I walk a squiggly line

i've done a lot of things

i've tried a lot of things

and I would say most of the time I learn a lesson hard

fall hard and get back up all the wiser

i guess I just haven't been very scared to try-- take a risk-- and see

one of my favorite taco shops, baja taco, has appx 2 parking spots. haha they had more in the back but it used to be a FIGHT to get one of the front spots. Anyways I always used to go there and say "someone has to get a front spot, it might as well be me." Most people would just go straight to the back but not me, I would troll those two spots and a lot of times I get one! I know that's not a risk- but I lived a lot of my life with that motto.

my old boss and friend Cara once said "you know what I love about you... is when you mess up you you're not afraid to admit you messed up and you usually learn from it and don't do the same thing twice." 

I can't remember wha I had messed up in that moment at work but it stuck with me. I took it as a great compliment from her. I remember loving that about myself. that i'm not afraid to try..go for it....expect that if I mess up i'll be ok and get up and figure it out. 

I got older.

and sometimes falling and getting back up hurt a lot more

stung a little bit more

I took risk that had bigger losses than before

I think after awhile I kind of stopped trying

i started just "getting in line" with the rest of the world

doing what the other grey haired people do

just do the normal--- and stop taking so many risk--settle down wit yo bad self

but realized I couldn't

that God didn't make me for a straight line

in fact he had already delivered me from trying to be perfect and would NOT 

let me go back to trying to be that girl again

every time I tried to do the "straight line" thing

it didn't seem to work

worked for others but not for Lindsay

I think i'm supposed to keep being  curious

keep being ok with taking risk

and life looking different

and keep on getting hit a bit..but getting back up....

***Insert Rocky Quote right here--- you know the one**** 

these lyrics from needtobreathe hit me so good...I think i'm just going to keep living a life that NEEDS Jesus to show up with Miracles everyday...little ones...and big ones... not the life I can control..but a life were i'm the daughter and he takes care of me.

"I don't need silver linings

I don't need so much more

I just need room to be wrong sometimes

that's all i'm hoping for

I feel like we could find it

if we knocked on heaven's door

i'd say God, i'm only human

you'd say that's what i'm here for

writers need to live a life to write about

this post is for my single friends.. and maybe my older retired friends too...

there is this cute show on Apple called "home before dark" 

it's about a family and the dad is a writer and a reporter and his little 4th grader follows in his footsteps

she tries to find out mysteries in her dads small home town and writes about it

anywhooooo in one of the episodes the dad tells the little girl that she needs to stop investigating for one night

that she needs to go live her life..that in order to write about life she has to live it.. that's what writers do.. they have to live life..see it..experience it then write about it..

got me. 

has life felt not very interesting lately? to anyone else? nothing to really write home about? Maybe that's why we're all just posting photos of food and just following influencers? Because we're not living a life worth writing home about? Well for me I feel like i've got in this comfort zone and it's pretty...boring.

I get it I get it-- life isn't always mountain tops and exciting adventures- it doesn't need to be the freaking best day ever every day---but-- you should be able to sit in a room with your friend and be like "wow that was a moment i'll remember for a long time" we laughed hard over a silly convo or i'm so glad we went Tubing today -- or that guy we met at the pool with the short shorts was a gem. memories. moments.  I feel like they've been few this year because online has been high- watching fake life on tv and insta vs. living life.

are you living life or watching others make up a story for you.

and i know it's not all bad-- hellooo TED LASSO INSPIRES ME SO MUCH.hahah but it's so easy being single to get into a routine of home after work, cook some food, watch a show and go to bed early. haha ok just me? I love early mornings so I'm in bed so early! 

and those are great- great to get rest- but it doesn't all need to be rest- especially my extraverted friends--- the way we fuel is by living a life with strangers and people.... playing volleyball or talking to the stranger at the pool.. or playing board games with your friends instead of just watching tv... it can be in the little moments too-- but just taking the time to create those moments and notice them-- vs.. I don't know... each of us just staying in our own homes living our own lives and kind of coasting.

i used to write songs-- I had so much to write about---I have a friend that for about 15 years- anytime I see him he ask "hows the new song coming" ha he NEVER lets it go...

I think it's time for us all to write a new song--- do something a little fresh- even if it means going alone and going outside the box--let's all try--- add some spice back into the week-- write that new country song :) 

does growing up look like giving up?

Did you give up living your life? The life you were when you were a kid---- I mean we can't be kids forever obvi-- but did you give up believing in yourself- believing in a life that is important and full of joy. I think I hit a point where I just kind of thought "it's time to be normal, it's time to settle down and be normal" and to be honest, me trying to be normal doesn't really work. Somehow it looked like me stop living and trying to be something else. 

I have a sweet friend whose mama just passed. But when she was in hospice she was making hair and lunch appts. my friend said some people thought she should stop her and bring her back to reality, but my friend didn't. My friend kept letting her mom make appts till the day she passed. her mom lived her life till the very last moment- scheduling and kept going not knowing if she'd get to eat that lunch or get her hair done. 

I told my friend sometimes I wish I was that hopeful and faithful with life as her mom. some days I just waste a day with being stuck. Not knowing which step to take next, or maybe having fear of being different and taking a different step that I just don't take any. So I just sit--- and miss a day-- and another day.

I want to be more like her mama- living a life with a goal- with a mission- like 12 year old Lindsay did- She was NOT concerned with the American dream as a little girl. 

At 30 something ;) I have gotten very concerned with the American dream and how I don't have it.... and how I need it. I got so focused on "normal"... I forgot that I have another story to live right now--- and to find it and go for it--- that I have to keep going towards something amazing and fun which is me and my story God made just for me. And yes it will be hard and there will be mistakes and set backs but it's the only one made for me.

The past year or so... I haven't really made many mistakes other than not trying for anything at all. I'm being vulnerable here- for the 1 person that might read this- I've become more "normal" than I ever have been- and I just don't like it. it's boring- I want to fight for things and work hard for things and set goals and achieve and fail. LIVE LIFE. 

Yahweh made us to live a life-- He did--- and i'm not talking prosperity gospel here- it's not all Millions of dollars and perfect health and just perfect. Life is hard and tragic and things don't always go your way and we will NOT understand His will most of the time- but I do know this--- he wants us to keep pursuing him--- keep going towards the gifts we've given-- keep being a light and trying for things- trust for him to come through on things that are bigger than us.

That's all-  I needed to write this to myself- this is a letter to Lindsay Michelle Frail... GET UP... 

growing up doesn't mean giving up who you are. 

keep going with who you are--- even if it's hard ...WHEN it's hard.

what if it takes 40 years to write that book

keep writing

20 years to write a song

keep singing

keep going 

30 years to find a mate

keep dating

Even if you don't see it on this side of heaven--- isn't it better to keep trying till the day you die than your heart to die while you're on earth. 

ok bye. mic drop.

She’s Hannah and she has a car

So it was one of the first months of COVID Quarantine and it was already taking it's toll on people. I missed seeing friends, and it was just getting tough. Everyone was zooming, calling, face-timing, whatever they could, but it wasn’t easy for anyone. 

My sweet friend Hannah is from Raleigh, lives in Nashville, but was working from Raleigh with COVID hit so she stayed there to try and ride it out. Needless to say everyone in Nashville missed her, including me!

So once a week we would call each other on our lunch breaks during covid and chat and talk a "walk" together. By our lunch break I mean her lunch break, ha. I worked in the entertainment industry so it shut down, so my talk with her was a very welcomed phone call each week.

My house has this huge hill as a front yard so when we would talk on the phone I would go out there and walk up and down that hill for the 30-60 minutes we’d be on the phone. It became our joke of me “walking the hill” while she was on the phone.

Anywho, one week we had our scheduled lunch call and she called me and said “are you on the hill?” and I said “yep I’m walking!” and she said “hold on, I’m walking outside of my house to go on a walk too.” And as she said that I see a car pull up my driveway and say “Oh nooo this always happens, someone always comes in my driveway while I’m walking up and down my yard like a crazy person…” ha we start laughing then I see who it is..”OH MY GOSH HANNAH…IS THAT YOU?!!”

She gets out of the car and of course we can’t hug (covid rules) but I ask her “what are you doing here?” and her answer was simple, “I came to walk the hill with you.”

So for the next 30 minutes we just walk and talk up and down that hill…together. That was the first time I had seen anyone besides my roommates for months. I don’t think anyone who didn’t go through Covid will ever understand what it was like to be isolated from your people. I needed to see her at that moment, she had a car, she had a way, she probably had a large bladder because you couldn’t use the public restrooms on that road trip. She just decided and said to herself “yeah, I’m going to drive and see my friend today, walk the hill with her.”

It wasn’t extravagantly planned out, but it was about knowing what someone needed at that very moment. Knowing it wasn't hard to make it happen, it was just a friend in her car coming to see if another friend was ok and to walk a hill with her.

that was her loving me with what she had. 

Be who you are, love with what you've got.

So it’s the summer of 2020, and if you’re reading this from the future, this was  the summer of COVID-19. I know the 19 in COVID-19 can throw you off, but this was actually in 2020 and this was the summer that life just got thrown upside down. The summer no one could see coming, and no one had a clear picture of how to get out of it. People had ideas on what to do, but we all kind of wiggled through it together.

I know it would be very easy for me to write about how hard it has been, maybe one of the hardest seasons in life thus far for many of us. Jobs lost, people getting ill, so much isolation, let alone the racial injustices that can't be ignored any longer. This has not been an easy season, it’s been a pretty tense and stressful trauma for everyone. I will write plenty on how hard this has been, I will not and have not been able to skim over all of the hard parts of these months. My family and closest friends have been there for me and me for them, to check in daily to make sure the day to day isn't getting us down.  

However, this little diddy of a blog entry isn’t about how hard it was, but it's about how I saw my friends and family in the little little moments, how they showed me such love and maybe didn’t even notice it.

I’m reading a book called “everybody always” and it’s a sequel to “love does” and both books are about a man named Bob Goff and his life and how he sees Jesus in random acts of love.  People RAVE about these books, and they are amazing, but I think there is a bigger picture here. Goff does live a pretty fun life with good stories, but I don’t think it’s anything out of the ordinary. Ok ok hold on….hear me out. I mean yes it’s amazing, but it’s not like he’s telling you a story about he solo’d  Kilimanjaro (def. had to look up how to spell that), or told you about his 5 gold metals.

He’s telling stories about how he gets a creative idea on how to love someone that is in his life and then he does it. How he thinks about toilet papering someone to make his neighbor laugh, then he just does it. And yes his life takes some pretty radical and amazing turns, but I think it’s mostly because he says yes to the daily life, and it opens more doors, gives him more ideas on how to be loving. He says yes to those little, but brilliant ways to love and before you know it he’s having a neighborhood parade. I love his books because it’s more about stories of just loving people however you can. Not coming up with these huge grande ideas, or planning for months, but just saying yes, going, letting them grow.

I also love that his books talk about heart ache and trials, and loss. As a  believer I think it’s important to tell those stories. For non believers, if all we talk about all the victories and they have loss, how can they relate? We need to share both, both will happen, God tells us good and bad will happen, expect both and be planted for both.

OK anyways, this is not about a Goff book review, this is about opening my eyes to see where others have just loved me. Where if I had to write a book right now, I could, because people just say yes to the day to day and it makes up my life. They show me love not by planning the most epic surprise ever, but just by loving me where I am, where they are, with what they have.

So the next few blog post are for me to remember the people who loved me right where I was ...in this hard time, with whatever they had. We weren't really allowed to hug, or go to restaurants or do the things we normally do. But these friends just showed up, with who they were and what they had and it turned out to be extraordinary.  We all have extraordinary lives waiting for us to see, Goff isn’t the only one that can live it. And Im sure I can speak for others when I say sometimes the exact thing we need in these hard times is to open our eyes to the little moments, the good moments, that the people in our lives, the 5-10 people you’ve been able to see these past months, those are the moments we need to capture.

Again, not minimizing that this has been a global trauma, I'm just trying to see little ways I’ve seen love over the past 4 months of quarantine.

Stay tuned party people...I'm going to do some reflecting and writing about my extraordinary life and the people who love me in it. 

don't be afraid to create

What do you want to create?
What do you want to leave in this world?
Give to this world?

We all need to
Make things

Bake things

Cook things

Carve things

The best is yet to come, use what has already been created and keep creating

Someone else is, yet you have something in you that no one else has

So you need to create something too

Some create children

Raise them

Teach them

Some create works of art in food

Share them

Eat them

Some write songs

They sing and inspire with

Create things

Little things

Daily things

Create things that fail

That go unfinished

That only leave a little wave

That’s ok

The little things

The ones that fail

That only make little waves

They lead to bigger things

Bigger ideas

Sometimes the ones that fail just keep you going

Keep the pattern and discipline going

To the bigger things

The ones that you will remember

The ones that others will remember

Life was meant to be lived

Your life was meant to be a story you can tell

A story others can hear

Don’t just listen to other peoples stories on podcast

Or watch other peoples stories on Netflix

They’re good to inspire you

But then create your own

Write your own

Tell others a story in what you create

The ones that didn’t work

And the ones that you’re proud of

All are part of the story of your life

Create in your life

Create a life that looks like who you are

Create something today.

What are you waiting for?

A few times a year YL gathers up all off the YL staff in Tennessee and they let us just be together, breathe together. We go over the year, the good and the hard, we just spend time together. This time we ate together, we worshipped together, we slid down a waterfall rock together into ice water, we even crashed go carts into each other, I mean crashed hard. Haha

All of those things were some of my favorites, but one of my favorite moments was walking around the pond at camp with my new friend Tiffany. Tiffany lives in Nashville, we've met a few times before, but this time we bonded and it was sweet.

One night after dinner we decided to walk around the water and burn some calories before the next gathering J We laughed and joked some and then began to shared fears in our lives the Lord wants to take from us. 

I started sharing with her my summer and how loudly the Lord spoke to me and how it didn’t just start this summer. That the Lord for years has sent me affirmation after affirmation on a part of my life I needed to move in and I never did. And she just interrupted my thought and said

“What are you waiting for?” I paused and said “What do you mean?” and she goes “What are you waiting for? Why aren’t you doing it? What would have to happen for you to do it?”

I paused for a moment and before I could even think of what I was saying I said “perfection. I want to be perfect. I will do it when I’ve mastered it and feel like it’s perfect.”

Wow. As soon as those words came out I was shocked. The thought of perfection is laughable, because it’s not even close to being attainable, everyone knows that, no one and nothing is perfect outside of Christ.

Yet here I was, waiting to move in an area of life until I had it perfect. Wow. There it was. I had no more excuses left, God showed my real heart, what seemed like my last excuse.

He’s given me gifts, given me people to support me, given me joy in this gift, given me opportunities and now has just shown me the only thing that stands in the way of me and this next phase of life is…my goal of perfection.

Something about her asking this question and me blurting it out just took a burden off of me. Almost made it ok to not be perfect when I play music at club this Monday. To not be perfect when I write my songs tonight, to not be perfect when I sing them to my friends and strangers. Of course you prepare, of course you spend time putting hard work into it, but allowing myself to be free to not be perfect. It felt like my excuse/fear was exposed and now I could move forward.

What are you waiting for in your life to be perfect? Or striving for in your life to be perfect?

Your career?

Your family?

Your weight? 

Looks?

There are things in our life we want to “master”, and we strive to master before we’re satisfied

I believe in working hard in your career, working out to stay healthy, communicating to keep your family growing. However we all need the Lords grace in all areas. Because if we’re always waiting for perfect, working towards it, we won’t find it on this side of heaven.

I don’t want to wait for perfection anymore. I want to move, and probably take some wrong moves but I want to move. I want to sing  in public, sing wrong notes in public, because it’s not about the notes, it’s about the singing part that matters.

I want to love hard because God says to, even if I don’t love perfectly and have to apologize for them seeing a raw side of me, I want to love anyways.

I’m not perfect, it’s not an excuse, I will keep being sharpened my whole life. However, I want to walk in Grace. I want to live in a place where I need God to show up. I need people to see more of him when I sing and live then just seeing Lindsay.

I need grace not perfection. I want to follow where I know my following Him will lead others to worship and not to me. I want to follow, right now, because I won’t ever be perfect on this side of heaven, so there is no need to wait.

What excuse do you have right now that is standing in the way of someplace you’re supposed to go?

What are you waiting for?