I’m sitting outside of Starbucks right now in my Jeep with a Dragon fruit refresher, my hair tied back (because writing is serious business and I always feel more productive with my hair secured) and rain and hail alternating on pounding my roof. My toddler is asleep in the back seat and I’m curled up front, camping dust tracing my bare feet. My shirt says Wild Love and I put a layer of fresh deodorant on before I left the house. There are 10 more things I could have done to make myself feel more presentable. . Well, actually, probably more like 20 since I’ve pretty much lived outside the past three weeks .

Here’s the point though. I feel like a person again. Not so much like a 24/7 caregiver. I mean, yesterday I removed toilet emergency item number 2 from my toddler’s hands. So yeah, at this moment I feel not so much like a burned out momma. Like there may be some spark under the plain old Anita after all.

We all have busy lives. Sometimes in the busyness, we lose track of who we are and what our feelings really are and how to connect with our inner child- the part of us that God created extra special and extra unique and full of His specific plan for the world and for us in particular.

In the past months of craziness, I’ve felt like I lost touch with who I was.

Moving is hard and takes every ounce of energy. Settling into a new routine is hard and coaching children ( and myself) through the emotions and upheaval that comes along is hard. Waking up at early hours with a ‘rearing to go’ (as my mom I used to say) toddler is hard. Losing someone you love is doubly, triply, quadruply hard. Healing is hard.

No matter what you are facing, I can almost guarantee you that if you are breathing, you are doing Hard.

Its just part of life. There’s not even any need to count points on a scale of 1-10 to see where your Hard lands.

It’s truly so easy to lose ourselves in the hard and busy. To forget that while we are serving and being productive and caring for others and bringing home a paycheck, there is that vital source of connection that, without given attention, will simply dwarf its way into oblivion.

It’s got a pretty quiet voice. But it’s persistent and misunderstood and often ‘shushed’

And honestly? Sometimes its just plain hard to hear. Other voices seem so much more demanding and persistent and authoritative.

Losing yourself is costly though.

Losing the person your Creator made you to be is downright sad.

It’s a paradox- this losing and this finding. Jesus said, “if you lose you’re life for My sake, you will find it.”

I think losing the life that Jesus mentioned was losing the part of us that is full of self and pride. Like our ego.

Only by losing the ego can the core of us come alive and that is the part deep within us that is sheltered in the safety of grace. That’s the part that our Creator calls beautiful. It’s where the gifts He has given to us are birthed and nurtured and grown.

I think part of that true identity is revealed by simply discovering what makes you feel alive. What makes you feel like a person and a human. When we connect with those basic life giving emotions, we connect with the core of our being.

Everything is connected in life.

Maybe its doing simple things like taking a hot shower after a hard day of work, watching the sun set, or drinking a steaming cup of coffee in the morning.

I think it needs to go deeper then that. We need to be still long enough to discover it. To hear new truths. To uncover the beauty. To find something life giving and follow through with it. To not give up on ourselves or our passions.

Often our natural passions are actually staring us right in the face, saying ‘use me’ while we are here tearing around complicating everything with the ‘ what if’ and ‘should be’ and ‘maybe’ and ‘can I?’

Just silence the noise. Find yourself. Know that while you will never fully arrive, until you are in Eternity with your Creator, you will come closer and closer to that fullness. You will be making the biggest difference possible in this world. Living the full calling of your Creator on your Life.

Live in your strengths. Learn from your failures.

Know that even mistakes and problems are chances to learn and become more fully alive and aware of yourself. Let’s just not even call them failures. Just growth spurts.

Don’t give up on YOU! Don’t stand yourself up on your own date with yourself. Go all in. Find your passions and follow through with them.

That’s where the magical, life giving stories happen.

I’d love hear the one thing you choose to do today that is life-giving for your inner core.

Rainbows in the East at 9 PM. Now that was soul food!