Sharpen your listening skills...gain some clarity :)

A year ago at this same time, someone very special gave me a gift for my birthday, a book called "Wild at Heart" by John Eldredge. I mentioned in a previous post my habit of buying and receiving wonderful books and just shelving them until I "have time" to read them...and although I have been doing a surprisingly great job of overcoming that old habit of mine (along with several others), I hadn't yet dug into this book. Over the past year I have seen this book everywhere - on my father's bookshelf, in friend's homes, office waiting rooms, heard it mentioned in random conversations, etc...it is almost like God has been trying to get my attention for a year now and get this stubborn girl to finally read the message of "Wild at Heart."

I don't want this post to come off as a push to get you to buy this book or even to read it if you aren't already so inclined. What I do want to get across in sharing this with you is the long awaited lesson I learned - God does speak to us even in this modern day and age - all you have to do is be receptive and listen. So, it appears there is a reason I decided to pick up this book when I did - I was finally at a point in my life where I was able and willing to be still, open my heart, my mind and to just listen.

I'm fairly certain that if I had actually read this book a year ago when it was given to me, the message might not have come across as clearly or I might not have listened to it at all. God speaks to each of us in different ways - and He spoke directly to me through the pages of this book. Just by being open and willing to listen to someone other than myself and my own (often flawed) reasoning, I was able to receive very direct answers to some personal questions I had been dealing with; not to mention how much weight was lifted from my shoulders. The best part though, is He gave me peace and a smile in my soul. I could not ask for better gifts this Christmas. Brooklyn is back ladies and gentlemen. :)

What unanswered questions or desires do you have? Ask God those questions. Share with Him your hurts, your confusions, and your worries. Carrying those uncertainties all by your lonesome is a neverending and uphill battle. So do yourself a big favor -take a moment to just be still and actually listen. He will provide you with your answers...just remember His answers will come in His time not yours - so you may have to put on your patient pants and rest easy knowing that He will give you exactly what you need when you need it.


Much love,
Brooklyn

Click my title link above - I stumbled across this Coffey video today...after creating this post - pretty cool. :)

Ahhhh I love this!

I fly like paper, get high like planes...

Wow. I wrote this about 5 or 6 months ago, somehow stumbled across it today and...well, I don't believe in coincidences, so I felt compelled to share this since it seems to relate so directly to my previous blog. A couple of my girlfriends and I had "freewrites" not too long ago that we did as a dorky thing, just the three of us. We'd pick song lyrics for each other and then spill our guts about what that lyric meant to us. Sometimes our freewrites were downright hilarious and sometimes they were pretty insightful and creative. I was assigned the following lyric from an MIA song...and here is what I came up with...

"I fly like paper, get high like planes"

from MIA "Paper Planes"

First, I want you to picture a paper airplane – the clean folded lines, how it glides through the air effortlessly and in the exact direction you aim it…the beginning launch always appears as a successful flight and then BOOM! Unexpectedly the damn thing takes a 90 degree nose dive straight to the floor. That seemingly perfect paper airplane has, in less than two seconds, become a bent and disheveled piece of origami with no hopes of ever flying as straight as it did on its first flight….
Ahhh yes…I can relate to that little paper airplane. My life has thus far, and I imagine will continue to be, a series of attempted solo paper airplane flights that always end the same way – crash and burn. I think I have folded my plane just perfectly, cleared an unobstructed flight path, and am ready for almost guaranteed success. For some reason, I am always surprised when my solo endeavors continue to end in what I used to view as failure. For the purposes of this little writing exercise, I’d like to refer to my mistakes as “crashes”. My perspective on these crashes is much more appreciative now than ever before and also now that I have been through so many, I am becoming somewhat of an aficionado at “disaster recovery” (HA!). These wrecks, although initially devastating and confusing, are always salvageable – IF you allow yourself to learn from them. It is a difficult thing to do to 1) admit how wrong you were and how badly you screwed up and then 2) to really be able to see the silver lining – to understand the lesson you were meant to learn even before you started folding up that little paper plane.
The silver lining – I could write all day about this little cliché but I will save that for another time – is what life is all about. The silver lining is what makes the last half of this song lyric make sense to me – lessons learned and all the good things that follow your “crashes” are what help you continue to grow as a person, truly appreciate life as the gift that it is and essentially take flight, not on your own, but with your friends, family, and God by your side helping you fly your plane through what no doubt will be a stormy sky at times. So recover from your crash and burns, fly straight through the storms, and always look forward to the next beautiful sunrise on the horizon.

Much love,

Brooklyn

GO POKES!!! BEAT TEXAS TECH!!!

Crash and burn...well isn't that the way it always goes? :)

My dad has told me more times than I can count this phrase, "The only thing certain in this life is change." Well, despite the fact that my dad attended the University of Oklahoma, I must say he is a very very wise man. :) It's true - just when you think you have your path in life figured out, you are on the right track and moving forward full steam ahead...something will happen that will most certainly attempt to derail your progress and your personal growth - spiritually, emotionally, whatever it is...life is a constant series of ups and downs. Simple as that.

But what if you always knew what to expect and really could plan your own life out to the tee? How boring would that be if you knew what to expect everyday? If you knew how every friendship or every relationship would turn out? It is easy to be pissed about the constant ups and downs when you are in a slight or even not-so-slight downturn if you will...and even easier to be giddy and thankful for the turbulence when you are on the roller coaster ride on the way up ...the key is finding joy and blessings in both scenarios.

Realize what it is you are supposed to be learning about yourself and those around you during periods of difficulty and frustration. God doesn't "close a door and open a window" for us as the popular old saying goes...I would argue that it is absolutely the other way around. He closes windows (cause who can comfortably crawl through a window to begin with?) and opens up doors for us that bring much larger, greater possibilities and opportunities than we could ever have planned for or imagined on our own. Look for your door, open it and walk right through it! Its much easier than crawling through a darn window. :)

And when you are reaping the joys of being "on top of the world" don't be selfish with your happiness - share your prosperity, your love, your time, your knowledge, your friendship, whatever...with those who may not be as fortunate as you at that moment in their lives.

This life is a wonderful gift and we only get one shot at it, so choose to be your best you at all times. You are a great idea because you were God's idea to begin with. And your time here is not meant to be squandered on self-pity, worry, stress, anger, jealousy, mistrust...let it go and laugh!

Click the title link above - not only is it a great laugh, but is an even better reminder that laughter is always present, even when we fall down. Quite literally in my friend's case. HA!

In Him,

Brooklyn

Too funny not to share as well - my dad's other famous phrase that he has loved to share with my girlfriends and me over the years...

"Boys are like socks; change 'em often."

the Augusteum and...me?

I love books. I love buying books, I love reading books, I love spending hours in bookstores...I am a true book nerd and I always have been. I used to read like 4 or 5 books at a time in elementary school and always won the class award for most books read or whatever...lame I know, but my momma sure was proud. :)So as a result of this book obsession of mine, I always end up with far more books on my shelves at home that I haven't even opened than those that I have actually read. (I should also mention how much I love to travel and in particular, how badly I have always wanted to go to Italy...but I'll get to that...)The A.D.D. child within me makes it difficult to choose which book to read out of my wide selection...but for some reason, a couple weeks ago, this one particular book which I bought like 8 months ago, caught my eye.

The book is called "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. Every word of the first few chapters spoke directly to me...and quite loudly might I add. It wasn't until a few weeks later that I realized why I had read those words - they were preparing me to deal with a very abrupt change in my life...and when that change hit, and had a few hours to settle in, the message I had read - a part of Gilbert's book that I thought was just so beautifully and purposefully written - came flooding back to me and became so significant to me. (here is where the "travel and Italy" part that I mentioned above falls into synch with this message I have been rambling on about...)

I hope you appreciate Ms. Gilbert's talent as well as her message as she describes her visit to the Augusteum in Rome, Italy.

excerpt from "Eat, Pray, Love" Chapter 25

"On my way back home I take a little detour and stop at the address in Rome I find most strangely affecting - the Augusteum. This big, round, ruined pile of brick started life as a glorious mausoleum, built by Octavian Augustus to house his remains and the remains of his family for all of eternity. It must have been impossible for the emperor to have imagined at the time that Rome would ever be anything but a mighty Augustus-worshipping empire. How could he possibly have foreseen the collapse of the realm? Or known that, with all the aqueducts destroyed by barbarians and with the great roads left in ruin, the city would empty of citizens, and it would take almost twenty centuries before Rome ever recovered the population she had boasted during her height of glory?
Augustus's mausoleum fell to ruins and thieves during the Dark Ages. Somebody stole the emperor's ashes - no telling who. By the twelfth century, though, the monument had been renovated into a fortress for the powerful Colonna family, to protect them from assaults by various warring princes. Then the Augusteum was transformed somehow into a vineyard, then a Renaissance garden, then a bullring (we're in the eighteenth century now), then a fireworks depository, then a concert hall. In the 1930s, Mussolini seized the property and restored it down to its classical foundations, so that it could someday be the final resting place for his remains. (Again, it must have been impossible back then to imagine that Rome could ever be anything but a Mussolini-worshipping empire.) Of course, Mussolini's fascist dream did not last, nor did he get the imperial burial he'd anticipated.
I find the endurance of the Augusteum so reassuring, that this structure has had such an erratic career, yet always adjusted to the particular wildness of the times. To me, the Augusteum is like a person who's led a totally crazy life - who maybe started out as a housewife, then unexpectedly became a widow, then took up fan-dancing to make money, ended up somehow as the first female dentist in outer space, and then tried her hand at national politics - yet who has managed to hold an intact sense of herself throughout every upheaval.
I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us that nobody could have anticipated. The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough - but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation."