Hello my friend,

I pray you are doing well and enjoying your July. My husband Ben and I, along with our son Isaiah, just got back from a week-long visit up to East Texas to spend time with my small, but oh so close-knit family. My mom’s house, where I grew up, is tucked away amid lush and piney woods, and while it, and the surrounding acreage, was once filled with all manner of canines, equines, bovines, and other lively farm animals, today, there are only the meadows, pastures and pens in which they roamed many fun-filled years ago.

As much as I enjoy going home and soaking up the peaceful, slowed-down world of the country, I frequently find myself feeling a little sad as my mind takes meandering strolls down memory lane, envisioning my younger self laughing at the silly goats and chickens, saddling my horse and practicing my barrel racing out in the pasture, traipsing through the creek with a pack of loyal dogs behind me… I took for granted what a childhood it was, for it was never lacking the simple pleasures which I long for now.

 

“When you finally go back to your old home, you find it wasn’t the old home you missed but your childhood.” – Sam Ewing

 

I remember the excitement I felt when, after graduating high school, I knew I’d soon be heading off to the University of Texas, an enormous school of 50,000+ students at that time, and therefore a far cry from what I was accustomed to. However, I couldn’t wait to live in the heart of a big city, with its famous live music scene, countless restaurants of every imaginable cuisine, immaculate parks, a picturesque city skyline, and a coffee shop on what seemed like every corner.

I couldn’t wait to hole up in such a coffee shop on Saturday mornings and simultaneously sip a cappuccino, people-watch, and write bad poetry.

I couldn’t wait to live in an apartment with views of lots of different people doing lots of different things.

I couldn’t wait to, well, experience a place that was completely different from the one I grew up in.

My, how things change…

Now, both Ben and I are dreaming of the country, and most of all, the contentment it brings as it reconnects us to creation, to the non-man-made beauties of fresh air, straight-from-the-ground sustenance, mellifluous birdsong, the smell of rain after a hard day’s work, the feel of our hands plunging into the dirt, the cheerfulness of animals who know nothing of politics or plagues or pandemonium…

“The country” is representative, in my view, of my childhood – a time and a place for which the only appropriate responsibilities were to grow, learn, explore, and engage with the world in ways that bolstered creativity, instilled confidence, and fostered independence through the process of seeking and finding, failing and succeeding. asking and listening.

I don’t know why it is that so many of us, once we reach adulthood, set our minds on parting ways with our upbringings. Whether it’s by venturing to a distant city, perhaps even a foreign country, or pursuing a degree or job that’s, well, not anything our parents would have suggested to us, or exploring different philosophies and religions, it’s not uncommon for people, myself among them, to journey away from our roots, at least for a while. It’s also not uncommon, from what I’ve seen and experienced, to journey back to those roots and view them with eyes full of fresh, deep-seated appreciation.

I think the inner drive to go our own way is not only natural, but healthy, provided we aren’t doing so with a spirit of rebellion, recklessness, or impulsivity. We need to fly the coop, so to speak, for many reasons I won’t take the time to enumerate here, but in a nutshell, it helps shape us into the individuals God created us to be. Out on our own, removed from well-intentioned people who may seek to influence our preferences and decisions, we can more easily discover our foremost passions, where we want to live, the type of person we want to marry – if we want to marry – what church, if any, we want to attend…and the list goes on and on.

And, as I stated earlier, leaving home provides the time and space necessary for us to reflect honestly on our childhoods and decide which facets of them we want to aspire to recreate, and even pass on to our children or other young ones in our lives, and which parts we want to file away as “mistakes made” and “lessons learned.”

 

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.” – Neil Gaiman

 

Of course, no childhood is perfect. Mine certainly wasn’t. But I am tremendously thankful for many, many blessings that I’ve only recently truly come to recognize and appreciate.

 

And now, for Quote Soup, the part of the email composed of favorite quotes I’ve collected over the past few weeks and think you may find intriguing and/or helpful too!

 

LITERATURE:

“Youth is like having a big bag of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple, state they were in before they at the candy. They don’t. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. The matron doesn’t want to repeat her girlhood – she wants to repeat her honeymoon. I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

 

 

SPIRIT:

“Your body is a temple, the seat of your soul to experience this beautiful reality. Honor it by ensuring what goes into, onto, and around it nourishes it, strengthens it and aids its natural intelligence to be the badass self-regulating, self-healing creation that it is.” – Alec Zeck

 

MINDSET

“Just because you don’t share it on social media doesn’t mean you’re not up to big things. Live it and stay low key. Privacy is everything.” – @herincrediblemindset

 

“Weakness is when external events control your internal reality. Strength is when your internal reality controls external events. Peace is when your internal reality is neither defined by external events nor compelled to control them.” – Neil Strauss

 

HEALTH:

“Treat training like a piggybank. Put a couple coins in each day. You’re not looking for overnight success. You’re looking for steady, sustainable progress. Patience and consistency pay off.” – Matthew S. Ibrahim

“Your 10 best doctors:

·         You

·         Doctors (jk it’s you)

·         Healers (jk it’s you)

·         You in nature

·         You well fed

·         You hydrated

·         You well slept

·         You in movement

·         Your innate intelligence

·         You, it’s always been you.” – Dr. Brad Campbell

 

 

BONUS!

Question I Saw That Intrigued Me:

“You meet your 18-year-old self. You’re allowed to say three words. What do you say?”

 

Thanks for reading!! If you’d like to some summer reading, please check out my fitness books, fantasy novels, and women’s fiction HERE!