I’ve thought about breaking up with you lately. You. The Blog. The Whole Thing. 

I’ve been known to squirm away from confrontation and I know (all too well) how to break a heart just by walking away. Never giving an explanation. Never keeping in mind that the other person–no matter what– always deserve one. 

So I am being honest with you and saying that I’ve struggled a lot with this space lately.

I’ve cringed a bit over the blog schedule I once laid out for myself like fresh new tops and skirts unfolded and paired on the bed the night before the first day of middle school.

Lately, I take one glance at the white space before me, think that I cannot fill it to justice, and shirk away to do some other task.

I love this blog more than anything. I’d gladly sit anyone down who is fumbling with a domain name or the question of actually starting a blog, just to say Do It. I’d grab them by the shoulders, regardless if they were a pair of shoulders I’d known for years or not, and tell them that if they have something to say, something to write, then now is the time. Don’t wait. Just start.

In two years, this little crook of the internet has opened up 1,001 doors for me. Not just in the outside world but in my very own heart. She (because I do believe my blog is a lady) has let me use her corners & her angles, her texts & her headers, to grapple with feelings and spill endless concoctions of confusion all over her pure white space. I’ll be forever grateful for that.

I realize it sounds like I am going through with this break up. Like I’ve taken this little blog of mine out to dinner, told her to dress up beforehand, and then dropped something down on her like, “We cannot do this anymore. It’s not you, it’s me.”

But it stings to know that this blog can so easily force me into perfectionism, lead me to believe that I need similes with silk straight hair & metaphors with well-groomed moustaches to come out here and perform for you. And really, I have no desire to be a performer. All I want to do is be a Liver. A Lover. A Planter. A Sower.

I’ve always promised myself that I would not use this blog to talk about me or my life but people, there is excitement brewing all over the place and I want so badly to share it with you. Over cups of tea. Over long runs. Over this space if it is the only place we can find one another.

I’m bursting at the seams to tell you that I am humbled to my knees & core each day by how powerful God has proven He can be when you’ve got a dream and a vision and you give it willingly to Him.

I am practically squirming to share here that I am sleeping in my running sneakers almost every night to catapult from my slumber at 4:45am to get to the gym. A treadmill and some barbells wait for me. I want to talk endlessly about my training for a Tough Mudder, how determined I am to run and finish this deathly obstacle course in May. How I am learning to test my endurance but I am dedicating my every step to a boy who taught me the meaning behind enduring as he so valiantly fought a cancer that couldn’t beat him.

I want to come here every single day, even if I don’t have an alliteration to tango with, and ask you the very same thing that I wrote in the last blog post: This life requires that we be bold. Fierce. And, if you see none of that in your own life, what are you doing wrong? Where are you not taking a risk? Where are you walking when you should be leaping?

I just came out a serious three weeks of “Run Down, I’m Tired, Wah-Wah-Wah, I Want To Complain All Day” mayhem.

I emerged. I stared in front of the mirror. And I asked myself, “Who the heck are you? You are not this girl.”

You are a grateful girl. A blessed girl. A girl who needs to hold her chin higher. A girl who has the world at her fingertips but will watch it get sucked away if she cannot stop focusing on the negativity. The Must Do’s and the Should Do’s. 

I came out of all of that when I decided that I would be as bold as life needed me to be, fiercer than I thought I could be.

Yesterday, my boss at work told me I should write a blog post on my latest decision: to wear red lipstick just because it is completely and utterly fabulous. & Bold. So Bold. (I’ve been literally having the greatest shindig of my life wearing this Very Cherry lipstick).

I told her I don’t write about myself. I keep “Me,” the girl with red lipstick, out the blog.  And then it all hit me…

Maybe it is time to share some stories. Maybe it is time to give you a glimpse of what is really going on in the life of a girl who is wearing bright red lipstick, hurling herself into mud pits on a daily basis, learning to nurse a heart that aches and breaks for all the humanity around her while fueling a love letter movement that is healing broken spots and breaking boundaries with every new day.

Maybe it is time to introduce you to her. That girl. Maybe she’s not perfect but she’s bold & she’s trying. And finally…. finally…. She’s got a deep joy webbing within her soul.