But often times we miss it.  We focus too much on what is wrong to appreciate what is beautiful – a fallen/broken world and the magnificent grace of her Creator.

More often than not we miss the beauty within ourselves.  We see our flaws [both physical and not] and believe the lies that these labels tell us.

My dear friend, Elora, has published her first eBook – When Beauty Pursues You.

In it she shares short essays on her struggle with an eating disorder, and the journey over the last year to where she’s come to today.  She shares her struggle to accept that there is beauty within her and allow it to overwhelm her.

In Elora’s own words:

this is for the girls who feel damaged and used and forgotten. it’s a manifesto, in the middle of my brokenness, for those who feel like they’ll never measure up against standards set for them.

Whether we’ve struggled with being over weight or too skinny, too blonde or too redheaded, abused, broken or simply just living this exhausting human life, there is beauty in you.

She {Beauty} wants you to know this and to live this.

I’m giving away two copies today of When Beauty Pursues You.  I believe this message that Elora has penned needs to be repeated over and over again.  To ourselves, our sisters, our wives, our best friends, and our daughters.

To enter, leave a comment below.  Please feel free to share a time when beauty has pursued you.  I will announce the winners on Friday, January 27th.

The tall girl, with habits that pushed me outside the circles of popular and even the not popular.  I was a social plague.  Think Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold, without the mass murder of course.

The desire to belong and feeling like I didn’t quite belong has never left (does it ever).  I’ve spent my life waiting for the hammer to fall.  When you spend your childhood as the social outcast – as the pity case – as the object of humoring teachers, principals, & parents, you becoming an adult who expects the same things will happen at 36 as they did at 6.

So, I second guess everyone’s intentions with me.  I expect with every invitation, every welcoming in, that I will be played the fool.

I recall a friend’s bridal shower that was a costume party.  I was so afraid to dress up because I fully expected that I was the only one who received an invite saying to dress up and everyone else was just coming normal.  I expected to be made a fool.

I put of walls of defense 10 miles wide around my heart.  And those closest to me still have 5 miles of defense between my heart and theirs.  I’ve been hurt……I seriously don’t want to be ever again.

So this belonging without being met and those who accept me [with my walls] because they have their own they’re learning to scale & break down, is difficult for me to grasp.

When you don’t have a history of belonging, trusting your heart & your emotions & yourself to another is daunting.

It’s a quest in vulnerability.

We aren’t meant to walk alone.  We only do because pride, jealousy, & bitterness work their way in between hearts.

When we fight to keep these barriers from between us we commune well.  We belong, right where we’re at and right where need it.

I’ve heard it said that if you’re dealing with writer’s block, the best thing you can do is just write.

I’m not quite sure if I have writer’s block or the fact that I’m processing a lot personally, but I feel the need to put this practice into place in my life.

My plan right now is to post three times a week.  I feel this is an attainable goal.  Likely these posts will fall on Monday, Wednesday, & Friday.  Don’t be surprised if I sneak one in on a random Tuesday.

Mondays, I hope to begin focusing more on 1000 Gifts.  These last few months have left me breathless and I’ve taken for granted even the minute gifts in my life, not to mention the large ones.  I want to start recognizing these and being grateful for the pillowy clouds in the sky & the way I seem to sink into my bed when getting up for work is the last thing I feel like doing.

Wednesdays, I’ll focus more on what God is showing me.  Things I’m learning.  Things going on in my life.  Whether these be people or lessons associated with my One Word or just life in general.

Fridays, I plan to focus specifically on my One Word:  hope.  I did this last year with my word Grace, and Elements of Grace.  It was helpful for me to keep my word in my constant thoughts.  It helped me keep my antenna up & take note of where God was showing me where grace abides.

I don’t have a catch little title for my Friday hope series & that’s probably okay.

Once again, thank you for spending time here.  I count all of you in my blessings.

I need to be here I thought, as rejoice – rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee... breathed through my lips.  I need to be here, in this moment.  Feeling this music.

I need to breathe this in.

This was the first time in a long time that I sang songs to Him.  It felt foreign and comfortable at the same time.

And for a few brief moments my pain, heavy heart and confusion rested somewhere other than my chest.

To be there…caught between Heaven and Earth.  Lifting songs of Noel and joy and praise.

I wanted to hold onto this moment longer than the constraints of time would allow.  To leave this burden that weighs me, in that secret place it was tucked away.

As I sit here reflecting on the energy that fell upon us and swelled up in us, I’m reminded that He came to take our burdens.  He didn’t come just to save us from destruction and to save us to Himself.  He came to walk with us as we traverse though this difficult journey called life and all the pain and brokenness that burrows deep within us.

As we continue to travel through this Advent and as Christmas morning dawns in a few days and as I continue to learn to re-trust, I’ll once again commit my heart to Him and continue to ask Him to heal it.

And believe that He has come to me.

In the light of grace.

Though I have worked my self into a tizzy over wrapping gifts in a fancy, creative way & getting the gift for my sister-in-law that I know she’ll love & the book for my nephew that I imagine him belly laughing at as his mom reads it to him.

I’ve had little time in the last week (plus) to just sit.  To just be.  I’m reminded of this post by my dear friend Mandie.

If I allow all the hustle and the dry fingers from wrapping paper and the cookie dough that I forgot to put baking soda in — if I allow all of this to take my focus, I’m going to miss out.

Not only on the blessed celebration we’re experiencing, but on quiet moments on the couch with a cup of tea.  Of smiles from Shawn and his I’m so proud of yous and thank yous.

So, I’m encouraging you to take a half hour (preferably longer) and just be.  Grab a cup of tea or coffee or cocoa piled high with marshmallows or whipped cream.  Watch your child as the play in the wonderment that is Christmas.  Grab your spouse & kiss some place other than under the mistletoe.

Just be.

Here’s a couple songs from a band (Future of Forestry) we hope to wake up in time to go see Sunday morning.  This first song I first heard last year and it’s one of those that reaches to my depths.  The second, is O’ Holy Night.  Last year this song hit me in a way it never has.  They lyrics tell not only of Christ’s birth, but the freedom from slavery we are in before we come to Him.

The Earth Stood Still

O’ Holy Night

What are you doing this Christmas season just to be?

I’d made accusations against God based on feelings that have been ravaging me.  Accusations of abandonment, of the lack of caring.

We were scheduled to volunteer at an event for Compassion and honestly I didn’t want to go.  I wanted to be home, warm, cozied on my couch with my book.  I didn’t want to have to put on a “happy, Jesus is awesome & compassionate” face.  [just being honest here]

I was finishing up my day at work when I got a text from Shawn.  We had a message from our sponsored child.

If you don’t sponsor, or even if you do – these letters have the ability to make a bad day good, and even bring joy when all you feel is anger.

When I got home we opened the letter.  Inside was an anniversary card from our sponsor daughter Nikita for our tenth anniversary.  My eyes brimmed with salty tears and quickly overflowed.

The card was accompanied by a letter.  With my eyelashes still damp from tears I read that she loves math, and I think how smart this beautiful young lady is.  She sends kisses and hugs and I think how loved we are.

And she closes her letter with a verse.  This is the first time in two and a half years.  I read the illuminated text written by a 11 year old girl half a world away, and an overflow of sloppy tears inundate my cheeks again.

I wonder at how a young girl who wrote this letter about two months prior (a month or so before this all started happening in our lives) would choose this verse for a letter that would arrive at this season in our lives.

My mind floats to God, and I believe that it was at this point that my shell first started to crack.

It still amazes me that God reached from the other side of the globe, that months prior to this season even starting He moved upon the heart of a little Indian girl to minister to us.

In my feelings of abandonment by God, it is difficult to celebrate this time of Immanuel.

While everyone else cheerfully decorated their tree and home, my newly purchased tree sat in its box on the dining room table, and the stockings & nativity on the work bench in the garage where they’ve been for the last 11 months.

I didn’t – and I think in some regards still don’t – feel it.

I’ve noticed my anger is cyclical.  A constant cycle of anger, indifference, & finally consideration – and then start the whole cycle all over again before consideration takes root and grace is exchanged between He and I.  While anger and indifference are interwoven through the whole time.

Last night I was talking with Shawn.  He was asking how I was feeling/doing in regards to the catalyst that has propelled me the this cycle.  My response was that I don’t tend to think about it, because when I do I get blindingly angry.

And I believe his response was what I needed to hear, he said you have to think about it, you have to get over it.  And I’m transported back to my question of if I want to heal.

This morning………this morning, I find myself back at consideration.  However, in a different aspect that what has been over the last month and a half.  Yes, I still feel angry.  As I’ve mentioned it takes time.

Last night while Shawn was at a meeting I set up our tiny tree and wrapped extra lights around, as it seemed only half the tree came with lights.  I draped around it red velour and as always strategically placed the cast members who remind us of that night, when Immanuel took place.

I feel this time, in this position of consideration – it will be different.  I breathe in deep and hold on as I take a step towards Immanuel.

Life feels kinda like this right now.   A hazy, swirly, complicated. 

In part, it feels like the farther I get from ground zero of what catapulted me to state the harder it feels to go back to faith and trusting.

And of course all I hear about is faith.

My heart automatically puts up its thick walls of defense.

It’s hard to trust when you feel like God hasn’t held up His end of a bargain — which of course is a ridiculous concept.

But that’s how it feels.

A friend, who speaks in wisdom to us, says that God is exercising our faith in such a way that it’s in our face. And I feel like this is the case – that He’s standing with His arms woven together across His chest asking me now what, what are you going to do now?

In reality — this same question I’m posing to Him, with my arms knotted.

I wonder if I want to heal. If I want to trust again. Or if this anger it’s just easier, so I build my defense and push away every time I feel wooed.

This is – honestly – harder than I was expecting. I knew it would be hard……but this, this feels excruciating.

I want to take the short road to wholeness, while at the same time exercinging my interpreted right to the way I feel.

Really, I don’t know how to get back to good.

I sat there as she delicately drew lines and swirls on my hand and arm with henna.  I was amazed at the intricacy that flowed from her brown hands.

Beauty…sitting across from me and on my left arm.

I couldn’t remember being this happy, this content in a while.  Being there among a couple hundred people – most of East Indian decent – it just felt right.

How quickly these feelings faded as insomnia ripped through my body that night, and quickly drudged up all the anger that had possibly, slowly begun to fade.

I laid on our couch.  The glow of the street light out behind, and the nightlights in the kitchen illuminating the anger seething from my heart.

Where had it gone?  That happiness I’d felt just a dozen hours earlier.

Where as I had begun the process of re-trusting, and of re-experiencing the grace between Creator and creation, I now screamed.

I fear that if you could see this anger, this distrust that swells my chest and juts out my chin – you would shake your head at me in contempt.

………….or, maybe you wouldn’t.

I wonder at how hard we fall sometimes.

Why we distrust One who is so magnificently in control.

Why we choose to believe words we know are lies.

In these handful of days that have past since that sleepless night I still wrestle with the accusations I placed.  And I fear them.

They hold power if I allow them to.

But I want to get that place I was at with the beautiful Indian woman creating filigree on my hand.  To the place of joy I experienced as we were swamped by the culture of a land our hearts cries for.

I need to remember and believe that He is not looking at me with contempt but with eyes full of tears and a broken heart.