June Goals

Today, as I've done everyday I thought more about my dreams of owning a small business

This time I thought about it a bit more seriously.  What if all of the other options in my head aren't working because this option is supposed to work sooner than I thought.  Am I marketing myself enough? 

Then there is the fundraising that has kicked off, and kicked off again.  Not much movement on the donation page, but praying that things pick up here soon!  Seeking hope and solutions for getting the word out about Serious Fun Children's Network!

I've always been one for goal setting, but I figured maybe writing them down for myself and even others to see may help ensure things progress this month.  I will have to check in every week, but here goes nothing!

June goals:

1. Be present. I am in Italy, and I have to let life happen HERE for the next three months
2. Raise $600 for Serious Fun Children's Network
3. Improve my Italian, one conjugation at a time!
4. Blog daily, whether it's here or on my running blog
5. Get new clients. 1-3 would rock, and doing an event for the Fall would be perfection

I can refer back to my desires for my summer when I need to "check myself" as well. 

Happy June Everyone!

Observations & Convictions

Just a few weeks ago I joined the Lenior Rhyne students in Florence for a day trip.  Because I have been to Florence and my budget for the summer is tight, I chose to visit the Palazzo Pitti (Pitti Palace) and then take myself to lunch.  I spent the rest of the day doing a lot of people watching, including watching other students from the US.  I watched with curiosity as they shopped in H&M, stood in lines for museums, and talked about their travel plans.  My first question was and always is: do these students know how lucky they are to be in Italy?!  Well that brought me to a follow up question, and let me tell you, it was a moment of conviction...

You see I realized that I was struggling with some loneliness and confusion, questioning my return to Italy.  The conviction hit me when I asked myself: Do you realize how lucky you are to be here?!  Everyone I love most is thrilled I am here, and they have been the ones reminding me this is a wonderful opportunity for self discovery and rest.  What a gift?!  To be supported, and in this place.

This place is home for the next three months.  It is time to rest in that fact, that OPPORTUNITY.  It is an opportunity to leave my comfort zone and discover being present and connect with this community.

My desires for this summer:
1) listen.
2) connect.
3) learn.
4) run.
5) fundraise.
6) travel and see.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness and many of our people need it sorely on those accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime" -Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad (1869)

Returning to Italy

It was 5 years ago, in 2009, that I began my blog as part of my requirements for my study abroad experience here in Sansepolcro, Italy.  Little did I know that curiosity and a hope for rediscovery would bring me back here 5 years later.  I have been note taking and journaling endless feelings about what it’s like to be back in a place where I've been before, but one far from home in North Carolina. 

It is hard not to create expectations when you return somewhere but it has been a goal of mine to let life happen.  Although this small Tuscan town hasn't changed too much, I have.  I am no longer student, and this creates an opportunity to be whatever I want to be.  I am still eager to learn but with a new hope that I can be present.  So far I have learned that running helps, rom coms do not.  I have realized that I am now more unsure of my life's next steps than I was as a student 5 years ago, or even a graduate 2 years ago.

I am hoping to take a hold of the truth that God is looking over me, and will give me strength to overcome the obstacles I fear lie ahead.  The Lord will comfort me in my loneliness and protect me in my new adventures traveling.

This is an opportunity… to learn, and to grow.  Each day I will try to do just that.

Thanks DC

Goodbyes are tough, especially when you are too busy to remember them!  Today happened so fast, yet so much happened.  I felt as if I was APART from the significant moments of the day and not A PART of them.

I look at the calendar on my wall (which should be taken down and packed by now) and can't comprehend how March is already coming to a close and with it, this huge chapter in DC!

Thanks for the memories DC, and the lessons learned along the way.  You have given me the opportunity to make incredibly inspiring and intelligent friends, and I've been challenged in ways I wouldn’t have experienced anywhere else.

Frederick Buechner puts it beautifully when he says "It was a long while ago that the words God be with you disappeared into the work goodbye, but every now and again some trace of them still glimmers through."  So DC, may you continue to challenge, excite and inspire people like me who come, and continue to be that for those that stay. As I leave this home I have created to head back to a place I know I can always call home, I will be grateful for this time.

Dear DC

This is the last week. It has snuck up on me amongst the madness of work and packing and trying to pack it all in.  My time in this city has taught me so much.  I have made great friends, found myself lonelier than ever at other times, and leave a better person.   Now I must leap. 

In this never ending winter, I remember the seasons of I have spent here.  Fond memories include braving the cold to run to the inauguration and avoid riding the metro on one of its busiest days. Another is sitting in the sunshine one weekday just staring at the cherry blossoms last year.  I was able to log miles and miles of running down Wisconsin Avenue taking in the view of those heading to and from work, my fellow running community, and the buildings and special places that make this city unique.  I enjoyed weekdays off, and while many others were at work I would explore the nations capital. I bought too many books, but filled up my time to read only a few.  I ate "all the breakfasts" and too many cups of coffee with close friends.  I learned what it was like to juggle 3 jobs while trying to find one that was a "better fit."  I felt and experienced the challenge of that job search, and ended up learning so much about managing and working for a company that valued me.  The unpredictable place I ended up instilled a new passion for entrepreneurship through my ever present passion for community.  That's evidence of breakthroughs from the leap I took coming here.

Before coming to DC I wouldn't have called myself a runner, or a listener, or a manager.  Before coming here I thought finding community was easy, and didn't take much work.  It takes a LOT.  Perhaps it takes TIME.  Did I give this place enough time?  Will I return?  These are the questions that challenged me when I thought about leaving.  By the beginning of the year, I knew it would be one that was about risk and change. It was time to get back to Italy. How would I do that?! And when?

There is a ticket to Italy in my inbox with MY name on it.  I made the choice and I'm taking that risk now.  I am leaving a comfortable place that I have "settled" for these last two years.  I can't settle now because it is a season for risk taking and MOVEMENT.  It is time to be a bit more vulnerable.  I am in a season where I find my heart in a new relationship, vulnerable and eager.  I'm anxious to spend time with those that know me best, but can't wait to spend time alone in Tuscany once again.

What breakthroughs will these risks lead me to?  I can't wait to find out.

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to UPROOT, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to DANCE, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to LOVE and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for PEACE.  What do workers gain from their toil?  I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.  He has made everything beautiful IN ITS TIME.  He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.  I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.  That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil- this is the gift of God.  I know that everything God does will ensure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it.  God does it so that people will fear him." -Ecclesiastes 3:1-14

Without Risks

Author Note: I am embarrassed when I see the amount of time that has passed since I last blogged.  It hasn't been that long since I last started an entry or had an idea I wanted to share, but it's just that sitting down and creating a post that would actually make any sense to everyone else but me can be challenging.  Sometimes we have ideas that we think are a bit crazy and sometimes it may be best to keep those inside.  I need to write more though.  It brings about a feeling of release and that is why going into this new year I told myself that it was time to commit to making the time to share life through my blog once again. 

Now that I have written an entire intro to a simple blog post to lessen my writers block guilt I can move onto this new goal and this new year.  Isn't it crazy we are in 2014 already!?  I mean how did that happen?  There is NO way I graduated almost 2 years ago from Meredith College, but enough with what was.  I want to make this year awesome. That's truly my simple resolution.  If I am doing all of the little things I have thought would make the year great, then I will undoubtedly have an awesome year.

I entered this past advent season in a bit of darkness about what this year could bring and as the weeks passed and I decided what I knew this year could and SHOULD be, I made my way into the light.  Last year I remained in DC and continued my search for community, a vision that hasn't been painted clear but that I know will come with time.  I continued to grow in my job as a manager where a lot of physical transitions were happening, but I remained with the same company.  This year it is about the risks though and that means change is up ahead.

I was "home" at Meredith College for Cornhuskin this year when a mentor and friend of mine sat down with me for a quick catch up. There I was, talking about my year and how I knew the next year had to look different.  She has always been good about being 1)honest 2)straight forward.  I carry our conversation with me throughout this season of Epiphany because it is a realization that takes me into this next phase: "Without risk there can be no change, and without change no breakthroughs." 

What breakthroughs might happen this year?  Well that is the fun part.  We chose the risks we take, but we have no ideas what the change will look like or what it will later help us realize.  That all sounds beautiful but I also thought it beneficial to share a sliver of what a not so hopeful and impatient heart wrote just recently:

How is it 2014, a year that I insist will be full of opportunity yet I am worried that it is already here and I haven't prepared myself enough for it!  I don’t have the money to move on to the next opportunity.  I don't have the next opportunity to get me to the other opportunity waiting further down the road.  I don't think I am using my time wisely.  What could I be doing differently?  I ask myself all of these questions yet they overwhelm me and then nothing happens except a stagnant young women refusing to actually listen in her stillness but if I don’t listen how can I know what opportunities are there or which ones I should take.  I fill my days with work and if work cant fill my time, something less meaningful sneaks in. (January 9)

Many thanks to Jan Richardson for her beautiful words in this Epiphany blessing which I will end this (but stick around, because I have more coming soon!) post with:

For Those Who Have Far to Travel

An Epiphany Blessing

If you could see

the journey whole

you might never

undertake it;

might never dare

the first step

that propels you

from the place

you have known

toward the place

you know not.

Call it

one of the mercies

of the road:

that we see it

only by stages

as it opens

before us,

as it comes into

our keeping

step by

single step.

There is nothing

for it

but to go

and by our going

take the vows

the pilgrim takes:

to be faithful to

the next step;

to rely on more

than the map;

to heed the signposts

of intuition and dream;

to follow the star

that only you

will recognize;

to keep an open eye

for the wonders that

attend the path;

to press on

beyond distractions

beyond fatigue

beyond what would

tempt you

from the way.

There are vows

that only you

will know;

the secret promises

for your particular path

and the new ones

you will need to make

when the road

is revealed

by turns

you could not

have foreseen.

Keep them, break them,

make them again:

each promise becomes

part of the path;

each choice creates

the road

that will take you

to the place

where at last

you will kneel

to offer the gift

most needed—

the gift that only you

can give—

before turning to go

home by

another way.

Rejuvenate

Rejuvenate

verb to restore to a former state; make fresh or new again.

It is important that as humans, we realize the importance of taking time for ourselves.  We need to give ourselves time to think about all we keep ourselves busy with in the day to day hustle and bustle.  For me, that time to think could not have come at a more pertinent time, than this weekend.  I recently found out the store I've been the assistant store manager at is closing, and the time for change comes again in both my job and soon enough my living arrangements.  I needed this time to rejuvenate in order to prepare for what the next few months will hold.  Just when things felt comfortable, they are being changed again. 

I had one hope for my time at home, and that was to be still.  The weekend far exceeded my expectations, and I was able to be still and spend quality time with family and friends.  I woke up each morning at home with no set plan for the day, but each held productive meaningful moments; a baseball game with my parents, good shopping/bonding time with my mom.  Going back to this "former" home (although I will always call it home) was exactly what it means to rejuvenate.  I even look at in a "back to your roots" sense.  Go back to what made you the person you are, the places that make you comfortable, and there you will find answers.  This can be your childhood home, your favorite place in town, or the porch with the people who know you best.  I confirmed things for myself while I was home.  There are jobs I now truly believe I will  or will not be happy doing, and neighborhoods I will be more happier living in than others. 

Take time to invest in yourself.  You can't truly invest in others unless you do that first!  Take a bath, lay in the grass and soak in the sun, BREATHE. 

She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future. Proverbs 31:25