Today I was asked if I write: I thought...yes, but it's been months.

Today I am in flip flops, like the cheap kind, the kind that only last you for one summer, the kind where you can feel every rock on your path stabbing at your heal, about to poke through to your foot. The type that give you no support, like you are walking bare foot over an uneven ground. In my last blog entry, I attempted to catch up to current times. I was unsuccessful. Failure is easy for me. Failure is a comfortable place for me. In my life I have failed over and over again, I have fallen short, I have tried, and fallen short again, and I have come to the realization that I will never succeed in some people’s eyes. But that is okay. I will always keep going and I will always do my best, even if my best is not good enough for everyone. I even have a parent that has never told me that she is proud of me, or genuinely unprompted that she loves me. And that is okay because in a way it is what I have accepted for years, you teach people how to treat you. I have come to the realization that others lack of love is not a reflection of me. It never has been, it is only a reflection of their ability, their capacity, not mine, only theirs. Their lack of love, compassion and acceptance has only made me strive in my life to be different; to tell people freely that I love them, accept them where they are, that I appreciate them, and support them with every fiber of my being. In the last few months God has taught me that the rejection that I experienced in my childhood was only preparing me to have strength and perseverance. In this world full of sin and pain I am sensitive therefore I experience consistent misunderstanding and rejection. He was teaching me at a young age not to place my worth in others hands, for only his hand are big enough to carry my heart. He was strengthening me to stand up in the face of fear and rejection and to keep going, to fight for what I know is right. He was preparing me for the biggest task of my life, the task of building others up. When you humble yourself and you ask God to use you for his will, he does just that. He opens doors and clears a path and that path is for success through all your past failures.

I have discovered that I do not fear failure, but rather I am terrified of success. Literally, for real, horrified like the edge of a cliff with unsure footing, in those blasted slippery flip flops, horrified! The last time I wrote was January and I only made my way through to October 2017. Well, now it is April 2018. I could make all sort of excuses for not writing. School, Life, My Business, time got away from me...but in reality, people make time for the things that are important to them. And I am no different. I have not put my writing first, I have not put praying for myself first I was working on building a business, and cultivating new friendships. I haven't blogged and I am okay with it because the last few months have been hard, I have grown and been pushed to my limits and I will admit that occasionally I have a difficult time sharing my broken, knocked down self with others. I am working on it. That is why I started this blog. I wanted to push myself, to reach outside my comfort zone and to share my pain and struggles. I know that it is only through sharing our pain and struggles that we can ever help others through their suffering. 2 Corinthians 1: 3-7 Hopefully as I bear my soul here I can inspire someone, really anyone. So, cliff notes, October came around. I got a job serving at a local privately-owned steak house. I really enjoyed it, it was 3 blocks from home, and they were okay with working around my school schedule. A month in I was making enough but of course in typical me fashion, I wanted more. I soon became a bartender which was great. They asked me to manage but I turned it down, I've been there before NO THANK YOU, longer hours less pay no appreciation no thank you. I had been learning in school, reading in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal and had come to the realization that the only way to get ahead is to have multiple forms of income. I started doing research, I applied to take on line surveys, I tried online writing, like those cites that say that they will pay you to write for them, reviews, manuals, resumes... Obviously, I like to write and I LOVE sharing my opinion even when people don't ask for it...ha ha ha but I realized that neither of those options was in any way lucrative. I regrouped, rethought, researched more, I tried to sell some on ebay, craigslist, offer-up. I came to the understanding that the nature of the consumer has been changing, growing, evolving. In 1994 Amazon was founded, soon after making shopping a click, search and scroll away, then boom it is delivered to your door step days later.

Along with the internet marketplace came scams, get rich quick schemes, as my amazing and smart grandma says ponzie schemes(I had never heard of) pay to be a part of... oh wait it’s not real...you've lost all your money, pyramid schemes. Well the sad reality is that those companies still exist. I can't count on two hands how many times I have been approached in the last year with the same pitch. "I met this amazing couple, they retired at 30, they are my mentors and I am slated to retire June of 2019." Sweet, good for you, (incert my eye roll here) what are you actually selling? Do your research don't get sucked in... find the right thing for you something you can truly believe in put your heart and soul behind something real. And if you are at all like me something faith and family based, don't sell your soul to the devil and then promise people heaven. Okay tangent much, haha, tangents are how I think. So I was looking, searching, I was open, and I was doing a ton of research. My cousin who I had been buying Lash Boost from for half a year now had told me I could do what she was doing. Her exact words were "you would totally rock it and be super successful". But I didn't believe her, because it is hard to believe in yourself when you are comfortable failing, so how could anyone tell me, "you will be successful". Ha there I was with a laugh and an eye roll and back to the conventional way of thought. We are taught to look for a job, not to look for an opportunity, we are taught to live to work and not love to live, we are comfortable with searching for the bigger paycheck, not the bigger dream. We spend so much of our lives chasing money and not living our passions therefore feeding our bodies and not nourishing our souls. It is no wonder we have lost touch.

In the middle of October after much research, prayers, and discussion with my husband we purchased a virtual franchise. Yes, me the classic eye roller, I jumped straight out of my comfort zone and dove into the world of a business owner. I had no clue what I was doing I was excited and scared. I told my family and friends and there were some that were excited and happy for us and others "per the usual" who still to this day 6 months later have yet to ask me what it is I am up to.

In December from my knees I made a choice, I decided to love myself the way that God has always loved me. I wanted to prepare to start a family of my own, and in order to do that I had to face those unaccepting demons that still held a place within me. Now don't be mistaken, I have always loved me and cherished myself. What I am referring to is getting to a place where I had to reached deep down inside and chose to change my subconscious self doubt. In order to do so I surrendered to the fact that I would need some space, and the only way I could do so was to let go of the people and the things in my life that had held me back. I had to start slowly to chip away at the self-doubt that had been sewn into my seeds for year, so be it, my entire life. I had to make a choice to break free, to choose ME and to accept me in a way I never had before. I had to choose to not put my worth in the hands of those that would not cherish and hold me like I was precious. So, I stopped, I quit, I didn’t reach out to my family and my friends who otherwise didn’t reach out first. And I learned really quick that as soon as people stop seeing you for what you can offer them, they just plain stop seeing you. By January I lost my newest friend of two years and by March I lost my oldest friend of 13 years. By April I learned that I need and deserve more from my friends in the future. We all grow and change and sometimes that growth requires change. These losses were Gods way of making room in my heart for the new. It is amazing the way life shifts when you discover that your worth is not hinged on the value that others see in you. For they are not you, and they are not God and they do not hold the keys to your worth. I had worn holes in my flip flops, that one season type of shoes. I could not continue to wear a shoe with no real sole, so I threw them away. I traded them in for a nice pair of sandals with an arch support. I now know that if I don’t have a supportive sole to walk around on, pretty soon my knees start to hurt, then my hips get soar, then my lower back gives out and before I know it I have a kink in my neck. If you are reading this today and you are struggling to move forward, maybe it is time to take a step back and see if you started with a solid foundation. Are you walking on a good arch support? If not, maybe it is time that you make the choice to invest in yourself and change your shoes, choose a new foundation. When I decided to see my worth and invest in more support those rocks that I could feel through sole of my flip flop no longer stab at my soul.

As I sit here today, I am thankful for my husband, I am thankful for Gods grace, I am thankful for new beginnings and new friends and I am thankful beyond words for my family. Until next time thanks for reading xoxo Lindsay Lou