Hey friends!
I just got back from FLA with my famjam and it was a fabulous time of relaxing, exploring & eating!
Florida has been that “family cottage” for me and my family for many years. It’s the place where we’ve escaped east coast winters for a few weeks of intentional family time, relaxation, dreaming & fun.
Read MoreHey friends!
I’m itching to blog about the latest book I read on our honeymoon in Jamaica— I highly recommend it. There were so many great nuggets of truth in Rachel Hollis’, GIrl, Stop Apologizing. Here are my top 5 takeaways.
1) Don’t water down who you are. Don’t apologize for who you are.
Now, caveat when you read “who you are” think of your best self. Don’t water THAT down. Have you ever been around a certain group of people who make you feel like you can’t be your best self? For example, sometimes if I’m around people who are being negative or have a victim mentality, I’m afraid to be my positive upbeat self because I might annoy them, or they may resent me. That’s wrong. Rachel talks about how if we were to constantly be adjusting, adjusting adjusting to serve other people’s agenda’s even when we don’t agree with them, we completely loose ourselves and who it is we are supposed to be for the world around us. Be FULLY you without apology. There’s only one you and the world needs you. Obviously always love others, be polite and use wisdom, but don’t mistaken that for watering yourself down to be a less FULL version of who you are. Be YOU. If people have a problem with that, it’s probably really a problem with themselves.
2) Don’t create space in your life, or headspace for negative, conflict creating people to speak into your life. At first this may seem like it’s wrong or sounds bad. But Rachel talks about how yes, it’s important to love everyone and be there to support people, but that is different than allowing people’s negativities and insecurities to have a say and impact on our own lives, thinking and approach to life. When other people’s opinions are directing your thinking or decision making, there’s a problem. It’s the OPO problem. “Other-People’s-Opinions.” You’re giving your power away and everyone else owns you. Use wisdom, council of a few people you truly trust, seek God, and move forward. This life can be challenging as it is, don’t allow additional conflict creators to have a place.
3) Touch it once. Create efficiencies in your life!
When you open an email, reply to it then. Even if you don’t have the answers, let them know you’re finding them. Touch it once! If you start doing something, be disciplined to finish that task, or the part of the larger task that you are doing. This creates little efficiencies throughout your day that turn into BIG productivity in the big picture.
4) Set your vision, the goals to reach it & then serve your agenda.
This might sound selfish at first glance, but Rachel actually says that in a way, you have to be selfish to accomplish your vision. Selfish to your vision. For example a part of your vision may be to serve the community, so you have to be “selfish” to make the time and not allow that time to be taken away by things outside of your vision. So in that way, be selfish with you vision. Although your vision isn’t selfish. Make sense? You picking up what I’m putting down? Make decisions, fill your calendar with the things that serve your vision. Otherwise you will never get there. Let your Yes be yes and your no be no. A yes to someone else’s inquiry from you may be saying a yes to their agenda and a no to your agenda. Be wise!
5) Move your body everyday!
Bottom line. If you aren’t feeling good physically mentally or spiritually, move your body everyday. This isn’t the be all end all answer but it will ALWAYS help. If you aren’t doing that, you are doing a disservice to yourself. Do something, for 30 minutes intentionally to move, to be active. Maybe it’s 2 hours for you, but maybe you’re looking for somewhere to start. Walk for 30 minutes minimum a day. Don’t complain about something unless you’ve at-least done this. If you catch yourself about to get down, or complain, nip it in the butt and go for a walk first, and then see if you still want to complain after. And if you do, maybe do another lap :P ! The mental and physical benefits of exercise are well researched and AMAZING.
So there you have it! My top takeaways from Rachel’s new book. Let me know what you think!
XOXO Ash
I break suitcases. I’ve probably went through 10 minimum. I think this says something about my personality... I try and fit too much in sometimes. Less is more doesn’t come easily to me (haha).
My most recent experience was with a fake Louis button duffel bag that I got in China. Boy did that thing look SHARP. It looked undeniably real, but it wasn’t. I packed that thing with as much as possible still being able to squeeze it shut between my legs and quickly zip it up. Perfect.
All my bags were set and ready to go by the door. And finally it was SHOW TIME.
We gathered all our things ready to go to the airport with our family, I got five steps outside the door, and pop, pop, pop, both handed tore off and the zipper popped from the weight.
An illustration comes to mind here. My bag looked the part, but when weight was added, it immediately broke and couldn’t not function to do its ONE job. Carry my things.
If it’s fake, it’s not going to be able to carry the weight of responsibility, the weight of its job when it’s show time.
I once heard Christine Caine speak a message I will never forget. She used the illustration of an old fashioned photo lab. That photo that is completely undeveloped, goes into a dark room for a certain period of time in order to fully develop before it brought back out into the light in order to show its true beauty.
This is much like us as people. God brings us through journeys of development so that we can be the real deal. Not fake. Tried and true and ready to carry weight.
Christine went on to say that if you took a photo out of development too early the photo wouldn’t be nearly as beautiful as the result it’s intended to have.
Same goes for us. If we try and get ahead of our season of development before our character has grown, before we’ve matured, before we’ve learned and put in the work, if we try to get ahead of God’s timing, we are like a semi development photo or a fake Louis Vuitton bag.
Let’s stick out the journey, let’s be the real deal, let’s become fully developed as we prepare to step into the big things that are next in our lives. Let’s be like a real Louis.
I bet you’ve never heard that motivational quote before.
“I’m like a real Louis Vuitton.”
Xoxo
Ashley
Hey friends!
It’s been awhile since I have posted an entry. It has been a very FULL fall season so far. But today I came across the above photo in good old, “Facebook memories”, and it really inspired me to write and share.
It seems like any regular old photo, could be anywhere, any beach, with no apparent significance. But for me this was a huge moment in my life.
I’m on a beach in Bogota, Colombia, on my first international outreach trip with The Gideons International In Canada. I had just completed my degree in Communication Studies, and I’m reporting for a global organization on their international work.
Just months before this photo was taken, my dream to report internationally on positive things happening around the world, seemed impossible. I remember flying up to Ontario from Newfoundland for my interview for a Communications Coordinator role in November of 2013. The reach of the organizations work fascinated me. I remember seeing a magazine publication of theirs on a coffee table at the office. One article in particular was talking about their work in South America and how they’d be sending teams to Chile and Colombia. After my interview, I recall calling my mom saying, “Imagine if I actually got to go on these trips as a reporter and help tell the story of how people's lives are being impacted.”
Less than a year later this photo was taken on the beach of Colombia as we boarded a small rickety boat to go to an island that had historically, never had access to Bibles. The people of the island desperately wanted to read God's Word to learn more about Him and the hope that we can find in Him.
Looking at this photo today I was reminded of two important things.
1) Don’t put aside your dream as if it's impossible. Whatever dreams, goals, and visions you have for your life—they are there for a purpose and they are not out of reach. Go for it as if you were created specifically to do and accomplish it— because you probably were!
2) Don’t loose the wonder-- the wonder and amazement of the opportunities you have been blessed with in life to do what you love. Be grateful, count them as a privilege, and pour your energy and passion into them!
Ashley
xoxo
Last week I was sitting in a Brian Houston concert and he started singing the song “How He loves us.” I had heard this song many times before, but this one line of the song really punched me in the gut… “I don’t have time to maintain these regrets, when I think about the way He loves.”
The past few weeks I had been stuck in a cycle of regretting things maybe I should have done, or maybe things I shouldn’t have done. And when we get into that cyclic headspace of should have would have could have, it is quite paralyzing and debilitating. It removes you totally from the active blessing and opportunity of your present and paralyzes you from stepping into the promises in your future. If we want to see God’s amazing promises and plans to unfold in our lives, and be able to identify them right now in the present, we really don’t have TIME to maintain regrets nor does God want us too. So stop it! (In absolute love I say that…)
Leave your past in the past and be in your present.
Okay but then when we manage to leave the past, all of a sudden we want the future. We want to run as fast forward as possible. But then we miss the present… Face palm.
Be in your present instead of wishing for your future. OR else you just miss life entirely because in every stage of life there is a flavor of “waiting” and anticipation for what is to come… Don’t be distracted by the wait.
I once had a friend named Angela Jones… actually she’s still my friend haha—and she once told me this: “You won’t get to your next season until you learn what God is teaching you in this one.”
The day after Brian Houston’s concert, over a delicious lunch in Calgary, Alberta I was ranting to Angela about all of the things that I wanted—right NOW! Haha aggressive, I know. I just wanted so badly to get to what was next… it felt as if I was in a season of transition, in between, a “not-yet” season, a waiting season…
“You won’t get to your next season until you learn what God is teaching you in this one.”
So this challenged me to really take my focus from the past, and from the future and bring it into to the now, more specifically to God, right now, and what he was saying, teaching, guiding, directing for RIGHT NOW. Not even for tomorrow, or a few hours by now, but right in this very moment. And then started carrying that into each moment.
When you intentionally seek God and open yourself up to him, quieting distractions, and disciplining yourself so that all decisions to your best effort are made to be more fully aligned with Him, clarity comes, wisdom comes, knowledge comes.
So the learning continues… this past weekend I found myself in California for some work meetings and events. I walk into the first event and the band is playing, you guessed it, “How he loves” … God is so cool like that. He will continue to remind us of what he is saying and what he is teaching us. And get this, the guy singing stops the song to talk about the line, “I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way He loves.”
All the praise hands emoji’s.
So then Eric Samuel Timm gets up with a pre-word before his actual message haha and talks about the concept of the alter throughout Scripture.
The alter is a place of sacrifice, where something dies. God’s Word tells us that we must die to ourselves, our flesh, our earthly, selfish and momentary desires in order to become a new person fully alive in His image, goodness, Spirit, power and strength.
For me it was a reminder that you can’t live a certain way, and expect your life to be a different way… if that makes any sense. If we want what God has for us, we have to walk his way and not our own. Sometimes it requires us giving up momentary satisfaction for a long-term and lasting life of fullness and purpose.
If we are depending on ourselves for fulfillment, or the world, or even just people around us, we aren’t going to be full. But if we look to God as our source we will overflow with more than enough. Where are we looking?
My adventure continues. I drive 2 hours to San Diego to meet a girl that I have never met before, but she is a well known communicator who speaks to thousands of women about where to find true purpose and love—In God. We had connected over social media just a week prior, and I had mentioned I was coincidently going to be in California that weekend, so she suggested we meet up. I was driving to San Diego in the WORST traffic of all time, passed 3 accidents as I was venturing down the California coast, and I was thinking to myself. Why the HECK am I driving all the way to San Diego in this horrible traffic and blistering heat, I could be laying on the beach getting bronzed and and we could just Skype later… Jus’ being honest lol.
I arrived at their young adults church service and met Brittni right away—you know those people you instantly click with? I knew why I drove two hours in traffic… Brittni was one of those people for me. Just to meet her, connect with her, and now be forever friends and sisters, is worth the world. Connection with God and people is everything.
Then her husband starts speaking a message and it’s entitled, “The power of your BEEN THROUGH.”
I instantly knew, this is also why I have driven two hours.
“Your been through, sets up your breakthrough.”
The fact that you’ve been through something means you are on the other side, or at minimum it has not defeated you. It’s our been through that stretches us, grows us, matures us, and those lessons, that growing time is what brings us to our breakthrough of newness, growth in character, new revelation, strength, wisdom, and discernment to carry into our present and future.
“We overcome by sharing our been through”
The enemy will try and shut you up from talking about anything you’ve been through. Do you know why? Because it points to the fact that he couldn’t defeat you with it. He didn’t win. You’re through it and you’re actually stronger for it.
And talking about it eliminates his power over you and others. Other people realize that their been through can become a breakthrough too.
“There are two options in life: You can be determined that your confession will always be positively impacting your circumstance, or you can allow your circumstance to negatively affect your confession (and then life sucks)”
Which you choose will result in leading two very different lives. One is bringing into reality the promises of God, declaring them consistently and unwaveringly over every circumstance, and the other is choosing to allow our perhaps less than perfect circumstances to confess things not of God, not of his promises, not of faith and hope… in other words, we actually end up declaring lies over our lives. Let’s not do that!
So this may be the longest blog I’ve ever written. But I wanted to share it in it’s entirety to show you as an example of how God is working in our experiences, he is speaking to us, leading us and it’s up to us if we open ourselves up to listen and to follow. And I promise, the choice to always be intentional in listening and following is the most life giving choice you can make.
Love you,
Ash
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