Real Life Reflections

I recently joined a writing challenge through Kristi Holl's Writers' First Aid (kristiholl.com). The challenge? To write first thing every morning for the thirty days of April. To do this, to do anything you value and want to make a priority in your life, requires boundaries. I've blogged about boundaries before, but it's been a while, so I thought I would share Kristi's thoughts as a refresher. She focuses on writers, but her words are true for everyone. This is her first post in a series: Why Writers Need Boundaries

My husband and I recently watched The Help - a story about a group of African American women who worked as maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the '60s. One of the protagonists works for a woman "who got no b'ness havin' babies." This woman, this family maid and nanny, tells her little two year old ward regularly, "You is pretty. You is smart. You is impor'ant." How difficult it is for us to believe that about ourselves - really, to believe anything good about ourselves. I always try to be my raw self when I write a blog post. Today is no exception. So I confess that I've been drowning in a storm of lies lately. My head knows they're lies, and I could easily tell anyone else in the same place that they're lies, but I haven't been able to get a grip. There have been so many of them coming at me at once. It seems that I just break the surface, gulp some fresh air of truth then get pulled back under. One thing I know: the enemy of our

My life gets a little crazy sometimes. I'm probably the only person in the whole world, right? The biggest problem I have when my life gets like that is me - my attitude. I live with the American belief that my life should be everything I want it to be. I should have everything I want to have; do everything I want to do. Have oodles of free time to travel and visit friends, work on hobbies, exercise, cook fabulous healthy meals. I should be able to do it all and have it all. The other night I had a dream - one that my husband had to awaken me from because I was yelling. In this dream, I was going through our house closing all the curtains and blinds. The kitchen was the last window to the outside world, but when I tried to raise my arm to drop the blinds, I couldn't. Something, some unseen force was holding my arm down. I struggled for a short time before I realized that the unseen force was an evil force, a demonic presence. It made me angry. I began yelling at it. Later t