Tag Archives: new

Show Me Your Scars

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Show me your scars. Tell me your battle stories – don’t hold back the details, I want to hear it all. The heartbreak and loss and grief. The hard times when joy was merely a discipline, not a feeling. Tell me of the times when you wanted to give up, when pure adrenaline kept you holding on. Be honest about your questions and your doubt. About the times when you had to reconcile faith with reality and the days when you weren’t sure if that was really possible.

Show me your scars with pride because they are evidence that you survived. That you’ve fought hard and your heart is better for it. Your scars have made you resilient. They’re the birthplace of your courage. Signs of your humble strength.

Show me your scars – the dark places where light shines through. The emptiness now filled with connection. Show me your scars and I know it will be safe to show you mine.

Comment Deep Thinking, Just Life

Addicted to Adventure

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My name is Katie & I am an adventure addict. Any personality test I take will tell you I thrive on the spontaneous. That I get bored easily. That I’m not satisfied with status quo but rather individuality.

And all of those tests would be accurate. But can I be really honest? I am suffering from adventure fatigue.  

Too often I feel like I am simply collecting experiences for the sake of experiences. Experiences are what shape & mold us, yes, but I’m beginning to believe that doesn’t happen without some curating. 

We live in a culture that has encouraged in us a fear of missing out so we say yes to everything. But I’m beginning to fear missing out in a different way – the depth of life I miss out on because I want to keep my options open rather than committing to something. 

I have a wide variety of interests & I’m a people pleaser. So naturally “no” is nearly non-existent in my vocabulary. But I’m wrestling with how to change that because my entire being is desperate to be whole. And I become more convinced that whole isn’t possible without saying no to a lot of things. A lot of good things. Maybe even some great things. All to create space for the best things – those I deeply value & am passionate about.

I am beginning to wonder what my life would be like if I became a curator of experiences rather than a collector. If I had an end goal in mind & those experiences were stepping stones rather than distractions.

But first, I have to do the work of figuring out what that end goal is. Endless adventure does a really good job of filling time, of keeping you busy & therefore thinking you’re achieving something. And while there may be small achievements along the wandering path, what do they really mean if they don’t move you in the direction of your purpose?

2 Comments Deep Thinking, Just Life

Making Honesty Contagious

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It was about a year after I moved to Nashville. A friend tweeted me about a friend of his moving to Nashville. Just a few weeks later that girl & I were enjoying breakfast at The Perch on a beautiful Saturday morning & one of those “I feel like I’ve known you my whole life” conversations. 

Over the next couple of years, our friendship meandered down life’s path, as many do.  Then, one day last November, my dear friend Ashley asked if we could catch up for coffee. And she shared a dream. One of those “Oh crap, I just said that out loud, now what?!” kind of dreams.

Since that day, the manifestation of her dream has evolved. It has been refined & reshaped. And her passion in it has been tested & established.

That dream now has a name: The Known Project.

And it’s not just a dream. It’s a calling. I can’t quite articulate the joy that comes from walking with anyone, let alone a dear friend, through such a journey. From naming to logo to capturing video to the first event. Getting the opportunity to offer whatever small bit you can in helping another bring their dream to life as they live out their calling is a sacred gift.

The mission of The Known Project is simple: create a safe place for honesty in order to provide people a chance to be known, not just seen. It is a place where secrets whisper hope.

And I don’t know about you, but in a world where identities & self worth & purpose are lost everyday to hopelessness, I think we could use a little hope.

I would love for you to join us at a special event in November for The Known Project. It’s going to be a fabulous fall evening under the stars with live music, apple cider, yummy fall treats, & a community of people committed to making honesty contagious.

You can find more information here.

Comment Just Life, Relationships

Those Things We Call Friendships

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“I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest of courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but rather the solidest things we know.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

We toss the word “friendship” around loosely these days and in doing so we’ve cheapened it’s meaning. A lot of what we call friendships are merely connections.

Connections are those people whom you say you’ll get together with…and you do…six months later. They’re the people you probably won’t hear from unless you reach out to them or bump into them around town. Most of what they know about your life comes from Facebook and Instagram, and when someone asks them about you they’re response will likely be centered around what you do for a living.

Connections aren’t bad but I’m learning it’s dangerous to call them friendships. 

Friendships are those people for whom you rearrange your calendar. They’re the ones who text or call just to share a funny or exciting story from their day. They’re the ones you text or call for the same reasons. They’re the ones who give you a hard time if they find out about a significant life event of yours on social media before hearing it from you directly, the ones who know the details of your life that are too sacred for social media. When someone asks them about you, they proudly share details about who you are and what you mean to them, not just what you do.

Friendships are hard to find. And they’re not so much waiting to be found as they are waiting to be built. 

As I get older, I become more convinced that true friendships are relationships almost as sacred as a marriage and almost as hard to come by. Now, I’m not married and it’s a different kind of intimacy, but I know that any true relationship requires vulnerability and vulnerability in any context is hard work.

With the wisdom of hindsight, I realize that many relationships I thought were friendships were merely connections. Again, those connections aren’t bad but believing they were friendships left me failing to understand the value of actual friendships. Oftentimes, while I enjoyed the company of those connections, I felt like something was missing. That missing feeling left me hesitant to place too much value on friendship at all.

As my understanding of what friendship truly is deepens, I can honestly say that I have some of the first true friendships of my life now at the age of 29. Some of those friendships are a few years old now, and the older a friendship gets the more valuable and treasured it becomes. I can also say that for the first time in my life I understand the responsibility and gift of being a friend to others. It is not a role to be taken lightly.

I agreed to meet a couple of friends for lunch. We had discussed a 12pm-ish meeting time so I left my apartment accordingly. Halfway to the destination I received a text that is was going to be 12:30. Okay, I’ll go to the nearby park and knock out some emails on my phone. 12:30 came and went. 12:45 rolled around and one friend said she was almost there. So, I headed to the restaurant. Fifteen minutes later that friend actually showed up. And the other friend another 10 minutes after that. Can I tell you I was upset? I was not a happy camper and my friend could tell. She straight up told me I was unpleasant and almost cancelled lunch because of it. In the moment that made me more upset. But, we pushed through it and lunch was more than enjoyable.

As ugly as those interactions seem in the moment, in hindsight they are some of the most treasured & beautiful because they are moments when friendship is handled with the roughest of courage. In those moments we are reminded that true friends are safe, and that we are loved not in spite of our flaws but as our whole selves – flaws and all.

Oh how I treasure those relationships that I can treat with the roughest of courage. Even when I think the ground has been shaken, my friends quickly show me that our friendship is rock solid. It is grace and love in the flesh.

2 Comments Just Life, Relationships

When Grace Looks Like Laundry

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A few months ago I was on a long weekend road trip helping a friend shoot on the street interview videos for a project she’s pursuing. In the lovely little city of Asheville, NC we met Sally.

Sally shared the story of her battle with alcoholism. She recalled the day she got sober – the day she woke up to find that her husband refused to go buy her usual daily box of wine from the liquor store. She went back to bed and finally crawled out sometime around 2:00pm. She had been drunk for so long that she didn’t know how to participate in her life as a sober person. What really struck me was what she did next. After feeling sorry for herself for a while she got up & started doing laundry. She had no clue how to “be sober” but she knew she needed to participate in the simple actions of life again & laundry was something she knew how to do. It was a life preserver she could grab hold of while she felt like she was drowning.  

For a lot of my life I used work & busy activity as a way to avoid feeling, to avoid life. And there are times when I can still fall into that trap. But at the same time, when life feels like it’s spinning out of control all around me & I’m gasping for air, the work of life can be like a life preserver. 

Growing up in church, I learned early on to over-spiritualize everything. When life knocks you to your knees that’s the best position to pray in, right?! That line of thinking would tell me that when life feels like it’s spinning out of control I should pray like I’ve never prayed before & God will give me peace.

I don’t doubt that God is the source of all peace. And that He grants it even when we don’t ask for it. But I’m discovering that doesn’t mean I have to sit idly by. Sometimes simply participating in the mundane activity of life gives me the space to catch a breath. It’s a handle to grasp onto. And as I go through the motions God’s love & peace soak into my heart through the back door that is unguarded by fear & doubt.  

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