Love Without Fear

Boy, the holidays are already here. That’s just crazy. This last year has been a little bit of a whirlwind for me. I mean, the divorce was finalized, I moved to a completely different city, and ended up starting my own business. If you had told that me that all those things were going to take place over a year, I probably would have laughed at you.

But it’s been so good. All of it, the whole process. I have received so much healing the past several months, and it’s partly in thanks to my wonderful support system. My family has been instrumental in helping me both financially and emotionally. Seriously. I wouldn’t be anywhere without their love and stability.

This is where I have to give a shout-out to Brother specifically.

He’s been the best. We’ve been roomies for a year now, and he’s totally helped me out with rent the last couple of months while I’ve been getting this business off the ground. He’s been my number one cheerleader and often times the reason that I didn’t just give up and go back to a regular day job.

My church family has been my other support system. I’m one of the lucky ones, guys. We’re small in number, but fierce in love. And the other night, as I had a conversation with my pastor and his wife about many different things, something awesome happened. I felt a healing in my soul that I didn’t even know I needed.

I processed this over the next few days, almost testing the feeling of such peace, but it hasn’t wavered. You see, one of the unfortunately side effects of being in an abusive situation is fear. When you leave that situation, you break off one part of the fear because that person can no longer control you through it. But there are other parts of you that still feel apprehensive.

One of those things is fear of rejection. It’s something that I’ve struggled with my entire life, even before living in abuse, and part of the reason I rushed into a marriage that shouldn’t have happened. As other parts of my heart were healed, the fear of rejection still reared its ugly head. Especially when you’ve been single for a while and haven’t had any real prospects for dating.

That was the amazing thing about the other weekend. For the first time in my life, I felt freedom to love without fear. It didn’t matter if I was rejected. Didn’t matter if things didn’t turn out the way I envisioned them. I could still choose to love and know that it’s all going to be okay.

Everyone has their moments of doubt, but you can’t let fear rule your life. Live without regret, and enjoy the journey. I’ve had a couple of design inspirations come from this revelation, and I’ll be sharing them as soon as they’re finished. In the meanwhile, I leave you with my hope for your lives:

Photo c. Hawk’s Haven Photography & Design

Be blessed! And thanks for traveling on this journey with me.

Autumn: It’s a Love/Hate Relationship

Autumn is by far my favorite time of the year. Seriously. You see, when you live in Central Oregon, you usually have two seasons: winter and August. Lots of snow in the wintertime, and blazing hot summers. I mean, we are called the high desert for a reason. We get very little rain. (No, no, you’re thinking of PORTLAND. Portland gets all the rain and is very weird. The rest of us in the state are fairly normal, and the Cascade Mountains block most of the rain from coming our way.)

So for about two weeks, we get to enjoy this absolutely beautiful autumn weather that’s pretty much close to perfect. The leaves change colors, the temperature drops to a livable degree, and there’s even several days of cloud cover. It’s my favorite season for all of those things, plus hot chocolate, boots and scarves, and maybe some apple cider.

Of course, the down side to the leaves changing color is that eventually they fall to the ground.

I went for a walk this morning since it was amazing outside, and also because I had been a lazy sloth for most of week. I saw all of the leaves on the ground below the tree in our front yard and was rather impressed. They’d all fallen fairly quickly. Well, a few hours passed after I returned home, and I worked away at some business stuff. (Side note: I’m working on a couple of calendar designs and couldn’t be more excited! I can’t wait to show them here.)

ANYway, by early afternoon I was ready to check the mail and see if any of my orders had come today, but when I opened my front door, I was greeted by this:

Yeah, those weren’t there when I went for a walk earlier, so I actually stepped back in surprise because I wasn’t expecting it.

That’s right, all of those leaves that had previously been in the front yard….

….were now all on my front porch.

“Well, that kind of sucks,” I thought, feeling none too pleased.

Then I saw my neighbor’s porch:

And suddenly, mine didn’t seem quite so bad.

So there you have it. White I love fall weather, I’m not so keen on the clean up side of things. But soon we will have those nasty white flakes falling from the sky, so I can’t complain. I’ll be wishing for fallen leaves when that time comes around.

And now, off for more calendar editing fun!