Tag: self

Thank You, Next

 

Laughing at how funny we are
Cory and i
Facetime with Nat 🙂
Violet, Ruby and I
That jacket though
Yeah…
Bowling and being awkward
Cheese balls!
Ummm
Facetime with the big sis
Capitol Tour with the fam
Speaking on a panel in Moscow, Russia
Blue lights. Enough said.
Fries and Ranch with Liv

“I find it interesting that this has been one of the best years of my career and the worst of my life,” Grande said. “A lot of people would look at someone in my position right now as an artist that could be at her peak and think, ‘She’s really got her sh** together, she’s really on it. She’s got it all.’ And I do, but as far as my personal life goes, I really have no idea what[…]I’m doing[…]and as of late I’ve discovered that it’s the things I’ve always had and the people I’ve always had that still make me the happiest.”

A year ago, I graduated from college. I got a new job. I moved almost a thousand miles away. I learned how to be an adult. I experienced so much love counteracted by heartbreak, grief and loneliness. I went to a foreign country for the first time. I planned a global conference. I’ve helped different families in minor or significant ways in over 80 different countries.

It’s been a crazy year.

In the midst of all those changes and challenges were a lot of tears. I learned a lot about me, and yet still know nothing at all.

Tears fell as I sat in my room a couple nights before my graduation as I stared at the cap and gown waiting to be worn across a platform to accept my degree.

Tears were shed on the interstate from Iowa to Virginia in my car full of all my belongings.

Tears spilled in the hall as the background echoed cheers at the close of the last session in Moscow, Russia.

Tears fell on a plane bound home to Iowa for a couple of weeks – a girl who once believed that heartbreak was purely metaphorical, found out it was actually quite physical and yet could only be healed by time and patience.

2018 showed me I am a constant work in progress, but aren’t we all?

Most importantly – I have learned to forgive. I learned to forgive others, myself and to accept the forgiveness Christ so freely offers me.

I have learned so much this year about love and forgiveness through my broken experiences. As Matt Heard said “The worst kind of pain is wasted pain”. So will I use my brokenness to push me into the next stage of life and grow me spiritually, mentally and emotionally and make me wiser? Or will I waste the pain and have it hinder my growth? Will it harden or strengthen my heart? Can I trust God to redeem my pain?

I settle my heart down and let the pain in. I will cast all my anxieties upon Him because He cares for me. He will lead me beside the still waters. He will restore my soul. He will lead me down a path of righteousness, but also a path of joy and peace.

Psalms 34:18 says:

“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit”

This year taught me love, patience and pain, but it also taught me how to understand and sympathize, it taught what it truly means to be selfless, but it also taught me how important it is to take care of myself – to take my God-sized needs to Christ, that in order to be a source of life, I need to have Jesus be my source of life first.

On the days that I couldn’t get out of bed, something so simple my sister said has stuck with me since “sometimes you have to do what is good for you, not what you want to do”.

I repeat these words on the many days I don’t want to work out. On the days I don’t want to leave my bed. On the days that I don’t want to eat a certain way. On the Sundays when I don’t feel like going to church. When I fall into my hermit-like tendencies. When praying is hard. When reading my Bible is about as unappealing as carrots (I greatly dislike carrots by the way).

In more ways than one I see how God interwove that theme into my life this year. Jesus saying “Sometimes I have to do what is good for you, not what you want me to.”

As Jeremiah 29:11 says:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

So thank you 2018; for all that you offered and took away; for all the people that came and went – and most importantly, to those I’ve always had and will never leave. 2018 made me realize that the people I have always had – are the ones that make me the happiest still and you can see some of them pictured above. I love these people. So much.

2019 is whispering on the threshold “it will be happier” as Tennyson says but I think I like T.S. Eliot’s quote better:

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.”

So thank you 2018.

Thank you, next.

Home Isn’t A Place

Touching down in the middle of a corn field is kind of peculiar sight, but if your in Iowa…it’s normal.

Home. I felt my heart ease into a strange rhythm of familiarity. So strange how easy it is go back to “normal” after being away for so many months and literally having been out of the country and back.

Home isn’t a place, it’s where your heart is tide too. My family. My friends. They are pieces of my heart running around. Now that my two best friends no longer live in Iowa, it’s more sad to go back, but my family is still there.

Iowa is just full of corn, but if you lived here your entire life you would find more to do than just starring at a cornfield across the road from your house. People who ask me what ones does in Iowa; I wouldn’t know. If your used to being bored, you find ways to entertain yourself.

My friends and I  jokingly dubbed ourselves the Queens of our small town…little did we know that a year later, neither of us would be around to reign over our metaphorical subjects.

As heartbreaking as it may seem…there is a happiness about it. A happiness that we can say later on in life as we all have careers and six digit salaries “remember when we all were poor and worked at the Cheese House together that entire summer?” or “Remember the late night runs to Village Inn?” and all the other crazy road trips and laughing until we couldn’t breathe.

I miss those days.

I don’t want to relive my life though. It would be nice to stop in once in a while. It would be nice to meet up at the corner near my house to drive into the city. It would be nice to get up early for church and eat at our favorite diner. It would be nice some days to hear Dad shuffling around upstairs on a Saturday morning. It would be nice to always find someone to hug in the house, especially Mom.

Those were the days.

But these are the days now.

Sitting in my office, I’ll suddenly have this out of body experience of wondering “Why am I here? Where do I belong?”

Thinking back on the last 10 years of my life. Back when I was 13 and constantly feeling a push to go forward. Now I just want to step back.

All of a sudden all the things I have accomplished and gone through in life will melt into these series of flashbacks. As epic as it sounds…

It makes me sad, nostalgic and lonely.

Lonely for the people who were there along the way; sad at the goodbyes to the people who came and went so suddenly, and then missing the ones that are still by my side though they are a thousand miles away.

Home isn’t a place…and yet it’s a place we are constantly longing for.

But until we get to Heaven, the longing will never cease. Can you imagine, being in a room full of faces you love and cherish? We get a taste of that every once in a while, but it brings tears to my eyes when I think how Heaven will never have loneliness, heartbreak or regrets. It will be full of those people who pointed you to Christ with how they loved you.

We see in a mirror dimly now, but when we get to Heaven, we will be fully known. We will see Christ face to face. That separation will no longer pine at us.

But today I will sit in my office and go through the motions of today, and constantly seek to do what God is calling me to be. Though my questions will sometimes raise to “why am I here? What am I doing?”, God has this amazing story for my life, and though I can only see through it dimly, and sometimes not at all when it is darkened with my confusion, grief and loneliness; I’ll trust His plans are far better than my own.

Retweeting Myself

cropped-me-24.jpg

DISCLAIMER: I have been off twitter for a year and I just recently downloaded the app back onto my phone. My original intention for staying off twitter has become very clear in rereading my juvenile tweets.  I have decided to reply to my younger self…and also pick up tweeting again. 

This was on a day in which I wanted to fall into solidarity and never leave my bed. I also had an unhealthy obsession with royalty and thought I would marry Prince Harry one day. Curse you Megan.

Haha, now you WISH you didn’t relate to them all at. FYI: I Have Questions by Camila Cabelo is such a depressingly great song. Also Hell No by Ingrid Michaelson.

Trudi, no. You deal with whatever it was in a healthy way. If you have learned anything in life, whatever you bury will inevitable resurface. I don’t even know what I was burying…it was probably something to do with my cats.

Literally the ONE time in the past four years that I watched the Today Show. Poor Katie, she probably was just nervous but some insignificant 21 year old decided to bash her on twitter to her 50 followers. I have impact people! (not really…).

Still relevant to this day. I’m one of those people that will inhale all the breadsticks from Olive Garden and just as we are about ready for the check, I’ll ask for another basket to take home.

This was the worst exam of my life. I had 75% of my final grade riding on this one exam. This was also the same week I had four finals every single day at 7AM…in snowy negative degree weather. I did pass the class though…barely.

I tweeted this because I had deleted my Snapchat account. Literally a couple weeks later I downloaded it again. So much for that self established importance.

Why did you feel the need to tweet this? I actually remember sitting there thinking about how my thighs basically expand massively when I sit down and how I was surprised I could fit in my seat still.

Still relevant…but I probably was melting down over a test. Not relevant anymore. Ha. ha. #graduated #adult #whyamiusinghashtags

Going to a big University has it’s perks, but it also was incredibly lonely. I remember during my breaks between classes, I would buy a snack in the library cafeteria and go sit in my car playing sad music and thinking how pathetic my life was.

Some things never change. Pumpkin Spice is life.

I just want to know what I was wearing…

Can’t stop pretending. But the sad part is I’m poorer now than I was then.

Well…he did get married. But not to me. I had to unfollow…it still hurts honestly.

And honestly…it just keeps getting more painful as the tweets gets older, so I’m going to just spare us both.

Self Love.

You’re not pretty, you’re ugly.

You have a double chin and a big nose.

You are not lovable.

You’re not funny.

You’re not smart.

You need to lose weight.

When I look in the mirror…

I think all of these things and more.

Even though I know that we are all created in God’s image. Even though I know that Jesus loves me. Even though I know that my perfectionism is unattainable.

I don’t love myself. I don’t think that I am good at anything. I have no confidence. My insecurities, self doubt, anxieties and sinful nature trail into my relationships with my family, friends and Jesus. It hurts me and it hurts others in the process.

There is a quote that says that you should be selfless but not think of your self less. I remember reading that quote one day and thinking how I seemed to mistake loving myself, and doing what is best for me, as a form of pride and selfishness. I remember reading this quote and thinking “Wow, I really am not selfless at all…or at least my form of selflessness is not healthy.”

It’s not.

If I have learned anything in the last six months, is that I can’t love others properly if I cannot love myself.

I use to think all those female celebrities were so generic. They always are telling you to love yourself and be authentically you, but I think there is something missing in that equation.

Jesus. Such a Sunday school answer. I know. If I were my authentic self, sin would take over. My default setting is to sin. By the world’s standards I am a “good” person…but good only can go so far.

If anyone knows me, they know that I will never boast about myself. If I do, it’s in a complete joking way.  In fact, if you give me a compliment, I won’t believe you. I used to think “Trudi, why don’t you believe a compliment?” but the truth was that all I could think was “if they only could see inside me…they would think differently”.

I could cry thinking of how I would and still tear myself down until there are figurative shreds of myself on the floor, giving people the capacity to stomp on me because I have no confidence.

I came to the realization that my searching for love and acceptance of myself has been me trying to love out my flaws (or look for other people to do so); an inward battle between me, myself and I, leaving me unsatisfied.

I was talking to my Mom one night about how I hated myself.

She referenced some video she saw on Facebook, and asked me to look at a picture of myself as a baby.

Childhood Photo.jpg

She asked me to say all the things I was saying to myself in the mirror right now while looking at this picture.

“Trudi, you’re not pretty or cute. You’re not smart. You need to lose weight. You are not lovable…”

I did this one night. I found this picture my Mom posted on Facebook and started saying all the insecurities and self-hate I held for myself while looking at this picture.

The results: tears.

Because when I look at this picture, I see a sweet, innocent, little girl. A girl who would sing at the top of her lungs in the car. Who would go running outside to search for ladybugs and pick really pretty weeds. She would play in the sandbox for hours. She would ride her little tricycle on the pavement on a pretend road made out of chalk.

Little Trudi. You are so loved. You are so smart. If you only knew the hardships to come but also all that you would accomplish. It breaks my heart to know that the little heart in this photo has ever known suffering.

I sound like my Mom right now…

You know in the Bible it says multiple times to “love your neighbor as yourself”. But if you do not know how to love yourself, how can you love your neighbor?

So, that is what I’m learning. I’m not talking about self-love. I’m talking about TRUE self love. The loves that does not see my sins bigger than my virtues, but the redeemed kind. The kind of love that holds freedom; that doesn’t keep gazing inward, but outward toward Jesus Christ.

I encourage you to read this article here in order to understand what I am talking about (otherwise I’m just going to plagiarize the shhh out of it).

The question: Do I love myself enough? I am a broken human being. But if I loved myself enough, I would be able to accept Christ’s love for me. Oh how freeing it would be. Dear little Trudi (even though you are way older now, that little person in the picture above will always exist inside) come as you are.

As the article says, stop scraping together your self worth and piecing together your sinful self. Embrace Christ’s love for you and then you will truly hold self love.