Hi friends!

So how narcissistic does the title of my post sound? Pretty much, huh?

We live in a culture that is constantly showing us what we need, should want, what our lives should look like, what shape our bodies should be, how we should wife and mother, etc. Media knows how to pull at those emotions and if we are not careful to guard our hearts we can easily be sucked into the comparison game which leads to a nasty black hole of discontentment. This comes from a daily battle within myself, I often struggle with this from various angles.

So I am celebrating 30 things I love about myself since I am turning 30 in a just a short couple of days!

“Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.” Proverbs 4:23

Rarely does media to encourage us to celebrate who we already are. What makes us tick, what inspires us each day, what parts of us that makes us feel good about ourselves.

For the most part media wants us to change, to create within us a need buy their product, the next best thing so we can finally feel like we fit in with the world or we are “enough” by their standards instead of our own.

But, today I encourage to look at yourself, look in the mirror, look around your home, work, your life and see all the goodness that is there around and inside you.

So what do I love about myself:

My body:

1. My hair. I love my natural hair color, even my grey hair (on most days!) Y’all I used to be bleached blonde in high school, when clearly I didn’t make the best decisions. Then I went through a super dark brown almost black phase. But those were never really me. Now, it’s been years since any color has touched my hair. I used to cover my grey up, but when I became pregnant I worried about the chemicals so now I just embrace them. They are part of me.
2. My toes! How weird is that! I have short stumpy little toes, and I love them.
3. My eyes. I have my daddy’s eyes. They are hazel and change colors when I wear blue or green, or darker colors.
4. My small chest. I seriously battled with this for years, I mean what flat chested teenage girl doesn’t want some kind of something up top. I also went through a long stint of seriously considering a plastic surgery, but there was always a small voice that told me I was perfect the way I was. (I’m not bashing anyone who has gotten work done! I get it, trust me! If it made you feel better about yourself, then that’s awesome!
5. My abs. I remember doing crunches religiously in high school, and always feeling good in a swimming suit. Here lately, however, even though I still workout consistently I had been feeling a lot less toned which led to the decision to cut out all refined sugar. I quit cold turkey. It’s been over a month now, and I feel SO much better, toning is coming back all from one small change! Whoop!

My Heart:

1. My ethics and desire to buy as many fair trade products (that we actually need!) as I can (from coffee to a new laundry hamper.) I love that my eyes are open to the fair trade concept, and that I am pursuing companies and products that fall in line with my personal ethics.
2. My heart flutters and butterflies for Kason. I still get that anxious teenage girl crushing on the cutest boy in school feeling when I know Kason is on his way home.
3. My conviction to help the homeless when I see them. I honestly don’t always help someone out, especially when I’m alone with Kerrington, but I certainly have a much softer heart when I see those in need than I once did.
4. My change in perspective of becoming a mama! I can’t believe I fought it for so long!
5. My desire to continue to grow in the Word and my relationship with Jesus!

My Marriage: You can read a previous post what I love about being married HERE!

1. My servant spirit towards Kason (most of the time!) Whether it’s getting his clothes ready for work, cooking for him, or tending to his needs, I enjoy serving him.
2. My comfort in my own skin. Kason constantly tells me how beautiful I am, and how he loves to look at me. While I can easily take this for granted, I am so grateful for his kind words.
3. My respect for Kason. When we get aggravated or upset, we never raise our voice to each other. I never “vent” to anyone about issues we have in our marriage.
4. Our prayer life. We have become so accustomed to praying together that often times, one of just needs to lay our hands on the other’s to know a few minutes of prayer is needed.
5. Our teamwork. In business, in parenting, in projects. We enjoying working together.

Motherhood:

1. The way I mother Kerrington. Not sure how to explain this. 🙂
2. My communication with her. I love that I talk to Kerrington like she’s an adult, and I always have. Because of that she has what seems to be an extensive vocabulary (perhaps I’m biased, but I don’t keep up with what she should be doing, so I honestly don’t know how much other 2 years old talk!) I also don’t shy away from “big words,” for example when teaching her we need to be still when we pray, we use reverent and respect and explain to her what those words mean.
3. My ability to take the time for explanations. I love that I have always explained to her what I am doing while she watches, and now as she helps me. I also explain why I do certain things while teaching what I am doing. For example, “Mommy is washing the strawberries because we need to wash the fruits and vegetables before we eat them to clean them off from being in the dirt,” or, “mommy needs to crack the eggs (myself) because they are raw, and we can’t play with them or eat them while they are raw because they can make our tummy hurt before they are cooked, but you can hand them to me (she wanted to crack some eggs one morning and mix them herself).”
4. My imperfectionism. I love that messes or accidents don’t freak me out. Goodness, I remember the first couple of times Kerrington spilled something and specifically when she was playing with Kason’s keys; she dropped them a certain way and the key pad broke open. She came immediately to me and clung to me for dear life. She didn’t cry, she just literally was stuck to me like glue. Once I figured out what happened I comforted her, and we fixed it together.
5. I love that I have always been protective about what we and others say in front of her about her. K and I were both adamant when she was a baby to never use words like “piggy”, “big”, or “chunky monkey” if she ate a lot. I know this seems super ridiculous to most because it seems harmless to talk about a teeny baby “who can’t understand” what anyone is saying, but I refused to believe that. I feel like she did understand, and being a girl I do not want to ever make comments that could potentially resurface later in pre-teen years about a poor body image.
6. I love that we have taught Kerrington to put her own toys up in the evening. Since she was old enough to actually “play” (about 6 months or so when she could sit up) at bedtime she would sit there and watch us pick her toys up and put them away in the little basket. I wanted her to learn that there wasn’t a magic fairy that flew through the house after everyone was asleep and picked up after everyone. We made a point to teach her early on that before bed toys were picked up. By her first birthday she was picking her toys up herself and pushing the basket up against the wall. Let’s get real though, some nights she does not want to put them away, and there has been some discipline due to a few tantrums, but most nights if we say, “let’s do it together” she complies after kissing and hugging all her babies. 🙂

My Home and Lifestyle:

1. Our simple home. It’s quaint (real estate word for “small”) with barely 1000sq ft, and only 2 real bedrooms, most would have looked for a bigger home for their second home, but for us this is all we need. The more space, the more places there are to fill with stuff we don’t need.
2. Our simple schedule. White space, ahh…white space. The sweetest kind of space there is. Why? Because it has made me a gentler and more patient person. I used to go and go and go, all day long. We had to go somewhere everyday, I hated staying home because I got bored. Our schedules were packed with barely any breathing room. We now go a few days without leaving home. And most recently we enjoyed the fruit of white space with a spontaneous adventure to a bee farm about 10 minutes down the road. Had our entire day been planned, we would never have had such fun tasting over 20 different kinds of honey from around the US, or watching the cows grazing in their pasture. White space friends, has changed my motherhood.
3. My lack of clutter and chatchkies. I like clean spaces, and I have recently learned the only way I can attain that is to scale way down on the amount of “things” we own.  (Thanks Allie Casazza!)
4. My cooking. I love that I have make a clear point to cook all of our meals at home so that I know what we are eating! Going out to eat is fun sometimes, but my joy is found in our kitchen where I know exactly what is being used and what the quality of the product is.
5. My closet. I have less than 10 tops, 2 pair of jeans, 2 pair of shorts, and about 4 dresses. I’ve always had a smaller closet than most, but I purged
6. My design style. I don’t have a specific one, I just find pieces that I love. I thought I wanted the quintessential “farmhouse” when we moved into our new home. But when looking at images for inspiration everything seemed to be white, wood tones, white, grey, and more white. There wasn’t much color. I need color! So instead of trying to copy any specific look, I just decorate with pieces that I love, but also have a purpose, which leads me to #7.
7. My intentional and purposeful decor. Like I mentioned in #3, I don’t like chatchkies. I want every piece in our home to tell part of our story, serve our family in some way, or simply bring us joy. I did not want to decorate our new floating kitchen shelves with vintage scales and wooden rolling pins just because every other farmhouse in the world was decorated with them. Everything in our home has a purpose, and if it doesn’t then it’s used as art in some sort of way, but it was picked out intentionally to tell part of our story.
8. My ability to talk myself out of things I don’t need. I am always pushing myself to really think about something I see I like and answering the question do I really need it?
9. Our journey to becoming debt free! Yes! What a huge blessing from the Lord it was to be able to pay off both our cars because we were able to get a 15 year mortgage on our home. 15 years! That’s just nuts to me! I love the scripture that Dave Ramsey quotes often, “Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird in from the snare of the fowler.” Proverbs 6:5 (You can read about his interpretation here.)

Now it’s your turn grab a pen and paper, or your phone and open the notes section, or you can just reply to this post! Write down 5 things you love about yourself and 5 things you are grateful for right now…I’d love to know what you write down if you wanna share!

xoxo, Tamara