I Spoke Up

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1. This was the fist Bible verse I ever memorized. I've been thinking about it a lot lately because I've been thinking about why on earth God would want to make something out of the mess that was the earth. I don't know if you're an artist or familiar with people who do creative things, but usually the first step to a masterpiece is a blank slate, a clean canvas, and a brand new palette with great splashes of color. The beginning of a painting is often the most organized moment of an artists' day, it's when anything can happen and the possibilities are endless. But that is not the picture we get at the beginning of creation, instead the canvas God is looking at is this: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep." (Gen. 1:2a) It was formless and void, in other words, all there was was chaos and emptiness. Not a squeaky clean new canv...

I feel like I keep waiting for something to happen so that everything will be different. Mostly, I keep waiting for the moment when everything in my life finally snaps into place and I get it together and become the person I was born to be. Know what I'm talking about? Like when I was in high school, I was waiting to be 18. When I was in college, I was waiting for summer. When I was in grad school, I was waiting to graduate. In my 20's, I wait until I'm 30... and so it goes. Don't get me wrong, milestones are powerful and can signify great things, but at the same time they don't actually do anything to change you in and of themselves. Let me give you an example. A little while ago, I got a letter in the mail that was actually from my high school self. When I was in 11th grade my English teacher asked our class to write letters to our future selves and he promised he would mail them to us in 5 years. I was skeptical at the time, but as it turns out the man r...

Lately I’ve been struggling with comparison. I’ve been struggling with walking alone and feeling like I have to have it all figured out. I’ve been fighting against my incessant need for independence that will impress those around me. I’ve been struggling with performance. And I think that if we’re honest, a lot of us struggle with those things. Especially as women, we have been conditioned and trained into seeing other women as competition. We think, “If everybody else gets complimented there is not enough approval left in the room for me,” or “If everybody else is beautiful, there is no beauty left for me.” We can’t both be pretty, we can’t both be smart, and if there’s more than two of us, forget it, it’s over. So we walk around seeing everyone else —especially other women—as competition, secretly hoping that they are successful but not as successful as us so that we can celebrate them without feeling like we failed.   Or maybe that’s just me, but it’s a feeling tha...