{what’s the scariest thing you’ve done lately?}

My world has become really small over the past year, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Given the latter half of 2015, we needed to circle the wagons around our family drama and trauma.  Now that we’re working through the recovery part, I’m trying to pry open my hands and do some things to make my world a little bigger. The first thing I did was to start writing outside of my journal (that’s why you’re reading this), and the second thing I did was agree to lead worship at a women’s conference this weekend.  When asked to share some music and lead worship, my gut reaction was to say “no” because that has been my pat answer for the past 7 months.  I’ve said no to a lot of things because I was barely holding on to my sanity as we clawed our way through the legal process of adopting our youngest. I’ve said no because I was drawing from a well that was completely dry.  I’ve said no because I haven’t had the mental space to focus on anything besides my family and our precarious 6 month journey.  And I’ve said no because I’ve been in the habit of saying no.

But, when asked to help with this conference on Saturday, I felt the Lord prompting me to say yes. I wanted to say no, but I didn’t want to say no, too.  So  I hesitated. And I called my husband who strongly agreed with what I felt God was urging me to do.  (God bless the man for supporting my dreams and pushing me to do things I don’t always want to or feel like I can do.) So, I said yes, and I’m glad I did because I’m really looking forward to exercising a part of myself that’s been long asleep.

I keep hearing in my head the words to a lesser known (but possibly my favorite) Sara Groves song:

Now something inside is awakening, like a dream I once had and forgot. 

And it’s something I am scared of and something I don’t wanna stop.

That’s really how I feel about the upcoming changes in my life.

But those things aren’t the scariest I’ve done lately.

Hands down the scariest thing I’ve done lately is to open up the book manuscript I began over a year ago.  I started writing it in January 2015 and wrote feverishly for about 3 weeks.  But I walked away from it after about 20,000 words because I was still too much living inside what I was writing about and I couldn’t get myself out of my own head.  Now that I’ve had some distance (it’s been over a year), I feel like I can begin to take it apart and do the work of putting it back together and finishing it.

So yeah.  There’s that.

SCARY.  But exciting.

What’s the scariest thing you’ve done lately?  Be brave and share it.

Saying it out loud can make you braver.