What Girls Get Wrong

Some days are a breeze. Others are hard. Like today. There's a lot of stuff going on in my life right now ("Yeah yeah, Christy, join the club." I know, you all have a lot going on, too). And honestly, sometimes I get drained from it all. Like today. I came home late from work with a bad headache and a bunch of things to get done, only to have some unexpected things pop up. My to-do-list won't be finished today. Days like this, when seemingly nothing goes my way (I admit, hyperbole, but hey, that's what it feels like), I can feel like a failure. Like somehow I messed up this whole life thing (yep, cue drama queen). On those days, and honestly every day, there's a list of things that I need to remember:  1. God loves me. " But God demonstrates His own love toward us,  in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."  ~ Romans 5:8 NKJV Isn't it amazing, that our God loved us so much, He was willing to die for us? And He pa...

As an intern in a public school district, I see so many kids who just won't let it go. They've been hurt, horribly treated by monsters of humanity. They've been bullied, harassed, abused in unspeakable ways, teased mercilessly, called names, shunned, ignored. And while the people who did these things to them deserve every bit of punishment they're getting and more, these kids just won't let it go. They live their lives with a chip on their shoulder, waiting for the person who hurt them to die, get in trouble, go to jail. And instead of overcoming these issues, instead of being able to become greater than their problems and to become spectacular people in spite of the horrid things they've had to go through, they play the victim card over and over again. Their lives become a continual downward spiral of "I've been hurt, so you should give me what I want. You should treat me like I'm king/queen." But real life doesn't work that way. Because...

Let me tell you about the day, a couple of weeks ago, when I failed. Miserably failed. Failed so greatly, so completely, that if they gave out awards for failing, I'd have won grand grand grand ultra-grand prize hands down. If failing was a martial art, I'd be the master sensei of failure, on the level of failing Ooguay from Kung Fu Panda was with kung fu. I wrote the book The Zen of Failing .* I submitted a form wrong for my internship. Yeah, I'm being ridiculous (I get like that a lot). But I know I can't be the only one who does this. We beat ourselves up over the smallest thing, over and over and over. We make a tiny, teeny, ant-sized mistake (like forgetting someone's name), and we act like it's the apocalypse of failure, and we can never come back from it. And while I'm not saying we shouldn't be sorry, that mistakes are cool, we often lose sight of the fact that it's not the end of the world. And that's the case even for si...