It's Okay (To Not Be Okay)

Hey there.

Hey you.

The girl sitting next to me whose name I don't know.  The boy across the lunch room who sits alone.

You.

My best friend, my worst enemy, my favorite teacher, my brother, my cousin, my fellow human.

Listen.

It's okay.
It's okay to not be okay.

Guess what?
None of us are.

Listen.

Stop.
Stop trying to fill your life with things and people that will never fill your heart.
Stop trying to please everyone.
Stop pretending like everything's okay.

I, Anna Potter, fallen, broken, sinful, crazy, weird, wonderful human being, declare that I am not okay.

Did you hear me or should I say it again?
I AM NOT OKAY.

And that's okay.

Why?

Because I have a God who IS okay.  Quite okay.  Infinitely and eternally MORE than okay.

And He is here, working in my not-okay-ness, creating a better-okay, and stronger-okay, a wiser-okay for me.

Even if you've heard this a million times, please would you just stop for a second and believe it this time?

You are not okay.
You are in need.
You are valuable.
You are precious.
You deserve to be full.
You deserve to be loved.

And if you don't believe my words, believe these:

"I loved you at your darkest."

Romans 5:8

"When I said, 'My foot is slipping', Your love, oh Lord, supported me. When anxiety was great within me, Your consolation brought joy to my soul."

Psalm 38:16

"So do not fear, for I am with you,

Do not be dismayed,

For I am your God.

I will strengthen you and help you;

I will uphold you with my righteous hand."

Isaiah 41:10

You.

All of you.

It's okay.

...Love, Anna...

Why We Hate Silence

Last night I received the somewhat harsh and all-too rare gift of pure, unadulterated
silence.

I was babysitting and I hadn't thought to bring a book to read for after I put the kids to bed.  So I sat down on the couch and was faced with quiet like I hadn't experienced in a very, very long time.

It wasn't the library kind of quiet or even the home alone kind of quiet.

This was still, deafening, ringing, silence.

It's a pretty severe punishment to be alone in such quiet.  Alone with only yourself and your thoughts.

I could have easily found something to do to occupy my time, but I didn't.  I just sat in the face of silence for almost an entire hour.

Why do we hate silence?

It's because when we're not busy filling up our lives with noise and distractions, we have to actually think about our lives, about ourselves.  And that makes us uncomfortable, squeamish, and sad.

We fill our minds with things to think about, our ears with music and conversation, and our hands never idle, always doing something.

But what would happen if we stopped and faced our silence?

What's so scary?

I think the answer to that more often than not is simply, ourselves.

Silence is the most severe and unwanted mirror of who we are when we're not in our usual business.

And if we sit too long in quiet, we start feeling like we need to be doing something else.  We start fidgeting.  We start filling up that silence with all of our noise.

But I propose that we spend a few minutes a day in silence.  That we face its reflection.

Because the more we learn to be quiet, the more we love ourselves in the busy and in the silence, the more we stop to think, maybe even be a little afraid, the more we'll know to listen.  To appreciate. To hope for.  To see beauty.  To be full.

It's okay to be quiet for a while.
It's okay to be afraid of it.

But if God commands us to "be still",
then,
let's be still.

...Love, Anna...

Take a Breath

I drafted at least four different posts for this week, but I haven't finished any of them and didn't really feel like any were the "right" ones to post.

Oh well, I usually do better if I'm "winging it" anyway.

I guess I just have this fear that eventually I'll just run out of good things to say.  Maybe I will.  But not right now.

I think today I'm just going to stop by and say that I am truly feeling full.  It's not because my life is perfect or because I'm happy all the time.

I just am, full.

Full of God's ability to prove me wrong.  Every time I think I'm right.

Full of God's ability to work through pain.  Every time I want to run away from Him.

Full of God's love.  Not just for me.  Not just in my life.  In every person I've ever come in contact with.

Full of God's peace.  Peace that holds me steady in the swarming chaos of my mind, my heart, and my world.

Full of God's hope.  In the snow, in the cold, in the sun, in the gray clouds.

Full of God's people.  In me and around me.  People who love me when I least deserve it, people who love me despite all of my shenanigans.  Family and friends who never cease to give me pieces of their hearts.  People who have made me who I am.

Full of God's music.  Melodies of words and sounds and beauty, everywhere and everyday of my life.  Proving to me constantly that You are here with me.

Maybe this is all just a jumbled mess of sentimentality to you.  But something in me just needed to put it all "out there" today.

To take a moment, to breathe, to be still.
To be full.

So thank you, LORD.
For Your full and fulfilling love and for filling my heart and my life with it.

...Love, Anna...

The Birds Sing in February

You know what's the worst?

Not knowing what to write about.

Yup.

I have a sad case of the writer's blues (and I'm blaming February - the worst and coldest month of the year).

But I thought, I ought to write SOMETHING this week for all you die-hard fans out there (it's a joke, so laugh, please).

So I sat down on Sunday whilst my Mom was tediously arranging our antennas (yes, antennas...WITH tin foil) on top of the TV in futile attempts to find NBC so we could watch the Winter Olympics.

Naturally, no divine inspiration struck me as I watched my Mom struggled with our giant rabbit ears.

So that leaves me here.  Tuesday night.  Avoiding my Chemistry homework and stuck still with no inspiration.

Then I had a thought. (Bear with me, I'm sort of winging this). The other morning I seriously heard a bird singing.  Not kidding.  I heard a BIRD SINGING in FEBRUARY.

What.

If A BIRD can sing early on a frigid February morning, long before I would want to be conscious, and long before even the first glimpse of spring, then why can't I write?  Why can't I be inspired?

Man did that bird make me feel pathetic.  Here I am all like "it's February, so I just need to put my head down and plow through", and here the bird is all like "I'm gonna sing despite the cold and the snow and all these lovely sleeping humans".

Because what is inspiration really?  It's just a way of looking at things.  The bird saw the new morning as a reason to sing.  And I saw it as just another freezing day of February.

What can we learn from this tiny singing creature?

Maybe that we should sing a little more, too.  Stop hibernating deeper and deeper into ourselves just because we don't like the world outside.  Maybe we should see things the way the bird does-
new,
bright,
hopeful,
and worth singing about.

...Love, Anna...

Are You Immune?

This week I had a realization that hit me kind of hard.

I was talking with a friend about the "high school culture".  Mostly about high school dating but also about the way most high schoolers talk and dress.

And as we were talking, I realized how immune I've become to a lot of things that maybe I shouldn't be immune to.

This got me thinking.

How much of our world's society are we SO immune to that we don't even find it troubling anymore.

How many times have we seen magazines like this:

Or posters like this:

And passed them by without a second thought as to how harmful they actually are?

I mean, how many times do we laugh when a character unexpectedly drops the "f bomb" in movies.  And how are we okay with watching shows where all the characters are having sex with people they barely know?  It's so much more common than we realize. 

It's so easy to pass these things off as "just how the world is now".  But just for one moment, shouldn't we stop and think about what we're putting into our minds?  Even if it's unintentional, like the magazines at the grocery store check out, shouldn't we take a minute to truly realize what these things mean?

I think it's easy for us to justify not caring because, well, WE don't do those things.  We aren't wearing those clothes, saying those words, or having sex with random strangers.  So it's okay for us to sit back and be entertained by the spectacle of our fallen world.  

"Alright Anna, we get your point.  But what are we supposed to DO about it?"

You got me there.

I don't know, honestly.  I'm not saying we should stop going to the grocery store or the mall for fear of seeing things we shouldn't see.  I'm not saying we should stop watching TV, reading magazines, or listening to mainstream music.  I'm not saying we should shut out the world by any means.

I think what I'm really trying to say is that we should be a little more troubled by it, a little less blind to it, a little less immune to the world.  

Maybe next time we see a magazine exploiting women or libeling someone, we should just stop for a minute.  Maybe pray.  For that person, or for our world, or for the LORD's presence to be known. 

Maybe we should have sympathy for people like Lindsay Lohan or Miley Cyrus, instead of making fun of them.

Maybe we should mute the commercials that sell only sin.

Maybe we should just be a little more "on our guards".  More aware.  Less immune.

Now, there haven't been too many occasions where I've spewed my opinions out for all to see on my blog.  And I was a bit afraid to post this, knowing that it's not something people are going to want to hear, since it's something we're all guilty of.

And before you start thinking I'm a hypocrite, let me be the first to say that I am extremely guilty of all of this.  I have become frighteningly immune, and this post is as much for myself as it is for anyone else.  

I hope that this strikes a chord with some of you as much as it did for me.  

Alright, I promise I am done "speechifying" you.  

...Love, Anna...

"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things."

Philippians 4:8