31 Days :: {2} :: Introduction

for real. {and I promise that most posts will not be this long lol!}

Life. I'm still (LORD-willing) still very near the beginning of mine, but even by now, I know that life is a journey. I truly believe what Corrie ten Boom said about every experience preparing us for a future we cannot see. And I can see it.

I can see the way life has lead me through a couple of years to get to this point. And I'm trusting that God will use this point where I cam right now to bring me somewhere new in the future. 

I don't even remember how, or why, but for some reason, several years ago, I picked up Ann Voskamp's book, 1000 gifts. And it awakened something inside. Something that said, the ordinary is more than ordinary. It is the very grace of God. And it began to change the way I looked at the world.

It was a fight. Everyday. It still is a fight. I don't imagine it will ever stop being one, but I do know the more I practice the stronger I am to fight this battle. 

"Life is a collection of a million, billion moments, tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous glowing pearls. And strung together, built upon one another, lined up through the days and the years, they make a life, a person." ~Shauna Niequist (Cold Tangerines)

have you ever stopped to celebrate sunset? a glorious show that God placed in the sky just. for. you. to. celebrate?

At the beginning of September I was thinking about 31 Days and whether or not I wanted to do a series in it this year, and if I did, what on earth it was going to be about. And about that same time, I picked up Shauna Niequist's book Cold Tangerines and I was hooked. captivated. excited. I couldn't put it down. This book spoke to me, right where I was at. Right in the middle(ish) of my year of Here & Now, which I was failing and succeeding at by turn. But mostly failing :P

And I got to the end, and this quote: 

"I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift, who will use it up and wring it out and drag it around like a favorite sweater." ~Shauna Niequist (Cold Tangerines)

and I knew. This, this was my 31 Days. I want to celebrate life - my everyday life. I learn by teaching and I process by writing. And maybe, too, someone else will be encouraged to celebrate their every-day! 

Because I don't want to get to the end and realize that my life was only mindane things, lifeless days that followed lifeless days, that turned into months, and years, and decades. "I want a life that sizzles and pops," I want to find this beauty in life. I want to celebrate!! :) 

So this is me. And Shauna. My writing will be raw and haphazard and unpolished, and hers, - well we all know her writing is refreshing and beautiful. 

One of the things that I had trouble with, even just getting started writing this post, is that I will puck up her book for inspiration, and then her sparkling words make the ones in my head, that I struggle to put to paper sound scattered and ungraceful. 

But by the grace of God, her book inspired me, and I can do no less than pick up my pen and write, and offer them to my LORD as a love offering, praying that somehow, in some way, He might use them to bless someone.

Glory to His name!

And so this month will be, as Shauna says, "a shameless appeal for celebration." I know I need it. Join me?

linking up with Chantel and Elizabeth :)