Tribe Life Tuesday: My Personal Development Journey

A weekly post from my childhood to grown-up friend Carrie ~ 

sharing her awesome life and her desire to have community while doing it!

Happy TribeLife Tuesday! I am so excited to share with you today! I am consistently on a personal development journey; I love to read and listen to people who encourage me to be the best person I can be. Recently, I have had many opportunities for introspection, which is an important part of the growing process. So today, I want to tell you about me, the girl that you may never meet but may be connected with until forever.
Here is a little about me:

• Everything I do must have a purpose, if not, no thank you.
• I’m not very self-disciplined.
• I hate injustice.
• I take responsibility for things I don’t need to… but I don’t always take responsibility for what is mine. (Figure that one out)
• I am an extroverted introvert.
• I love to read but don’t do it nearly enough.
• Sleeping is one of my talents.
• I prefer the nicer things in life.
• I have my best ideas and am the most focused at night.
• I am an organized mess.
• I’m a city girl and a country girl!
• And, most of all, I want to create a life worth living.

I say we should create on purpose. It’s up to us to do all we can with what we have to make the best life we can. We’re required to do our part and the rest will work itself out. When we serve others our lives begin to take shape in beautiful, unexpected ways.

Each of us are unique. We love what we love and hate what we hate. I know those are strong words, but people are worth loving and some things are worth hating. Again, we hate some things, not people. Like I said above, I hate injustice. I physically hurt when I see the rights of others being violated. Your loves and hates are so important, don’t dismiss or overlook them. 

You are unique; you bring something to the world that we need. Do you know what that something is? If not, find out what drives you and start there. There's a good chance that passion will contribute to the clarity of your life's purpose. 

I still don’t fully know with absolute certainty that I was put on earth to do a specific thing, but I know what drives me, what type of life I want to live and that’s enough for me. I feel like I am going to look back one day and go “oh, I see it now”. But it will be revelatory at the end and transformative while I’m in it. 

So what does a life worth creating look like to for me?

• It looks like having deep, meaningful relationships 
• Caring for the broken
• Giving more than I keep 
• Loving people well, right where they are 
• Being empathetic 
• Having wealth beyond my wildest dreams 
• Creating a safe, respectful culture everywhere I go
• Making our legacy legendary

This sounds like a life I want: having more than enough, plenty to give and plenty to keep. I want to create a space where all are welcome. You can be sure that I am in the process of creating this type of life for myself and, of course, my husband is right there with me. Everyday is an opportunity to take another leap in the direction of my future.

Now that you’ve read all about me, who I am and what I long for my life to look like, I encourage you to go through a similar introspective time for yourself. Whether you know your purpose or you haven’t got a clue, take some time to think through who you are and what you want out of life. Then, because we’re not meant to do life alone, share this with your friends, your tribe, your community, so they can encourage you and challenge you to be your best self and go after the life you want. I can’t wait to see what you create! 

Thank you for reading.

See you next Tuesday!

Carrie

*Please note that content in guest blogs is not necessarily shared by the station manager (i.e. Wendi!)

What words can you say?

Sometimes someone says just a few words to you and it changes your perspective and energizes you and refocuses you.

My friend Linda is a pediatrician who was stationed with us in Turkey. She has amazing decorative taste and a very clean and precise home. And she did just that this past weekend.

I told her that I felt my house was really messy. I'm a very organized person, and I really have been feeling like I have just lost my ability to keep up. I felt like I had control until I started homeschooling with a Hannah in tow.

Linda told me that she thought I was doing very well for living in a house with six people and having nearly ten people for dinner every night. "I really think you're doing great!" was honestly the equivalent of a bag of chocolate and a pedicure in my heart. It truly rejuvenated me.

Of course words have to be true to really mean something. And she was being truthful. She said it wasn't as bad as I thought it was! I seriously felt so encouraged, and like I wasn't losing ground as much as I thought it was.

Just remember that the words you say to someone are incredibly powerful. YOU have the ability to make the difference in someone's lives TODAY.

What words can you say?

We Bought a Farm: I'm Not in Control

I think I want to believe I am in control. But losing half our turkeys yesterday quickly indicated to me that I'm not. We can do everything we think is right and try as hard as we can, but farming is sort of a microcosm of life in general I think. In the end, God is in control, and we aren't. And that's hard to wrap my mind around sometimes. I want to trust God and give him control, but I want to control things.

Don't we all?

I want to throw in the towel.

But I won't.

I just shake my head and say "that's a bummer" and remember that losing some turkeys pales in comparison to so many other things. My husband wasn't here when things went down yesterday, but he took it in complete stride. "Bummer" he said. What else can you say?

And in the meantime, we keep farming.

But we are, as I have mentioned previously, scaling back a bit. We always said we wanted to try some stuff here on the farm and see what is a good fit. And so we are trying to decide what things we enjoy and what things are too much and get our load here to a manageable amount. We know our sheep and laying chickens are here to stay. But we aren't sure right now about our pigs or ducks or geese.

Time will tell.

Again, back to that microcosm, aren't we all -- you and me both -- looking at our life and trying to decide what we have time for ... what is too much ... what is too hard ... what is spreading us too thin?

I thought that living a rural life would be slow, but rural doesn't automatically equal slow. You still have to be purposeful in your decisions. We don't run around as much and we don't eat out as much, but we still are busy.

And trying to find balance.

Just keepin' it real!

This makes me happy

I am a HUGE fan of the Oxford Comma, and use it religiously. Never understood why it isn't required. NOW IT IS! :) Read here for more on a lawsuit that may settle this forever!

We Bought a Farm: Wanting to Skip the Stinky Things

I want to not write Blog posts detailing the icky stories -- the ones I don't want to remember. But yet, I feel, it is important to write about the good and the bad. To keep it real. To not make things seem idyllic all the time. Because sometimes it is far from idyllic.

Today we had a big bummer occur on the farm. We had friends over with a dog. There were three dogs.  We are not sure whose dog was responsible but the turkey brooder was left open inadvertently and one of the dogs got inside and killed 2/3 of our turkeys.

It was awful. We feel awful. Everyone is sullen and frustrated. It is the nature of the farm life I suppose, but it doesn't make it less difficult. I wish I knew which dog it was because I really thought I had trained that instinct out of both of my pups. But we don't know. Not sure we will ever know. And it honestly doesn't matter.

I feel whooped. I feel like I don't want to be a farmer anymore. I feel like I just want to quit.

This'll pass. But for right now, this is keepin' it real.

I really want to throw in the towel.

So sad.

We Bought a Farm: My Saturday

Shane and Linda are in town for the weekend. It is so wonderful to see them as always. But it was also very fun because I had an opportunity to spend some girl time with Linda and a friend she introduced me to, LaShea. She is a fellow adoptive mom, and and we just hit it off online and were all able to meet today. Today, LaShea was home visiting family about an hour from here so Linda drove in and the three of us got to have a bit of girl time -- thanks to Shane who volunteered to babysit. Here is a photo of the three of us:

Today was a busy day for me because Jacob was off, my in-laws were under the weather, JB was at work, and we have a new WWOOFer that needed to be trained in. But I managed to get it all done including:

• Lunch with Linda and LaShea at Yoders
• Three animal runs -- a.m,, noon, and p.m. with new WWOOFer
• Making dinner
• Taking care of four children :)

Of course Shane and Linda helped a ton too and together we pulled it off.

I also wanted to share two pictures that I really love. Here is Abigail and Sidge who went to run some farm chores two mornings ago and had breakfast at Dunkin Donuts. I just think they look so old and grown-up here. I can't believe how fast childhood goes:

And then I took this picture today. This is so Abigail. Wearing a dress, boots on, riding her bike down the hills on our farm. She is such a combo of princess and tomboy. She is just such a precious little girl:

Erica's story

My cousin Josh has a wife named Sarah. I consider her my cousin. We are super close. Years ago, her cousin came down with bacterial meningitis. This is her story. You will want to watch this. She says she is not an inspiration, but I think she is!