People, People, People

"Look, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person is still going to think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with." -Juno

"You're the strangest person I ever met, she said, and I said you too, and we decided we'd know each other a long time" -Brian Andreas

"You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place." -Miriam Adeney

"They are my people. People keep you going. People are better than... no people." -Grey's Anatomy

"You'll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breathing screaming invitation to believe better things."  -To Write Love on Her Arms

Fear vs Everything Else

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." -Marianne Williamson

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." -Eleanor Roosevelt

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all. From now on you'll be traveling the road between who you think you are and who you can be. The key is to allow yourself to make the journey.” -Meg Cabot

"Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it." -Bill Cosby

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” -John Lennon

"Don't give in to your fears. If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart.” -Paulo Coelho

Moments & Words

"You never know the biggest day of your life is the biggest day. Not until it's happening. You don't recognize the biggest day of your life, not until you're right in the middle of it. The day you commit to something or someone. The day you get your heart broken. The day you meet your soul mate. The day you realize there's not enough time, because you wanna live forever. Those are the biggest days. The perfect days." -Grey's Anatomy

"There came a moment in the middle of the song when she suddenly felt every heartbeat in the room & after that she never forgot she was part of something much bigger." -Brian Andreas

“In this Church Pew or Bar Stool Kinda Town” : Taking Stands & Making Decisions

When I started this blog it was my intention to try and make the world a little brighter by some really awesome, thought-provoking quotes. Recently however, a friend of mind mentioned that I should actually write something, you know, from my brain. And, up until recently, I didn’t have the time to consider what to write about, or any ideas of where to start thinking of a topic. 

And then, Chick-Fil-A decided to have a ‘National Eat At Chick-Fil-A Day’ in support of traditional marriage. Of course, at first, this had little bearing on this blog. But the more I’ve thought about this and the more I’ve seen on Facebook and the news I decided this was an interesting and pretty thought-provoking topic.

It should be noted here that this will not be the place where I word-vomit all my thoughts and feelings about the whole thing. Nor will it be left against right; conservative versus liberal; he said, she said; you’re wrong, I’m right entry. What it will be is a glimpse at what this event and the many others on both sides, means for making decisions and taking a stand.

Somebody once told me that when it comes to controversial topics you have to pick a side if you want anyone to pay attention to you. If you know anything about me, and I am assuming if you are reading this, you know a great deal about me, you’ll know that my question in response to this statement was something along the lines of, uhm, why?! 

So here I am, days after the president of Chick-Fil-A,  who is a well-known Christian, decides that he should use his fast food restaurant to finally voice his opinion about marriage, and I am wondering how to make sense of it because there are a lot of things that are going through my mind.


First, I believe in and respect the First Amendment. In case you need a refresher course it reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” And, thanks to the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment, Dan Cathy have every right to say and do as he pleases(within reason, of course :)). In this case, Cathy decided to use his First Amendment rights to express his views through his company. Still okay in my book.


Naturally, since this is all about sides, it makes sense that I have other thoughts going through my brain and that’s where it gets complicated. The other side of this is that I support gay rights. I mean, really, how can I live in this world and believe that any human being should be treated differently because they happen to live a different lifestyle than I do? I can’t do it, so I don’t. 

And we come to the question, is it okay to be on both sides? I say yes. Some may say no. Even more people will probably say they don’t know. If you say no, your decision making is probably 10 times easier than mine will ever be. If you say you don’t know, good luck on the search to figuring it out, let me know how it goes. If you say yes, like me, you’re in for a hell of a ride that I’m still trying to navigate.

Decision making is much easier when things are clean cut and straight to the point. But, what fun would that be? Here is the heart of the issue: how do we pick a side? How can we take a stand when we are straddling the state line? How do we support people, organizations, businesses, and even, as crazy as this sounds, religious institutions if all our eggs aren’t in one basket?

How do we: the universal, left, right, straight, gay, black, white, female, male, young, old, pro-life, pro-choice, pro-war, anti-death penalty, pro-healthcare, anti-socialism, religious, atheist, spiritual, employed, working-poor, NRA supporting, ONE Campaign supporting, north, south, east, west, or any of the other combinations of people, how do we make decisions and take stands in the gray world we are living in?


Chick-Fil-A will eventually just be a blimp on the radar in the land of controversial topics like Susan G Komen and Kony 2012 and there will certainly be more like it. To some, this might just be a matter of deciding how much you like chicken. But for others, it is something deeper. Now the question for people in any place, on any side of the fence, is in the face of being on both sides, which wins out: one or the other, or both?


Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you decide: be okay with it.

This vs This...

So, there's this...

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." -Maya Angelou

"Don't make someone a priority in your life when you're only an option in theirs"

"You're going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. It's actions, not words, that matter." -Nicholas Sparks

But then, there's this...

"Scars remind us of where we've been; they don't have to dictate where we're going." -Criminal Minds

 "In the end, no matter how your plans turn out, no matter how others treat you, you get to choose what your life looks like." -To Write Love On Her Arms

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."-Mother Teresa

 "I chose to forgive. Putting this decision into action hasn’t been the simplest thing I’ve ever done. Sometimes when your heart is smashed into a million pieces, you have to dig pretty deep to collect all of them again, and along the way, anger and bitterness and resentment rear their ugly heads and try to convince you that it will be easier to just give in to them. And sometimes, that’s a pretty tempting idea. Those are the days when you have to take a deep breath and choose, again, the path to forgiveness. And if that’s not enough, those are the days when you find someone who will help you want forgiveness, and you sit with them and cry about how unfair it all is until you settle down and realize that what you’re doing feels terrible and the forgiveness thing is just a better idea anyway. And after enough days, and maybe months, of deciding again and again to forgive, it suddenly becomes easy. And you’re finally not angry any longer." -To Write Love On Her Arms

Friendship. Community. Love.

"You're the strangest person I ever met, she said, & I said you too, & we decided we'd know each other a long time" -Brian Andreas

  

"You may not remember the time you let me go first.

Or the time you dropped back to tell me it wasn't that far to go.

Or the time you waited at the crossroads for me to catch up.

You may not remember any of those, but I do and this is what I have to say to you:

Today, no matter what it takes,

We ride home together.”  

-Brian Andreas

"Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done."~Starhawk

"No one with good friends is ever a failue."

"I can't promise to solve all your problems, but I can promise you won't have to face them alone."

"In this world full of pain & sorrow, maybe once in a lifetime, you'll find people who will make you feel wonderful. Hang on to those people no matter what."

“I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you. Something worth living for, maybe even worth dying for. Something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead. I can't tell you what it might be, that's for you to find, to choose, to love. I can just encourage you to start looking & support you in the search."

My Past Self Is So Smart...

 Rarely is this blog about my personal thoughts. But sometimes, I make exceptions. Today is one of those times. Snippet of my past self, telling me(and you) super important thought provoking things. Listen to her, she's a smart lady :)

"Growing up in this world sucks and unfortunately there's no nice way of putting that. But I guess maybe we need to slow down a little and stop running, I hear it takes a lot of energy out of you. Who knows, maybe if you stop running you'll find out who you are, who your friends are and what the people in your life truly mean to you ." [June, 2007]

"There comes a moment, even if just a brief moment, when you find some inner strength and it is amazing. Where you get your strength from doesn't matter, as long as it comes along and pours cold water over your head." [December, 2007].

"It is cool to think about the roles that we have in the communities we are a part of. Sometimes I forget that I'm not alone because there are so many other people out there who are part of the community, who have a role and who fill it well. It is also really cool to think of the different, smaller communities that we are apart of and the different roles we play in each of them. God is pretty great like that, giving us different talents for the communities that we are apart of and for community in general. I don't know if this will be profound. Or even if it is suppose to be profound. I just know that community is awesome and that even in the darkest places community comes along and pulls you out. I'm glad I know that I need people. Because with people we have community and with community there is love and love is the best thing ever." [January, 2009]

"It is interesting, he said, to look back on the life you've lived. Why's that, she asked. He smiled and simply said, because if all this good has come already there is hope that something better is on its way." [February, 2012]