It's Okay to Be You | Mundane Monday

I need to know its okay to be myself.

I need this a lot.

I need to pin point every single thing I don't like about myself, every feeling, every tendency, every fear, every grotesque moment where I pretend I'm an Extrovert and go a little bit crazy, every word I say--and I just need to root out the bad stuff and tell myself never to do it again, but to the things that are just me--I need to tell myself that it's okay.

When I'm shy and awkward in front of new people--it's okay. They're probably just as shy and awkward, and what if they're scared of you?

When I'm playing a game with a room full of competitive people and I just feel like sitting in a corner and telling everyone to be nice to each other--it's okay. They like being competitive, and if it doesn't hurt their feelings, let them be them. And it's not bad you're not competitive. There's a room full of people who are, so you can just be you without throwing the world out of balance.

When I just want to be alone for like two seconds--its okay. Heaven forbid you should stick yourself in the muck and mire of people and the world when you don't want to. It's okay to want to be alone sometimes.

When I'm around really trendy, fashionable, smart girls, and I'm still wearing overalls and braids, and feel like I'm fourteen, and really dumb--it's okay. You got the overalls 'cause you loved them, and you braid your hair 'cause they're you, and that doesn't make you fourteen and dumb, it's makes you YOU. And everyone is smarter than everybody else in different ways.  

When you feel really inadequate because you can't do something as well as somebody else--it's okay. Write down a list of things you love to do and the things you CAN do well.

When you'd rather just head up stream when everyone else is heading down stream, it's okay.

When you're following your dreams and everyone really doesn't understand why you'd rather live your dreams instead of make it rich with a fashionable degree, it's okay. Doing what you love, doing what gives back to the world in amazing and quiet ways, is more you than you could ever be.

Be unapologetically you.
But be the kind of you that changes the world in unapologetically wonderful ways.

Happy Monday.

Love, Kayla

Did you see this? It's my new weekend thing.
5 Inspiring Things to light up your weekend with smiles.
There's bluegrass dancing, elephants and amazing plants that show you how to bloom where you're planted.

Let's chat! What's your favorite thing about yourself?

Christmas in March (A Gift For You Today)

Happy Monday, everyone! As promised, I've something extra special for you today since I botched up Mundane Monday last week.

On Facebook, I asked you all to help me choose a cover for a short story I was doing. You chose this happy winner . . .

Summary 
Can something as small and insignificant as a sled really change the lives of a few insignificant boys for Christmas? 
If you loved Dickens' A Christmas Carol you'll adore this short Christmas story about kindness, innocence, and love.

I'm so, so honored that I'm able to offer this free of charge. It was a huge blessing to me when I wrote it and it just makes my heart soar that I'm able to share it with you!

Perhaps We Can Have Christmas in March?

You can download The Boys of Holly Street  HERE. 

Or, if you want it sent directly to your email inbox for easier access from all devices, sign-up HERE.

Christmas doesn't come but once a year. We hear that a lot.
Maybe I'm just a little bit crazy about Christmas, and a little too stuck on tradition and the childhood magic of it, but I'm sure one for believing that Christmas doesn't come just once a year.

Christmas is be lived through every year.
Yeah, and it's hard and kind of false to live "a holly, jolly" life with mistletoe and a big belly laugh. But I'm not for false joys.
I'm for the real kind of giving from a heart that is thankful.
From a life that is lived in love.
From eyes that find the good.
From hands that share the beauty.
This is Christmas all year round.
Happy Christmas in March, everyone.

Love, Kayla

Why the World Needs Differences | Mundane Monday

I think about differences a lot.
Differences are constantly thrown in our faces.
From Extroverts to Introverts, men to women, poor to rich. Black to white.
The stark differences and then the sub differences to each difference.

Upper class poor, middle class rich.
Celebrity men and women to common men and women, and everyone in between.
Introverted extroverts, extroverted introverts.

And we are even further divided.
Artists who use their right brain to mathematicians who use their left brain.
Moms and dads.
Corporate business men and women to those who work a nine to five.
Farmers to ranchers.

If you took each one of these subjects you could further divide them into individual classes and subs. Then those individual classes and subs could be even further divided, and so on and so on.

In front of me I have tacked up on my cork board a simple square of paper. With my purple pen in my messy-handed font I have written this:

Differences should not divide, differences should connect.

Yeah, and I'm the girl who just wishes she could have smarts and vivacity, to just be brave enough to talk to people already.

My mama, sister and I went to hear Temple Grandin speak. The place was packed. And through her whole talk this was her theme. We need differences.

On the way through a cold January night back to our car, clear across campus, I was just giddy with excitement because this was what I had been thinking for a long, long time. To hear someone else confirm my beliefs was just awe-inspiring.

My sister said to me as we shivered in the cold, "The dreamers and the artists can dream of flying, but we need the mathematicians and inventors to show us how."

Differences should not divide, differences should connect.

All throughout history you can see how our differences have connected us. You can also see how we've let it divide us. But it's because of our differences that we have all the technology and all the art we have today. And it's because of our differences we've found someone, something to help us cope with our fears, our troubles, our heartaches.

I still cannot fathom how someone's brain pieces worked just right to come up with the idea of a computer. Or why do some people cope better with trauma than others? How can someone know just what to say to soothe someone's hurting heart?

What would we do without any of these things?

If you stand back and take a look at the many varieties of people and places, the ones you understand or just don't get, if you take a moment to really see what good these things produce, then all the dividing lines start to blur, and like "pearls on a string" everything starts slowly slipping into place.

Feelers who live by their emotions NEED the thinkers to balance them out and the thinkers need feelers to show them the softer side and the needs of others. We need the artists to see the most mundane of tasks, to capture in words, in a lens, in a painting, in a song and show us how beautiful it is. Introverts NEED extroverts to stir the wild, to bolster courage, and drag them out of their comfort zones. Extroverts need Introverts to show them the quiet, the introspective.

And not one of these people think exactly alike. No one thinks exactly alike. But the things that occur to you may never occur to me. And that's why I need you.

Can you not see that though our brains work and function at many different levels, everything we do may seem like a rebellion to each other, but ultimately--there it is. It's all for each other. Because of each other we're who we are.

Humans are the business of humans.

We're made of the same dirt and stardust.

Yeah, and there will be people who keep those lines drawn even when you have learned to see past them. You might laugh at me because I'm just an optimistic INFP who has a hard time facing reality and you're an Extrovert who knows the harder faces of life and I just don't know what I'm talking about. I know, and lines will keep being drawn over and over again, but the difference between you and me is just this:

When you choose to a see a line instead of a human.
When you cross the line of human sacredness and take what is not yours to take.
That's when you and me--we're divided.

I'm drawing no line. Because who ever you are, you're my business. You are why I'm here. And there really are no lines but the lines we draw between ourselves.

The world is full of opposites and contradictions, differences and contrasts.
Our differences are the most amazing things about us.
And the thing of it is, we're all made up of curves and corners, edges and points, and we all fit into the same great, immaculate puzzle. These are the only lines that should be drawn, the lines that show how we fit into the shape of this world.

Love, Kayla

An Unholy Beauty | Mundane Monday

This is the moment when I really see,‭ ‬for truly and honestly,‭ ‬that moments—they are these unholy,‭ ‬precious things.‭ ‬Unholy moments, the moments that just rush by unaccounted for, the ones we don't "set apart" a moment to really see.

The night sister and I sit around a cold basement with yogurt and tea,‭ ‬our feet propped up on lawn chairs in the middle of winter—it's the light shining in the darkness that always catches me—creating a hole,‭ ‬a way to see through.‭ ‬Like a light bulb clicking on inside my head.

Even when sister and I just want to get away from work and money,‭ ‬and this never ending stream of restlessness and discontent.‭ 

This ugly light from a clip-on lamp,‭ ‬tea cups and spoons on a plastic file cabinet.‭ ‬Cold toes and movies that make you cry—it's this marvelous moment turned good when you look at it right.‭ 

These times when you're actively seeking something good when all the world is just this pressing ice cube of depression—you have to stop and you have to choose to see the good.‭ To make something unholy—holy.

‬Because seeing those ugly moments as portals—that's how you see how good this life really is.‭ ‬This is the place where we can see God through God's eyes.

Love, Kayla

A Collection of Light

The sun breaks through the clouds, turning all in its path to gold, like a pocket from heaven broke open because it could not contain all the glory hidden within. I believe that's what sunsets must be. I believe that's what light must be.

Each dawn is a promise.

Every morning you rise to see the sun, or even the dim gray light of overcast skies, it is a promised manifested.

He uncovers the deeps out of darkness and brings deep darkness to light.

I've lived in a basement room without windows for the last twelve years. And you'll never find a photographer who says they aren't in love with light. So maybe I'm not a bit light hungry.

But you can't deny this:

Light gets in. There isn't a morning it doesn't rise, there isn't a night it does not pierce. There isn't a crack it does not find,

It can burn and it can heal, it can take and it can give, and there isn't a life that can grow without it.

He dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning . . .

The sun is there because it is a promise. Some days it is hard to find, hard to believe it will come out again.

But what you look for, that will you find.

Love, Kayla

A List of Good Things + plus Free printable

1. Tea and books and comfy, pillowy blankets, and owl mugs

2. Windchimes

3. Sunshine

4. Birds on wires

5. Hot chocolate with marshmallows 

6. Afternoon light

7. Towels on the clothesline 

8. Pink clocks

9. Holes. In jeans.

10. Fresh basil from the garden

11. Memories

12. Winter sunsets

13. Hope

Extra list of Good Things 

Free printable

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

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Where I'm From (Writer Version)

I am from tea mugs and spoons scattered across a messy desk. From inky, colored pens and marked up, dog earred books on writing.

I am from the dark little corner of the house with fairy lights strung up because there's no window, from the smallish, cluttered bookshelves that feel like everything I've ever wanted. From the sign outside the door that says it plain, "Mole End".

I'm from the nights Daddy gathered us kids together and read books, from big sister and summer days in the loft reading Trixie Belden, where all this love really started. I'm from noisy dinners where the parents just sit and listen and smile, and from bonfire evenings beneath the stars.

I'm from "arists don't get paid very much" and "most artists starve anyway", but God "has made everything beautiful in its time." I'm from scattered, elusive dreams, an awakened blindness and a groping for something in darkness. From nights of scribbled messes and days of "never being good enough."

I'm from too many books from the library and soft pillowy blankets and days you never want to get out of bed, and from books you never want to reach the end of. I'm from moments of sheer inspiration and days of black failure. From chocolate to ease the torture of uncreated things, to lure inspiration in, to forget, to write again.

I'm from boxes of half written story pages, slips of paper with a word, a sentence, a name, stuffed everywhere but my head. From the piles of notebooks where I never reached the last page. Yeah, and I'm from finished messes of stories that will never see the light of day.

But I'm from seeing possibilities where others see walls, from ordinary, every-day things and recreating them in ways everyone can see. I'm from recording, preserving, and keeping for remembrance, from bringing something new into the world. From keeping the darkness at bay.

And I'm from a long past of writers and artists who dotted history with their struggle: from the hope of leaving the world a little bit better than before.

Are you an artist?

"Art is the bringing of something new and beautiful into the world. Something genuine and good, something that does not darken the world, but leaves it a better place than it was before."

By that definition many things would be considered art, and rightly so. Your mechanic is an artist. Your hairdresser is an artist. YOU are an artist.

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