Being in silent mode on a flight across the US with no constant email message and no one texting me, I'm required to think. My mind wandering from leading my company & inspiring my employees to organizing myself & finding more time with God in my hectic schedule to the one thing I can't stop thinking about no matter what else floats into my brain.

A man who is calling on God and being led to be with me. A man who already loves the woman I am from only two encounters over two weeks and countless conversations about the future.

Although the biggest thing on my mind has to be leading my team to success, I feel like there has to be a partner in all of this. My friends and coworkers are great. Even other colleagues and acquaintances are helpful but having that one cheerleader who always believes in you and truly cares about you is something I've truly missed.

Dave Ramsey keeps talking about spousal approval and says that a great spouse will always have your best interests at heart. I resent hearing that because my dogs are the closest thing I have to a spouse and they don't care what I do. Most relationships I've had have not been built on trust, prayer or safety and I know that all of those are needed to ensure success.

This man is showing me what a truly Godly man is and is proving that he can lead by showing me how God is working in his life AND mine. Being able to start at this place allows us to cheer for each other and not feel taken for a ride. With my craptastic relationship history, I am still skeptical and will be until I can feel God leading me also. His support while I am searching for God's voice is imperative and so clearly there.

Being able to sit back and feel his prayers going up for me when I am feeling scared, nervous or even thinking things I shouldn't, has been some of the most heartfelt love I've ever been touched by. My heart is fighting with my head and at this point, my strategic mind is winning. My heart bursts with the beginnings of love and excitement while my rational mind tells me to slow the hell down.

I keep thinking that this must just be how things are in his life but this is apparently SO different and new to him too. Balancing the last 14 years of decisions he's made without asking God first and this new life that he is basing solely on God's purpose has been so freeing for him.

My life has been free for a long time but my brain still tells me that it's trapped in the mistakes of my past. Too many questions, worry and skepticism. I find that I haven't fully placed this potential relationship on God's shoulders. I know this man is not manipulating me but my head doesn't wrap around that. He just knows that God's got a bigger life for him and is positive that it includes me.

How do you run from that?! Time to fully give it to God & let go of the past.

Walking through this I'm reminded of a song my dad and I used to sing when I was a kid:

"In His time, He makes all things beautiful, in His time. Lord, my life to you I bring and may each song be to you a lovely thing, in Your time."

Photo by: Patrick Onofre

"Why don't I have ____?"      

                                                                  "Why can't I get ____?"
            "I'd be so much happier if ____?"

Ever catch yourself asking these questions of yourself? I finally quit... and guess who is happier than ever before? Me.

So many people think that if they had more, they would be better off. The grass is always greener. If you are single, you wonder what it's like to be married. If you're married, you wonder why you made that decision. If you don't have kids, you yearn for them. If you do have kids, you're happy to give them up for a night off. If you're in an unhappy job, you know you'd be happier working for yourself. If you work for yourself, you wish for the days of a steady paycheck. Greener... but is it?

At the beginning of this year, I set a goal of intentionality. I didn't do a New Year's resolution. No "I'll eat less and run more". No "I'll walk the dogs more." No "I'll take more time off." Just a goal of being intentional with everything I do because no one else was going to live my life better than me. 7.5 months later, I see the fruits of my intentional intentionality... and every day it's clearer.

No more worrying. When I set this goal, it was to put full faith that God had given me the tools and the strength to be a success. I finally started leaning on Him and with that I had to stop worrying about everything. Money, relationships, work, family, everyday details... Once I stopped, I was able to focus on what He really wanted for me - my best life. A life that was in place to help others accomplish and live their own.

I love my life. My friends, my family, my job, my coworkers, my clients, my dogs, my home, my office, my body, my goals, my everything. Nothing is perfect but man, I really love where I am a month from 31. I am happy, I am healthy, I'm in the best shape of my life, I'm a successful entrepreneur, I travel, I am full of faith... it's all coming together.

Being intentional about who is in my life, what I do with my days, and how I find peaceful rest each night knowing I'm living my best life is how I am able to just be happy.

Are you happy? How are you intentional about your life?

As a Christian, I've heard the words 'garbage in, garbage out' most of my life. Usually it was a pastor or a mother telling us as youth that the music we listened to or books we read or people we hung out with are going to cause destruction in our lives. Since most of us as kids don't listen to the people who tell us 'no,' I felt I could do what I wanted without worry of consequences. I was my own person and knew who I could hang out with, what I could listen to, what I could read and how I was going to act without their influences. Sometimes our elders are right... 

music
Music has always been one of my top passions. I love going to concerts, I have to have music playing all day, I wake up to music, I sing at church every week as the Music Director, I just love music. All styles, all types, all kinds, doesn't matter. I love dance music, heavy beats, stuff that makes me want to jump around. Mainstream music has been becoming more overtly sexual with every new song that comes out. I catch myself singing the words and realize it says nothing about who I am or what I believe in. It actually says the opposite and many times it's repulsive.

I've been listening to Christian radio over the years but found Air1 and XM's The Message along with the local station 91.9FM to be the contemporary Christian rock stations that had a great message AND a great beat. I never got into gospel or traditional church music (hymns and things) but with the upbeat, positive message of these stations I was able to get my music fix while not worrying about the words coming out of my mouth. 

Don't get me wrong... I still listen to mainstream music and there's a lot of great stuff but sometimes I don't 'feel like a plastic bag floating through the wind.' I feel like I'm being lifted up and I'd rather have those words stuck in my head.

food
Recently I've been noticing that all the working out I've been doing hasn't been helping me as much as I expected. My legs and arms are getting toned but my middle isn't. There are muscles under there but a nice layer of fat has formed causing them not to show. This theory applies even to my body. When I eat a box of Girl Scout cookies and go for a run, it's not going to help with what I really want it to. The garbage I put into my body causes me to see where it's going while the positive things I'm doing for myself can't seem to balance it out. Everyone says that it's 80% how you eat and 20% how you work out.

I'm putting myself on a strict low carb, low sugar diet to help myself curb my cravings for sugar. At 30 without children, I should be able to keep myself lean and healthy but if I keep stuffing confections and pizza down my throat, I'll just keep finding that my muffin-top is getting bigger.

words
I may be a Christian but I've always had the mouth of a sailor. I'm not sure if it was because I was being rebellious due to the fact that we weren't even aloud to say 'awesome' growing up (because only God is awesome) but I definitely felt like I fit into who I hung out with by dropping the f* bomb without even thinking about it. 

For Lent this year, I gave up swearing. Teresa told me a story about a kid in college she knew who touted that his father was a Christian but that he swore because nothing in the Bible said he couldn't. Teresa's response was: You're right but it's terribly disrespectful to the people around you. No more nasty, foul words.  

people
I am a very social person and a connector of people. I love meeting people and making them part of my social circle. Not long ago I realized that I was being overly friendly and just letting anyone who wanted to be a part of my life... not just as an acquaintance but as a friend. Some of those people pushed my bad habits to the max and I found myself doing things I wasn't proud of. No one made me do anything I didn't want to do but they reinforced the things I shouldn't be doing. Slowly I noticed they started weeding themselves out of my life and now my close friends are people who help me grow, not keep me heading down a destructive path.

At work I noticed that when I allowed certain people to be my clients I was angry more often than if I worked with the people who gave me a positive feeling. Those frustrating clients caused me to say and do things I normally wouldn't do and brought my entire attitude down. Thankfully I've been learning how to spot them recently and clear them out before they become my nightmare. 

Overall, my mother and my youth pastor were right. If you hang out with people who are rude to others, you'll find that you're being rude to others too. If you listen to music that doesn't send the message you want your life to show, you'll find it's the soundtrack of your life. If you eat unhealthy, you'll find that you can't fit into your jeans. If you say disrespectful things, your mother will end up hanging up on you.

Time to clear it out and clean it up. I'm on a mission. Now it's your turn. 

I write a lot about relationships - friends, love, family, God, and work. Life has us wrapped up in relationships, most of which are good but some are not the ones we should have. My life has consisted of lots of incredible friendships, hard family relationships, a back-and-forth God relationship, good and bad work relationships and terrible love relationships for the most part.

My dear friend, Diana, told me that I need to let go of the bad relationships and move forward in my incredible ones so I can find the peace I need inside myself. This is such a big struggle in my life. I tend to reach out for the relationships I shouldn't have because they are a challenge and I like to fix things. I end up getting hurt badly by them but go back again and again. I have too many of these relationships in my life right now and can't find a way to walk away from them.

I keep a little devotional book on my desk at the office called Hope for Each Day by Billy Graham. It's a short verse with a 1-page devotional, quick and easy. This morning I walked into my office with a headache, miserable at myself for not going running and had to deal with a lazy employee which just ended up making me really angry. I was also thinking about relationships I have in my life right now that I know I need to walk away from.

The devotion for today reminded me that God knows everything and puts things in our way to show us He's really there. It reads:

Accept God's Freedom
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.  James 4:8

One day a little child was playing with a valuable vase. He put his hand into it and could not take it out. His father, too, tried his best to get the little boy's hand out. but all in vain. They were thinking of breaking the vase whtn the father said, "Now, my song, make one more try. Open your hand and hold your fingers out straight as you see me doing and then pull."

To the father's astonishment the little fellow said, "Oh no, Daddy. I couldn't put my fingers out like that because if I did I would drop my penny."

Smile if you will - but thousands of us are like that little boy, so busy holding on to the world's worthless trifes that we cannot accept God's freedom.

What "trifle" is keeping you from God? A sin you won't let go of? An unworthy goal you are determined to reach? A dishonorable relationship you won't give up? I beg you to drop that trifle in your heart. Surrender! Let go and let God have His way with your life.

I believe that God is in charge and really knows my pain and misery in these. I do have relationships that are sinful, dishonorable and painful. They cause me hurt and headaches and I need to let go of them so I can move forward in the way God has asked me to.

What relationships are you still holding onto that you should let go of? Take it to Him and ask Him to help you remove them. I'll try to do it first and let you know how it goes.

A local radio announcer had a 'positive tip of the day' a few weeks ago:  "Your private life says more about you than your public life." It really got me thinking about the things in my life that are private, things I would hate for others to find out about.

One of my dear friends, Rashmee, passed away suddenly recently. She was here, then she wasn't. Gone without warning. Her little light left this world and a mark on all of us left behind. She was such a darling young woman who gave so much to the people around her. Her life was marked by having so many people who loved her. When she died, I started thinking about everything she left behind unfinished or hidden. Did she have things she hoped no one would find? It wasn't her time to go. Did she have relationships, emails, pictures, things that she didn't expect anyone to ever see? I doubt it. She lived in a clean life with clean friends and a loving family. She had nothing to complete, just a lot of living to do.

My life has come under serious scrutiny by myself. Looking at every aspect of who I am, what I am, where I am, what I have, everything - has really made me stop and think about where I am going. If I died today, would people find things they didn't know about me? What would they think of me? Would their perception of me change?

God asks us as Christians to live our lives in accordance to His gospel - to walk as Christians in all aspects of our lives. Rules for Practical Christian Living is found in Ephesians 5.

Be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. - Ephesians 5:15-21

Being a Christian and walking in His light, without losing our inhibitions or who we are as true Christians, is all He asks. 'Do not get drunk with wine' is not just warning against drunkenness, it's telling us that when we get drunk we lose our discernment and act in ways we wouldn't if we weren't drunk. Excessive anything is not living the way He has asked us.

Walking on a straight and narrow path allows us to face the right direction, continuing along in the way we are supposed to and in every aspect of our lives. It doesn't just ask us to be public figures as Christians, but also in our private lives. Recently I've been hearing a Christian artist say that it's easy for us to confess our sins to God but it's not easy to tell others of our indiscretions. We should tell those around us about what we've done so we can have more desire to change our sinful ways.

Think about the skeletons in your closet, the things you want to get off your chest, the things you have hidden in drawers or boxes so no one finds them... all the things someone might find out if you died suddenly. Are you prepared to leave behind the memories of who you are and what you have? Think about it and start cleaning out your life. I'm cleaning mine out. As much as I am a Christian that doesn't mean I have nothing to hide. Why would I want people to know about the sinful person I am?

Thank you, my dear little Rashmee, for making things more clear in my life. Thank you, my heavenly Father, for listening to my sins and forgiving me for them. Thank you, my friends, for listening and supporting me through all of life's changes and decisions. Now it's time to make it happen.