A Little Bit Brave

I’m glad you were born.  I’m glad you are alive.  I want you to stay alive.  These are the words we mean when we say, “Happy Birthday.” Today I turn 20. It’s weird because I wasn’t sure I’d make it this far. And I know so many others aren’t sure if they’ll make it to their next birthday. Some of you aren’t sure if you’ll make it to next week. You’ve stopped making plans, stopped looking forward to graduation, the end of the semester, the end of the week. Friend, you are alive. You have fought so hard to make it here. And I know it doesn’t feel like you’re fighting, but the fact that you are here proves that feeling wrong. Life hurts and it seems like the hurt will never give way to joy. It seems like you’ll never feel alive again. Please trust me when I say you will feel alive again.  There will be moments that you want  to be alive. You’re not out of time. Tomorrow needs you . There are songs you will listen to and love, hands you w...

i point to the line of trees and say we can stop there. she says we can keep going. this week, i did not want to hurt myself. i say  i’ve finally reached the other side she says we can keep going. it is warm outside and i take off my flannel; i am wearing short sleeves underneath. she is not afraid. she has never been afraid of me. today, recovery is yoga mats and coffee mugs and hiking a mountain. more than that, recovery is discovering that i can go so much further that I believe. maybe this is what it means to be alive. spring comes late here. maybe i am on colorado time. april is almost over and i am still thawing out, but this weekend reminds me that snow and sun can live in the same month. maybe being alive is more than waiting for life to happen. maybe getting better is more than having answers for every question. maybe becoming who i am meant to be is more than figuring stuff*   out. looking out over boulder...

When I look back at where I was a year ago, I can't believe how much my life has changed. Sitting at home after my first semester of college, I start thinking about exactly where I've been over the last 12 months. I see the fear and anxiety that burned. I see a girl who painted over her identity with insecurity and trust issues. I see a girl who let discouragement keep her from pursuing what she loved. I didn't blog very much in 2017. It doesn't really make sense, because one of the few blog posts I wrote this year got a huge amount (for me) of views. You would think having a post with 20 times the usually number of views would inspire me to write more. Instead, I went exactly five months without posting anything. I wanted to be everything I saw other bloggers being, but I didn't think I could measure up. So I didn't write. Words got harder. Despite them being my passion, I stopped believing they were worth anything. I was desperate to speak, but my m...

Going to university terrified me. I had done well in community college classes. I had chosen a school 20 minutes from home. I had amazing friends at my home church. And I was scared. High school was tough for me, especially in terms of friendships. I was worried I would carry those problems into college. I've had crippling anxiety because of school before. I was worried that perfectionism would steal my joy. Every morning, I wake up a little earlier than I have to, and I spend time with God. How little I appreciated this habit before college. I read my Bible consistently long before I moved into my dorm. I listened to worship music. It was really good. But while I was at Gateway Student Conference in July, I heard God say to me, "this will be one of the hardest seasons of your life, but it won't be the same as other hard times. This time, you know I'm with you." I know this couldn't be a time I neglected my relationship with God. So many things--f...

This is my last semester of high school. Last year, I was desperate to get out of high school. My junior year was, in a word, terrible. There were good moments. It got better towards the end. But I was miserable for a significant portion of my 11th grade year. My sophomore year, I saw my high school career ending a whole lot differently. I imaged a graduation ceremony with my friends, staying in touch and even as close friends with several of my current high school friends. Now, I'm not good friends with most of the people I was friends with that year. Six months ago looks much different than right now. I had no idea what the semester would look like. I didn't know who my friends would be, what dual credit classes I would take, or when I would get my license. I didn't know I would get a smart phone, a job, and a two hour drive to debate club. I had no vision for the rest of the year or the next. I spent the fall semester figuring things out. I found myse...

There's something incredible about being able to look out a window and see the ocean stretch on for miles. A thousand shades of blue dancing over and beneath the surface. Life. Beauty. Wonder. How do we go through each day without stopping and staring at the incredible creation around us? How have we become so complacent, so blind to the beauty around us? We're sucked in by rush, by busy, by cell phone screens and Instagram filters. We don't want to miss out on Snapchat stories or Twitter feeds. But we miss out on sunsets and starlight. Breathing in warm sunlight. Moonlight between tree branches. The ocean stretching out for miles, stretching out forever. We snap a photo of autumn leaves, a gorgeous sunset, and share it with all our friends. Then we move on. We don't pay attention to the small details of our lives, the little moments of utter beauty. The little miracles that make our lives magical. The small strokes of the paintbrush God has used to fill in th...

The room wasn't clean enough. The makeup wasn't blended enough. The skirt wasn't big enough. The speech wasn't persuasive enough. The hair wasn't straight enough, then it wasn't curly enough. The waist wasn't small enough. The voice wasn't clear enough. The words weren't pretty enough. I wasn't perfect enough. *** If you've ever felt like you aren't good enough, these words are for you. Because you're right. You aren't good enough. You aren't good enough because the standards are impossible, and you aren't perfect. That's the bad news. The good news? You don't have to be. You don't have to have perfect. No matter what you've heard, no matter what you've told yourself. You can't be perfect, and you don't have to be. I'm tired of people wishing they had that one thing. If they had that hair, or those clothes, or that grade, that talent, that popularity, they'd be enough. I...

Here we are, on the last day of the year. We'll pull apart party poppers (say that three times fast), drink sparkling grape juice, make resolutions we sort of intend to keep, and make a big deal out of everything because "it's the first of this year!" And then there are those people who are always like, "remember last year, when..." and then go on to describe something that happened five minutes ago (okay I confess that person is me). I hope you had a good year, even if was a hard one. In some ways, I think the hard years are the best years. They're the ones that help us grow, that make us better.  For me, this has been a long year. On the outside, they don't look too different. but everything feels so different than they did twelve months ago. I'm ready for this year to be over. It's kind of like Christmas. It's great and wonderful, but only for a limited amount of time. If Christmas lasted any longer than it does, it w...

|| "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring." Proverbs 27:1 || Nothing this year went how I expected it to. For instance, I did not expect "man buns" to become a big thing (unfortunately they did). Or for people to demand that I watch them do a stupid dance move (I'm proud to say that I have never whipped or "nae naed"). Or for people to demand to know what my shoes are (that was probably the most annoying thing). Or any of the other weird things that have happened this year. But more seriously, there was a lot of disappointment. In different ways, with different things. That's not to say there weren't great things that happened, because great things did happen. Like, I got a cat and went to NITOC. But not so great things happened too. Maybe it's just me, but I always have these unspoken expectations at the beginning of each year. At New Years, at my birthday, at the beginning of the school year. I exp...

Ah, Thanksgiving. The day of food, football, and awkward family relations. There's turkey and potatoes and getting hit in the face with a football, and wishing you hadn't eaten as much as you did. Plus, you can get Christmas shopping done on this wonderful day, because now Black Friday starts Thursday evening. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of Thanksgiving. I don't like watching football or most of the traditional food eaten on this day. But my least favorite part of Thanksgiving is the day after. I don't think there's anything wrong with going out and getting a great deal on Christmas gifts for the people you love. That's great. Go shop on Black Friday at whatever time you want to. That's not what I don't like. But I've noticed this thing that happens around Thanksgiving. For about four weeks, starting November 1, everyone becomes really grateful for everything. Grateful for family, and food, and friends, and football. I'm all for gratitu...

|| "The Lord will be your confidence and keep your foot from being snared." -Proverbs 3:26 || Demi Lovato makes me sad. Not because she went through rehab, or writes sad songs, or because the end of Princess Protection Program is emotional (though it is my favorite Disney Channel movie). Demi Lovato was on the cover of "Cosmopolitan" magazine in September. What did she have to say to those criticizing how sexual the cover image was? "I feel incredibly empowered and the most beautiful I have ever felt on this magazine." Demi just came out with a song called "Confident." I hate it. I don't hate Demi, don't get me wrong. But her song isn't about confidence. I don't think she even knows what confidence isn't. That's not her fault. Almost no one these days knows what confidence is. It's a word that's thrown around a lot, and there are a lot of definitions, but for now I'm going to talk about the definit...

I was up until one the other night, so there was a moment when I looked down at the clock before going to bed and saw this: This small box in the bottom right corner of my laptop screen was the biggest relief. Not that September was the worst thing ever, but there was so much going on the whole month and, unlike most months, it did not go by fast. But it's over now, and I can look back and say I did productive things! September is one of the busiest months of the year for me, and October is one of my favorite months, so I'm going to share what I learned in September and what I'm looking forward to in October (spoiler alert: it's not Halloween). What I learned 1. I work better with a deadline If I absolutely have to get something--a speech, a novel, a blog post--done by a specific time, I will get it done. Loose deadlines leads to procrastination and scrolling Pinterest and watching Once Upon A Time reruns. And then when I realize I should probably do the thi...

Ah, July. The month of Independence Day parties, illegal fireworks, swimming, speech and debate camps, and wishing I had my license. This month went by really fast, but I did learn (or re-learn) a few things in its 31 days. 1. Calendars are more fun when they're pretty I got a new weekly/monthly planner the other day, and if it weren't for the lovely green and blue cover, I probably wouldn't ever use it. But since it does have a lovely green and blue cover (and interior), planning things months ahead may become a little more common. 2. Journaling actually helps No, I don't write in meticulous detail about everything I did that day. That would be boring. But I do write how I feel about things, which keeps me from imploding. When you write, it doesn't have to be extensively descriptive. Just get your thoughts down and you'll feel better. 3. Panic doesn't help But I still panic. And it doesn't help. Don't panic. It just str...

||"Cease striving and know that I am God." -Psalm 46:10|| One of my friends from youth group is a ballet dancer. Every year, from early September to late November, is Nutcracker Season. At the busiest part of this season, she's in the dance studio seven days a week. She and the other dancers practice hours each day, memorizing each dance, learning to move to the music with every limb in place, a smile on their face. Oh how I admire ballet dancers. Thanksgiving weekend, they perform. And it's beautiful. The dresses and sets are nice and all, but the real beauty comes from the dancers. The movements are smooth, practiced to perfection. The months of practice come together in one fantastic show. These girls have learned exactly when and where to move in time to the music. Sometimes I live my life the same way. Don't get me wrong. I have about as much coordination as a baby elephant. Ballet is not soon to be listed among my list of talents (w...

Normally when people think about being brave, images of sky diving and roller coasters are what appear. Or maybe you think of people going on missions trips to third world countries. We think of big, bold choices and actions. But bravery isn't always big. The seed of starting a blog was planted in my head when I was twelve. I told my youth leader Sarah that I wanted to be a writer, and she mentioned blogging to me. A couple of years later, I started Kitkats and Impromptu , which focused primarily on speech and debate life. It was a small decision, one that I second guessed more than I should have. I started the blog for fun, mostly so I could ramble about speech and debate to people who would relate.  It's still really fun. I get to draw stick figures on paint and write about something I love. Occasionally, I would write about more serious stuff.  Those posts rarely got as many views as my funny posts or my parodies.  But I still wrote them. However, th...

When I was thinking about what I learned this month, I realized just how many things have happened to me in the last four or so weeks. I've grown a lot, and been in situations I've never experienced before. Here's what I learned in one of longest months I've been through. 1. Swing dancing is seriously amazing My friend had her 16th birthday party at a dance hall in a sketchy part of Fort Worth, and when I saw the place for the first time I was like "what the heck did Kat get me into?" But once I got inside and started learning how to actually swing dance, I learned I'd been missing out on something amazing for years. If you get the chance, you should grab a few friends and go out dancing! 2. I am ridiculously sentimental I cleaned out from under my bed this month, and I realized that I keep way too many things. I honestly don't care about the crafts I made in VBS when I was ten, but I still had all the little cardboard baskets and pi...

For the last few months, I've felt God calling me to start a blog. But I was afraid. Up until a couple of months ago, I didn't see any girls close to my age doing things like starting blogs about living for God. I knew teenagers with writing blogs, and I saw a lot of blogs written by women in their twenties, but in my heart I knew that I needed to write to other teenagers about living from a love for God. Yesterday, I got to reading some of  Annie Downs'  writing. Her book  Let's All Be Brave  is technically supposed to be for adults, but I still read the free excerpt because I love Annie's writing. That little excerpt is all I've read of the book, but even that touched that space in my heart that keeps trying to push me forward, into unknown, uncertain places. And I listened. Sunday morning at church, the sermon was given by a woman, something I was super excited about. Then she, Holly Wagner, started  preaching about bravery.  Again, that space ...

" all the world's encouragement to "be yourself" is defeated from the get-go when we use other as the measure of who our "selves" should even be."   - Phylicia Masonheimer  "I wish my hair were straight like her's." "If only I had the fashion sense of my best friend..." "He speaks so much better than me." "I can't dance like them." {~}~{~}~{~}~{~} I stare at the dressing room mirror, sucking in my stomach and standing on my toes. Trying clothes on is a huge pain already, but when you throw swimsuits into the mix, I can hardly stand a glance at that mirror without tearing up. My hair is frizzy from spending six hours in the car. The florescent lighting turns my skin a pasty white, making my acne scars practically glow. If I only had her skn, her legs, her hair. Everything looked wrong in that mirror. My legs too big, my skin too pale, my shoulders too wide. Too much and not enough. When...

Tangled is one of my favorite movies. I honestly don't remember what I thought of it when I saw it for the first time when I was eleven. I just remember sitting in the second row of the theater, craning my neck, and wishing we'd decided to sit on the stairs instead. But now? I love the characters, the writing and dialogue, the plot, the music. I've seen it a few more times than the average sixteen-year-old. If you've never seen Tangled, 1.) You should go watch Tangled, and 2.) Here's what you need to know about the movie for the sake of this blog post: Rapunzel, who is about to turn eighteen, has spent her whole life in a tower in the middle of the woods. Every year, on her birthday (" only  on my birthday.") a bunch of floating lights appear in the sky. Rapunzel doesn't know exactly what but she "just feel[s] like they're meant for [her.]" But her mother (well, not her mother. The woman who kidnapped her when she was a baby and h...

I didn't expect to feel different the morning of my 16th birthday. I figured it'd be like every birthday ever. People would wish me happy birthday on Facebook, I would eat cheese cake with my family, maybe watch a movie. The thing is, I did  feel different. *Gasp!* I know, I know. I wasn't really that much older than I had been last night. Nothing had physically changed. I didn't magically have a drivers license. I certainly didn't grow (haven't grown since I was thirteen). I didn't wake up to balloons and confetti and people screaming "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!" at me. That would've been terrifying. I probably would've cried. Instead of waking up feeling the same way I did the night before, I came to a realization: I have a life. Like, I'm a person. Who is alive. And breathing. And I can use words. As I reflected stereotypically over the last year of my life, I realized I was tired of waiting for my life to begin. I'm not ...