Tag: speaking

Apple Seeds and Deep Prejudices

Life Lessons, Metaphors, Spiritual Growth, Success & Motivation

In the Spring of 2016, I realized I am prejudice. prejudice noun prej·u·dice \ˈpre-jə-dəs\ :  an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics : an unfair feeling of dislike for a person or group because of race, sex, religion, etc. : a feeling of like or dislike for someone or something especially when it is not reasonable or logical All of these definitions fit my condition perfectly. But my prejudices have nothing to do with skin color. Home Sweet Home While preparing a message to give at a ladies luncheon at small church in Southern Kentucky, I got stuck. When I booked the event,…

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Are You There God? It’s Me Rachel

faith, Life Lessons, Spiritual Growth

“Tell them to go home and flourish in their planting, in the place where I have planted them, and if they do, they’ll change the world.” – Bobbie Houston  It was a sweltering Friday in July, but I was inside. I was sitting just outside of a hotel meeting room door anxiously waiting for my name to be called. It was my first writer’s conference and I had scored one of the few, coveted appointment slots with a publisher; during which I would pitch my book in hopes they would offer me a contract. I sat quietly, legs crossed at the ankles, my hands in my lap resting on top of the three…

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The Year God Stopped Talking to Me

faith, Life Lessons, Spiritual Growth

New year’s day 2016 I sat on my living room couch, face red-stained and eyes puffy from hours of crying, my voice half-strained from screaming – at God – in particularly colorful language at times. Why? Because it was New Year’s Day and as I sat down to reflect on the previous year and craft my plans and goals for the next, I realized 2015…..Well…..sucked. Sure there were good things in 2015.  In fact, on the outside it looked like a GREAT year: We bought our first house. Barry left his job where he was miserable and went into business with his Dad. We took my my mom on an incredible trip to…

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You Make Me Brave

faith, Life Lessons, Success & Motivation

Jonathan Robert Willis *Photographer snapped this shot at the ‪#‎Unpolished2015‬ conference the moment he was asking me about my book, and i was telling him and his team about how i’m in the editing process now and how editing is WAY harder and more work than writing the book ever was! and then we laughed about it. what i love is that this expression captures so much of what 2015 was for me – that’s an overwhelmed laugh. it’s laughter lined with a layer of uncertainty because i actually had no idea what i was doing. being an author, publishing, speaking publicly…. i know it’s what I’m being called to, but it’s all…

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Speaking Life

marriage, relationships, Spiritual Growth

This week a professional friend/acquaintance told me “you have one of the happiest marriages I’ve ever seen on Facebook.” While I appreciate what he said, his comment in and of itself was a can of worms.  I mean, we are all guilty of using our Social Media pages to portray the “highlight reel” of our lives – I certainly wasn’t posting a status update about the little squabble Barry and I had thirty minutes after that compliment!!  But later that night I thought about what he said while I was taking a shower.  Then I looked up and a reminder of why this is was literally right in front of me. You want…

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Weighted Words

Life Lessons

The first time someone tells you they took notes on your talk, is a humbling and sobering moment.  You realize you’re not just talking anymore. I’ve always been a story-teller, but now my stories carry a weight and a purpose, and can change people’s lives. They always have on a smaller scale. Words are seeds. Seeds we plant in our own mind and our own lives, as well as in the lives of those we encounter.  A few weeks ago my church played a music video for “Shake It Out” by Florence + The Machine that they remade.  You should go watch it, but for those of you with limited time I’ll attempt…

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#56

faith, Life Lessons, Spiritual Growth

Skydiving is was on my bucket list. It’s number 56, in fact. I kind of had it penciled in for this Summer, and then my best friend turned 40 and decided that’s what he wanted to do to celebrate. BINGO! Weeks leading up to the event I was pure bottled excitement and eager anticipation. My husband had a scheduling conflict arise so that he was not able to join us, and I remember having a strange little flutter of uneasiness. Am I going to be able to do this without him? Won’t I need him there?  Then I reminded myself, I lived a pretty routine life for 25 years before I met him,…

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