build the new road. 

How do you feel, Monday? Does it feel burdensome that most people loathe your existence? Do you take it personally or do you realize it was just an unfortunate alignment that made you first instead of Friday? 

Well, Monday, I'll tell you what I like about you: when the baby naps in the morning, the chance to sit and have coffee with you, the opportunity to work a little from home, the chance to see what lays ahead and ponder the unknown corners.  Today, I love the chance to indulge in copious amounts of intricate song lyrics & deafen myself to the sound of anything outside of my speakers & mind. 

So, Monday, thanks for coming to rest a bit with me.