Thanksgiving at the Circus..no really.

Thanksgiving with the Smith Fam part 2. Thanksgiving's didn't change too much from those first few years. Everything from the speeches, clothes, and Grandpa Smith fishing for compliments on his dressing. I forgot to add that part last time, you could guarantee Grandpa was wanting to know exactly what he thought about the stuffing. He knew it was good, he just wanted to affirmation...funny, I must have inherited that trait. I cooked a big dinner last week, and kept trying to figure out what people thought of it lol. Anyway, sad to say, Grandpa passed away in February 2003. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around I think it was a unanimous decision to do something different for Thanksgiving. So, we did what any family would do. We went to the Shriners Circus in Evansville for Thanksgiving.  Most would assume that we did something different because of my Grandpa's passing, but I think it had more to do with Grandma thinking we all belonged IN the circus. A compromise had to be made. We ate at a Golden Corral (product place!) and it was delicious according to my 8 year old memory. Afterward we went to the circus! The whole family enjoyed it! I have to admit it was where we belonged! It was a great year! :)

Thanksgiving With The Smith Fam

It's the (second) most wonderful time of the year; Thanksgiving! It's the absolute perfect day where families dress up adorable, eat a picture perfect turkey, play football in the yard, watch the parade, go around saying what they are thankful for, and have a wonderful time with, including in-laws, the whole famdamily! Wait, I'm pretty sure that was a hall-mark movie. While Thanksgiving's were great growing up, we were far from hall-mark. I'm pretty sure we would have ended up in the comedy genre...or a TLC reality show where the views hashtag some thing like; smithsarecrazy. Before you get the wrong idea, I love Thanksgiving in my family, God knew which bunch of nuts I belonged in. Until that wonderful Thursday I will be sharing some of my Thanksgiving memories, I hope you enjoy them as much as I like sharing them!

1995-early 2000's
Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house  funeral home we go! Yes, funeral home. Grandma and Grandpa Smith live in the upstairs apartment of Queen Lee funeral home. The apartment is decorated with antiques, so I've already gotten the "no running" speech. I must have heard it 27 times since I've been here a whole 2 minutes! To this day I can hear all the adults saying "don't break that lamp!". Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's was always a blast. Cousins, the parade, and lot's of food. Dad, my uncle, and cousins usually went deer hunting so we would hear lots of stories about the hunt. One time Dad even got a deer before he was in the woods, he hit it on HWY 231. ;) We would also have company from "up north" sometimes. (That means anywhere North of Bloomington), and since they were there, you could be sure that there would be a "be on your best behavior speech". Then, of course, there would be lots and lots of food! A good time was had by all. Us grand-daughters would play, watch the parade. and get loaded up on sugar. I can gaurantee you that we were dressed up too. Mom had this thing about making sure we were dressed up, and matching..and that included those God forsaken tights, or lacy socks. It was good though. I am thankful for our crazy earlychildhood Thanksgiving dinners. Through all the crazyness there was love, and I would give anything to go back to a Thanksgiving dinner with Grandpa Smith...I would just be sure to dress how I wanted, haha!

This wasn't much in story form, but I hope you enjoyed it! More to come!!

Long time no blog: and a story.

Well, I fell into the trap of business again and let the blog suffer. Please know, it was not intentional. In fact there have been nights where it's bothered me so bad, that I couldn't sleep. I know, that sounds way overdramatic but hear me out. It's not so much the blog aspect of things, it's the "I started something and didn't finish" that is driving me insane! I am, however, pausing a little bit of the focus of true beauty I was on. I will be open and vulnerable with you, I have had some stuff going on lately, and don't know how effective my writing will be. I do want to share something with you, and get some feedback:

What's something you do to glorify God that isn't traditional? I have been dieting and working out for months, and I had to get to a place of This is for God before I started seeing results. Now, I wish I could say that I stuck to that motto the whole time, but even I get distracted by the opposite sex and do things for the wrong motives. Recently, on top of other things, that hit me like a ton of bricks. I gave it back to God, and I am slowly but surely seeing results again. I want to eat healthy for myself yes, but more importantly I want to be healthy for God. My body is a temple, and an instrument used by God. I want to be fit and strong for the same reasons. My heart is in third-world countries right now, and I want my body to be fit as possible to better serve. Since I am so passionate about this, and have grown closer to God in it, I am also attacked for it. Days I don't work out, the devil often torments my mind, and of course, I tell him where to get off. I often struggle with guilt for eating, but something I have realized lately, is God created food! He even created it before the fall, it was intended to be good and not sinful. Even looking in the Bible, people entertained with food! He created it, and it is good! Cheat sometimes, it's ok.Don't let satan have authority over what you eat. Let me tell you, we are humans, and I shamelessly ate a lot of ice cream last night. (Carb smart, of course ;p) lol but in all reality, nutrition facts should have nothing to do with it. It's your attitude about it. I can eat all the healthy food I want, and if I'm still putting that food before Christ, it's a sin. I still struggle with it sometimes, I'm a girl and sometimes there's not enough chocolate for the day! I have made the personal choice to eat a restricted diet, but that doesn't mean it has to be that way for everyone. It's what's best for me, and some of my health problems. I try to eat healthy though for God, and myself. It doesn't matter what everyone else thinks. As far as exercising goes, I love it. I have to watch myself with that too, I ended up hurting my back a while back. All things are good in moderation. While exercising is great for my body, and another way I glorify God, I have to be careful with it. If I hurt myself and don't give myself a break, I'm not benefiting that temple at all. I am still an avid fan of "no pain, no gain" though. Discipline, and hard work is good for the body, soul, and mind.
So to answer the question I started out with: I plank to glorify God. I often pray through it, or do it when I feel I need to get over something. The other night I felt I needed to keep going, and I made it 16 minutes, and 10 seconds. That was not me at all, and when I finished I laid in the floor about to cry of joy and thanked Jesus. It's something that God, and I like to do together. =)

That's all for now folks, see you again soon!

Coming soon!

Hey y'all! This month has been crazy busy! I am planning on continuing with my blog series as soon as possible. Hopefully this weekend! Stay tuned!

True Beauty: More detail from Part 1. Don't hide!

First of all, thank you so much for all of the feedback from my first blog! It meant a lot to hear from you!

Shorter entry today, but it came to me during my prayer time this morning.

Last Friday I was in a very introverted mood. I am a major extrovert so times when I need to be alone are few and far between. I watched my favorite movie these days, "10 Things I Hate about You" and fell asleep but I woke up just as the movie was fixin to end and the most romantic part takes place. I cried, I laughed, and then the thoughts of "I want one" were flooding my mind..but that's beside the point. I didn't have much time to think about it because my awesome roomie came and sat on my bed and read me some of the book Captivating. (We interupt this blog briefly for a public service announcement. Every woman, please must read Captivating. It will change your life) She came to a section that talked about hiding. I touched on this last time, but I want to go more into detail on it. As I listened to what she was reading my eyes watered, and then the tears came rolling gently down my face. It hit me. I have spent most of my life hiding. I sat on my bed crying as my friend put her arm around me and prayed. I came to terms with the fact that this was a stronghold and I needed to let it go.
 Women spend most of their lives hiding. I can name of at least a dozen amazing girls off the top of my head that hide. Why do we do it? The crazy thing is, it's not always hiding from something bad. The majority of the time we are hiding from the women we are called to be. We have gifts, talents, and beauty but often lack the confidence to show it.We don't even realize it about ourselves so we resort to hiding. The biggest things we hide behind is words. I can't,  I am too busy, That's not for me, You get the picture. We also hide from physical things. Movies, books, work, food, sleep, make-up, clothes, men, etc. We are afraid to show our true selves because of what the world is telling us. It's time to stop. God has a plan for you. I can't stress this enough, we are made in His image. As women we have a job that only we can do, and we can't spend time hiding behind our insecurities. It's not hide and seek. If we keep hiding, there's not a gaurentee that someone is going to find you. Jesus has already found you, and he's waiting for you to come out. Use your gifts, grow your talents, and show your beauty confidently. Be secure in who you are. It breaks my heart to see people hiding from the beautiful person they are.

True Beauty: Part 1

Femininity and beauty is a topic that has been on my mind lately. I will probably have to break it up into several different blogs, but today I wanted to start sharing my thoughts starting with my background.

I was raised in a family of all girls, so naturally I grew up with people expecting me to act like a lady. That's the first mistake. What exactly does "act like a lady" mean? The keyword in that sentence being "act". I was a tomboy, so this acting didn't always come east to me. I prefered mud, fishing, and camo over sparkles, playing princess, and pink. In all honesty I despised pink. I associated it with girly things, and girly girls wern't interested in playing FBI with me so yeah, you get it. I went through a stage of army camo, and never doing much with my apperance. I wasn't what you'd consider ladylike on the outside. My mom, bless her heart, really didn't enjoy this stage. She wanted me back in frilly dresses, even though I pitched a royal fit everytime she forced me into one. (It was quite humorous, actually.) The truth though, I was confident. It wasn't until people implied that I shouldn't be that way that I started struggling with insecurity. Then the memories of being called fat and ugly were starting to hurt for the first time. I wanted so bad to be pretty, When people told me I was pretty, I was so convinced that they didn't mean it.

I was for sure a girl, I had the raging hormones that came with it. Romance books, movies, and weddings, that was my interests. On the outside I was a 13 year old who didn't know how to fix her hair, and make up was a forgein concept. (I wore ribbons though) Not to mention, I was overweight. My friends began to have boys show interest in them, and I became convinced that since I didn't have that interest from the opposite sex I was an ugly fat girl. You can imagine what this brought on, constant trying to improve myself. I was glad I started to care more about how I looked, but I was still so unconfident with my body, self, and face. This lasted up until late teens and grew into negative self talk/no confidence, then grew to depression, then grew to eating, which then I grew! Then the viscious cycle started all over again. I would constantly change hair styles, try diets, and hide. I hid behind food, romantic books and movies, other people, t-shirts and jeans (disclaimer..nothing wrong with t-shirts and jeans. Every southern girl thanks God for them.), and as much as I hate to admit it I got into some secret sins that did nothing but create more bondage. I was a wreck. Now I am going to bring it back to the top, I felt like I had to "act" lady like. The sad fact though, it didn't work. I was ashamed. Even up to a year ago I was being told "You need to be more feminine. You need to try harder. You need to watch what you eat"  I thought the only way for me to be a feminine young lady was to be girly. That's not who I was. As time progressed it dawned on me that I was a lady. The inside was what made me a lady. I was created with a gentle heart, I am wired like every other woman, I desire love, I want to be wanted, I was made in God's image and carry an aspect of His beauty. Being a lady is a matter of the heart, and once I became comfortable with that confidence starting coming out. I know who I am in Christ. I feel beauty because I am made in the image of the most beautiful thing in all of the universe. The thought of that leads me to want to take care of my body, present myself well, and show love and grace to everyone. I feel as if though God has really captured my heart, and whispers to it what he expects of me, and what he thinks of me. Let me tell you, it is so much better than what the world screams at me. I enjoy dressing more feminine now that I am more confident of who I am, I enjoy doing things with the girls, and I can still be Leah. I can still frog gig, hunt, fish, drive a truck, wear camo, and be beautiful because being a lady goes beyond appearance.

.fem·i·nin·i·ty

ˌfeməˈninədē/

noun

1. the quality of being female; womanliness.

   
   

   
   

   synonyms:

   womanliness, feminineness, womanly qualities, feminine qualities "she was a woman truly comfortable with her femininity"

 I thank God that he made me to be a girl. We really do have more fun. ;)