I've got my singing voice on blast now, because it's getting down to the wire.  This little one and I have a marathon to run and we've been preparing.  Her with her persistence and me with my determination.

Emotionally, Spiritually, Mentally and Physically. 

The journey of bringing a life into the world is all encompassing.  The more this life moves and follows me daily as I do my own life, I have been realizing how important our surroundings are.

Maintaining an atmosphere of strength, purpose and sweet surrender to the beauty of life unpredictable has been a mantra.

We've set up a birth plan, washed the clothes, got the carseat locked in, and we've embraced the unpredictable.  We don't want to live in a life of fear or perfect planning, but in the moment of the daily. 

Words are so important.  Keeping the words around us positive and speaking life over this process has been a realization of the life our little family want to live.  

A life redeemed with spirits released to the trust and peace that only God can give.  

So many of us do not realize how our own experiences, worries, fears and overall mindsets can affect another. 

May I be so aware of myself and how I affect this little heart.  May I speak words of life and faith.  May I deny "myself" so I can be the grounding my child needs.  Not to negate myself and needs, but to take stock in what I may carry that need not be shared.  May I be the fighter and the protector but not the controller.  May I train my mothering like an athlete, that I will understand how to use my abilities in a way that holds on when needed but knows instinctively when to let go.  Because the letting go is as important as the holding on. 

There is an amazing team of people preparing for this life and we are blessed daily by them and their care.  

This is it sweet one.  The stage is set, the curtains are ready.  This is your first call.  

It's the time of year for Spring Cleaning.  For clearing the cobwebs of your life and space and making room for the new and the fresh.

Those of us who find this a fun and inspiring task are already on the journey of renewing ourselves and our spaces yet again.

There are also those who don't enjoy this.  Who find 'renewing', 'renaming', or 'rebirthing' a very uncomfortable, scary task.

Both are valid.

We need those of us who have no problem moving forward into 'the new'.

And

We need those of us who prefer to rest in the known of before.

That is how we appreciate the balance.

There is balance when we make room in our lives for new things.

There is balance when we take the time to consider a new journey, decision, next step.

And although we may be scared to put a label on a 'next step', sometimes that is exactly what we need to do in order to progress more in our life.

Life is ever moving and changing.  We cannot expect to stay in the same place with the same people.  We either progress in our relationships, and work.  Or.  We don't.

We have to make room for life in our life.  Eventually, you and I have to put a foot in front of another and go.  Somewhere.  Anywhere.

For me, I am making room for a baby.  I am on the countdown to her birthday and daily going through the things that we accumulate that do not represent, or welcome her into our lives.  We have to make room for this new life and that means that we stop and assess what we value.  We make decisions based on moving forward to bring her in.

It's a natural thing.

This making room for more.

The more room you make,

The more life can happen.

So make room.

Here on the East Coast, it is white.

Like a new duvet cover our world has been blanketed.  Not just once, but over and over again.

For some, this is suffocating.  To be layered upon layered with white.

For me?  This is miraculous.  

No matter how many negative posts come out about our weather I am still smiling with my wilted tulips that I just had to say goodbye to.  Because Spring WILL come.  It does every year, and no matter how much weather we get in any season, there will be complaining.

It's too muggy.

It's too hot.

It's too cold.

It's too rainy.

It's too slushy.

It's too....

The city of Halifax has miraculously avoided many tragedies in the past few months.  One specifically in a public place which could have been devastating.  

Think of that.

Think of our soldiers away in hot countries who would give anything to be back in their snowed in homes, with their spouses and children.  Shovels instead of weapons. 

Think of the farmers whose land is getting the most rejuvenating moist giving season this year.  That we might actually profit from the lands white on white covering.

Think.

I hope the snow continues for as long as it needs to.  Because white on white might actually be what our land needs.  Because weather comes and weather goes and what is left is still you.

You are still the same person with or without the white.  If you are anxious for Spring, you will still be anxious when it arrives.  Because once Spring weather is here and all the rain douses our land, and the frost covers our tulips during a flash freeze, we'll be complaining then too.  

What is our problem that we can be in one of the most beautiful places on earth with all it's entitlements and still find reasons to be discontent?

I'll let winter sing a bit longer so I can learn patience, joy and rest in all this white it has layered on me.  

Sometimes life is in those quiet moments.

You know,

Those real live moments that are quiet.  

The nothing but ticking of the clock.

The twitch of a cats tail.

The feeling of a baby inside a tummy stretching for more room.

The blinking of a cursor on screen as thoughts scattered try to come together.

...

I don't want to be so busy that I miss those moments.

And often we are in the quiet moments when we least expect it.

Leave room for the quiet moments.  The moments that take us by surprise and make us pause.  Pause further.  Press into the silence.  There is something there worth finding.  Something there worth trusting.  May it rest on us and may we not be too scared to accept it as settles.

.....

We like labels.  They tell us exactly what something is or isn't.  They categorize, organize and set into place what we yearn to define.

We are born into this process.  We are given a name, and from there everything else follows.  We lean slightly one way towards what is so often called "The Right Brain"  (Which is a complete myth of a concept) and we are labeled 'Artistic/Creative'.  We lean in the opposite way and suddenly we are all "Logic".  

These labels that the our systems, cultures, and norms set up as a whole, only teach over time limitations instead of freedoms.  

Because when we are told something enough, we will believe it.

In my High School Grade 11 year I was picking out courses with my guidance counsellor and expressed a desire to take the next Biology class the following year.  I enjoyed the one I had taken, and wanted to take another one.  I liked the material and it interested me. 

The response?

"You can't take that. You are not good at it.  It won't look good on a transcript."  

That was that, I was dismissed as not good at Biology therefor I had no business being in a class that would teach me about it.

Implied Label: Not smart in the sciences.

I accepted it.  I never took a science course again.

Labels.

"Why don't you ever use a nickname for me?  You've never given me a pet name!"  I whined at the man I had married years before and known for even longer still. 

"I don't know...it's not easy for me.  You have always been 'Amy' to me."  He spoke into the quiet of our darkened bedroom. 

"Just Amy."  I huffed holding a cat tail with my left hand and feeling the rumble of her purr through it. 

"Not, just.  Amy is enough, you are enough as you are.  You don't need any other way to describe you, because Amy says it all."

The cat purred louder and I let go of her tail turning towards him.

"Amy?"  I questioned not fully grasping how my three letter name could say anything more than a popular name trend.

"Amy."  He pulled me in and I heard his breathing get heavier.

He wasn't trying to label me. 

Why was I?

Because I wanted a label.  

"Tell me what I am."  I had so often asked my family, friends, teachers, online tests, bosses, colleagues ... 

I am this.

I am that.

We need to be anything but these labels.

We need to flourish without a definition. 

Because we are enough.

We were made to be exactly who we are.  Contradictions and Consistencies all wrapped up into one person.  

Never label yourself as anything, because labels limit you.

And you are anything but a label!

Embracing change is a habit that is hard to wear.  We like our routines, our rituals and our safe places and we keep them like religious practices. 

What is normal and comfortable to us, is how we so often define our being, as a person.

I was slammed with this at an early age.  Twenty years old and I already had professors calling me out.

"This is how I am."  I would say.  Knowing and able to explain all the reasons why I am the way I am.

"That is a selfish answer and you won't pass this program if you keep acting like you can't move past these things."  Was her response.  She was a hard core woman who knew I had a long way to go before I could graduate with this title 'Interpreter'.

I didn't know it then, but I know it now.

She wasn't accepting my 'fear' as a right for me to stay the same.

Because anyone who says "I just have to say this,"  "This is just the way I am," , "Its the only way I know how to be."  Those are the responses of a life kept in fear.

Because fear holds us back from seeing past our limitations.

Trust me.

Fear doesn't want you to win.

Fear doesn't want you to see another way of being, saying, acting or showing.  Because it likes you the way you are.  No change, no growth, no perspective.

Change comes around the corner and your reaction is all you have.  You can't stop change but you react to it and it's either you reacting with your fear or your ability to see past fear.

Fear is the root of almost every negative reaction.  

That little nugget of truth right there should be on blast the next time you respond, explain or require a reaction from another.

Fear is the underlying theif that likes to sneak in and take your freedom away.  It tells you to rely on your crutches and your insecurities and it tells you that you will always, without fail, be the way you are.

But we weren't made to be enslaved to 'the same'.  We weren't made to be frozen in our tracks.  We were given more than that from the day we were conceived and it's time that we accepted the ability to move past ourselves.

We need to change like we are fearless.

We need to grasp renewal of the mind daily.

Like a watch you put on to remind you of the time.

Put on a watch that ticks fearlessness instead of minutes.

We were made for more than fear.

So go and get your fearlessness and jump into change like it's a pool of tropical water that was waiting just for you.

What if social media was more than just a representation of what we wanted people to see?  What if we actually expressed our true selves and then sent each other full grace and full love in return?

What if there was a "Giving Love" button?

What if there was a "Sending Grace" button?

What if there was a "Forgiveness" button?

What if there was a button you clicked that hovered over every text, photo, video and emoji that was called "Transparency" and when you clicked it, you actually saw what was underneath all those words, that face, that moment, those sounds, that icon?  

Life has a timeline and we forget this in our very caught-up-with-our-phones type-of-world.  The instant connection has a way of messing up our sense of forwardness.  We either are thinking about now, or scrolling back through the images and posts of 'before'.  

That 'before' has a way of skewing our identity and making us believe that there is always another person with a better post, another picture from our past that says it better, another tweet to retweet and another pin to find that may D.I.Y. us into a better place. 

Someone is always going to be out there, sitting on their own experiences and ready to tell you what you have to brace yourself for.  They are ready to tell you the worst of their timeline because that's what is easier to do now.  We live in a 'high lights' world where the only moments that we allow ourselves to dwell on are the ones with enough reposts, likes, thumbs up or hearts. What about the other moments?  The ones that went unnoticed, untagged, unhearted, unpinned and unsaid?

Remember those days?

That time you did something and never tweeted it out, because it was too shameful?

That time that quote was posted on his wall that meant everything to you and nothing to anyone else, yet liking it wasn't an option you had?

That time that a picture was deleted off of Facebook because the memories hurt too bad?

That time someone made that quick comment beside you and you felt your heart lurch to the ground with despair?

The time you stopped uploading because the uploads were fake and you knew it?

Remember those days?

Those are the moments in our history that speak for the forward motion of how dates and days actually work.  They are all inclusive and don't hide, don't lie and don't pretend to be naive to the present, the past or the future.

If social media was turned upside down, we might actually see something worth sharing, worth reposting, worth responding to.  It might actually be a representation of realness and wholeness.  

Because you can't get wholeness in your life unless you get real first.  And real isn't hiding the trauma, the depression, the anger, the desperateness that lives on the inside of the posts.  

Real is exposing it.

Real is pressing a button under it that says:
"Sending Grace"   "Sending Love" , Sending "Mercy".

Because if I am honest, I am no more or less closer to the place you are in, than you are.  

That's the reality.

That's real.

We are all but one step away from wreckage.  One step away from destroying our lives.  

And social media has a way of allowing us to hide from this truth.  What if we just turned it upside down and shook things up a bit?

Could you handle it?

It isn't that we should lay down and be doormats to the loving process.  It isn't that we should take our beating hearts and throw it across a field like a football and expect it to be caught.  And it isn't that we should take our good intentions and heartfelt words and expect the wind to take them where they should go.

It isn't that.

It is something else.

We love wrong all the time.

It's not that we wanted to.  Not that we planned to.  It happened the way loving wrong does.  It slips out of our hands and we don't notice until someone else finds and shows it.  Sometimes, we stay in all that denial.  It couldn't be our love that was left there, we wouldn't do that.  We aren't that kind of wrong loving type of person.

It doesn't change the truth.

You left love where it didn't belong.

How do we recover from all that wrong loving?

Wrong loving is only healed by right loving.

Loving the brokenness.

Loving the healing.

Loving the way God has to piece back together all the broken pieces of our mistaken places.

Do we deny the real?

No.  Because wrong loving is as real as right loving.

Never accept the words "but it wasn't real."

It was.

And you bled that real on the floor and that ain't blood stained denial.

That's blood stained reality.

I hear too much of the doubts of a recovery process.  It's bleak, they did too much.  They are broken too bad.  I can't look at them this way.

WAKE UP!

LOOK AT THEM.

LOOK AT YOU.

Look at that brokenness straight in the face and don't break eye contact.  That is beauty, that is love, and that is real.  You can't deny that real, once we give it a good acknowledgment, because the more you look, the more you see yourself reflected in their eyes.  

We are all just as broken in different ways and Loving it Out, means to stop the judging, stop the criticizing and start the loving.

Love them for their mistakes, love them for their darkness and you will find that as you love your soul heals faster and changes in a way that makes your movements in life like a dance.

And we dance in right love because thats what dance does, it dances in the light of glory and grace.

Loving the Right means Loving the Wrong.

A new year for The Creatives means more than just a number, it means embracing the unknown and in many cases, being okay with where we are now.

There wasn't an agenda set forth or any particular way to go about how this group collectively shares and communicates.  That's how it has become.  It ebbs and flows with those that join and the room for an openness is expected.

There are close knit friendships, there are newly met aquaintences, and there are unknown faces that sprinkle the room.  With a third trimester belly, I do my best to sit back and observe as I so often tend to do.  I take in the dynamic of the room.  I monitor for safety, and I monitor for vulnerability.  Sometimes I sense a sensitivity and work hard to watch out for it.  Sometimes I notice an eagerness in a newcomers eye and I hope for it to be blessed.

The Creatives is a scary concept.  It isn't for those who wish to pretend that they are 'normal'.  Whatever 'normal' means.  These women gather and display all their differences and journeys without hesitation and those that are new to it, I hope are wrapped up in safe arms and feel moved.

What took place on this first gathering of 2015 was the knitting together of these women.  One by one, each and every woman shared and nodded with the journey of 'acceptance'.  It isn't about where you can't seem to get/reach, but what you are doing today.  And 'doing' today is the movement that will bring you into 'tomorrow'.  

One actor-woman has the voice of a true singer and there is merit to this talent and dream.  It isn't just 'you sing well' , it's a 'that's natural and beautiful'.  And there is always a struggle for artists/creatives to feel validated enough to go out and do, but there is a whole group of women behind a voice saying 'do'.  And we want us all to 'do'.  Not for the pressure, but for the love of it.

And there it was.  Our reasons behind ourselves.  We crave to do these things, yet feel incapable, inferior and as if we've missed that boat.

We were made to do these things.

We are capable.

We are skilled.

We are on the boat.

There are seasons where we will be quiet, and restful in our passions, and there are seasons where we will be loud and busy in our passions.  Neither season is to be ignored or seen as better as the other.  In the quiet we are given the ability to see things, do things and expierence things that we need to be present and acceptant of.  In the loud, we are given the ability to take all of ourselves and put it into something that makes, does, is, and will affect others.

Ultimately , we move where we are at.  No matter what that looks like we will be moving to the beat of ourselves.  Comparison isn't for us.  It destroys us, so we say no to it and anything else that may block us from where we are and need to be this year. 

We do 'Dreams' like we do 'Now'.

And

We do 'Art' like we do 'Life'.

There isn't enough time spent on the ways in which we need to rest.  Need to heal.  

We are walking hearts who experience any manner of things in the run of a day.  It's not to say that we can't handle it, but it is to say, that we play possum to the amounts of blows we take.  We keep on going without a deep moment to process. 

And sometimes life happens and we get blown out of our reverie and healing is but the only thing we have left. It's painful.  

There is a process and a waiting for healing that doesn't seem to make sense to our instant-living type of lives.  The process of healing a broken heart can, in the midst of it all, be the most torteourus recovery.  The process of healing our bodies can be, in the midst of it all, an intricate complex journey.  

Yet there is a process that needs to occur for the healing to take place.   

We need to break first.  In order for us to recover, we need to submit our bodies, our spirits and our hearts to being broken and that is often the side of ourselves that we hate to see.  That we are fragile and capable of falling to pieces.  It's humbling, scary and almost unbelievable.  

But thats the truth of it.

We break.

We break, because we were made to reach for healing not just once in a while, but everyday.  We are everyday broken and everyday need to grasp for the healing we need.

This may be hard to swallow because it seems like an ode to the broken, the lost and the physically undone.  But it's for you.  The strong, the invisible, the confident and the happy.  Because you need this too.  Believe it or not, you need to let it be healing.

I say "Let it be healing" because I mean the any manner of things that you run into today, this week, this month, this year.  Let this be the time that you don't shy away from facing what you aren't strong in.

Healing occurs slowly, and we can only know it has happened once we look back.  So while you inspect your brokenness do not be discouraged, for seeing a break, a tear, an open wound, a scab...whatever it is you discover, you need to let those things stay open to the process one day at time.  

So let your moments, experiences, and circumstances open you up to the rest of the healing you need.  

It's an everyday thing.

So let it be healing. 

We are going to let out some of those unpretty words you got there in your hands.

People have words hanging in their closet that they dust off for rainy days to remind you of things you thought you had sorted.  It's not that they knew they would use those words at you, it's not that they dusted them off and said "this is just the kind of kick in the face type of thing I want to say to her next time."  Seriously, they didn't think that hard about it, but, it's still a thing isn't it?  That when you feel like you got it handled and settled someone always has to show up and throw some more of those unpretty words your way.  

Whats worse?  They have no idea that's what they did.

Some people are born cynics.

Some people are born motivated.

Some people are born worry warts.

Some people are born free spirits.

All people are born.

Since you were born and you might actually want to live a life that isn't weighed down by anothers words all tumbled out because they thought they were helping, sharing, communing...

You can say 'no'.

It's hard sometimes.

Saying 'no' to words that were well meant but ill regarded.

It's not that you want the person to zip up their words, but you want those unpretty words to change.  Because those words seep into your skin like water to your spirit and they feed you.  

You notice the 'It was rough', 'It wrecked me.' and the 'It's okay."  when actually, your spirit needs it as 'It was real', 'it made me' and 'it will become clear in time.'

But you can't tell words to change.

You can't blame anyone for your word needs.

But you can say no.  And it won't be pretty, it won't come out smooth and pretty as you imagined it, because whenever you need to keep the positive going, there is never an easy way to do it.  It's like turning on a bright light after being in the dark for too long.  Your eyes can't adjust fast enough and you are left blinking.  

You are blinking.

They are blinking.

Ouch. 

So accept that it can't be an easy process when you are fighting your insecurities and your negative monsters.  

You know what YOU need, and just because someone else thinks you need some good ol' fashion 'This is how it is' talk, you are the only one who knows if and when you need to hear it.

And us listeners who see that another is affected by our narrative, we need to back those words up! 

We need to back up and breathe because the last thing we want to do is send someone off with a version of our words that didn't leave them with truth that softened and not truth that stung.

Truth doesn't sting it heals, so the truth of your story should be to heal and bring salve to a wound.  Words have power and we can't be so concerned that someone isn't 'getting it', when really...it's us.  

Our communication, our narrative, our words that we think are just normal, may actually have a side to them that are unpretty, unwelcome and unhelpful.  

And if truth words heal, then our receivers should be healing along with us as we share.