November 9, 2016November 9, 2016 by Bethe

My Epic Solo Roadtrip – The Backstory

I’m sitting in my condo with the balcony doors open wide so I can hear the sound of the waves crashing outside. The ocean is one of my favorite sounds in the whole world. It’s both relaxing and also a wonderful reminder of how powerful my God is. He made those waves. He made that ocean. And He is so much bigger and more powerful than anything He created.

Here’s how I got here:

About 18 months ago, I found myself. Really found myself. As weird as it sounds, I believe the catalyst was our miscarriage. It was so heartbreaking, but that tiny, unborn baby has brought me such healing and confidence and bravery. What a legacy.

I think it was the catalyst because for the first time in my life, I walked through grief – deep grief – in a healthy way. I gave myself space to hide away from the world for a whole month. I was really open about my self-care. I was frank when people would ask how I was doing and I would tell them, “I’m feeling pretty awful, so I’m going to hide away for a few weeks and mourn and heal, and then I will go back to living.

I also learned during that time, even more vividly than I already knew, that my God is a great comforter. And He can handle it when I lean into Him with my grief and my stress and my anxiety and my fears of the future and my insecurities and even my anger. He can handle it. He did handle it.

A month after our miscarriage, Mr. Right and I got our matching tattoos. He thinks that was a turning point in my life – where I just went for something big. A tattoo is not big to the average person, but to me, the ultimate rule follower, it was SO big. It was one of the first times in my life that I decided to do something and didn’t care a bit what other people thought. I did it for me.

As a life-long people pleaser and rule follower, the past 18 months have been so freeing. It’s like at the age of 34, I realized that the people around me love me and don’t care if I have a tattoo. Or pink hair (which came later). Or a perfect home, job, family, apperance… life. And the ones who do care – well, I don’t really care anymore what they think. And not in a “I don’t love people and care about them” way. No, it was more of a “I’m going to put on my big girl panties and just be Bethe and not worry about what others think about me” way.

I finally felt free.

At age 34.

Now, 18 months later, just two weeks shy of 36, I am celebrating finding my voice. I’m celebrating the things that God has shown me about Himself. I’m celebrating my marriage to my husband – which is so far from perfect, but is also such a gift from God. I’m celebrating being a mom to a daughter who is a delight. And a hand-full.

But I’m not just a wife. Not just a mom. Not even just an employee. I’m not defined by those titles.

I’m just… Bethe.

Before this gets too fluffy, let me also say that we have been walking through something really hard this year. So very hard. Just three weeks ago I experienced one of the greatest traumas – one of my worst case scenarios – and it hurt. And so I did the thing I did after my miscarriage – I holed up at our house and told people I didn’t want to face the world. But that it was only temporary. That I’d be back. Because now I know that you can grieve now, or you can grieve later, but you WILL grieve. And so I leaned into the grief, and slept and slept and cried and got angry at my lot and had some very frank conversations with my Creator. And guess what… He can still handle it.

The details of the trauma doesn’t matter. In due time, I will share all the details with you (goodness… if you know me in “real life” you already know all of it… or at least, most of it). But the type of trauma doesn’t matter. It’s the way you overcome it. The way you trust your Savior with your hurt that matters. It’s the way you get back up and keep living that matters.

And so that’s why I’m here.

A week after my worst case scenario happened, Mr. Right and I were on a fancy date, celebrating life in the midst of heartache. And he hatched his idea for me to go on an epic solo road trip to visit my girlfriends. To see my girlfriend who moved to Orlando, and my other girlfriend who moved to Oxford, Mississippi. To stop and spend some time at the beach. To rest, and to heal, and to have special girl time with my friends. To just drive and drive and spend some alone time with my God and a good audio book. To find an adventure. To celebrate finding my voice.

And so two weeks later, I’m here. And now you know. I’m out here, driving 1500 miles alone over 7 days, to celebrate. To celebrate life. And freedom. And growth. And healing. To not be a wife or mom or employee or any other label I have given myself. To just be Bethe.

To feel free.

June 23, 2016 by Bethe

Do I have faith when the stuff hits the fan?

be brave, freebies, Prayer, Printables, scripture, Texas Lovely
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Last week I wrote about how God has provided in a BIG way to our family this year. That we have been saving toward something BIG, and that He has been so faithful to bring us extra work to cover the costs. I wish I could tell you more, but someday I’m going to have a big story to tell you. It’ll be worth the wait.

Well, a few days after I praised God for providing for us, our air conditioner bit the dust. On Father’s Day, while I waited for Mr. Right and Wrenn to return from a weekend at a relative’s ranch, the house started getting hotter and HOTTER. Texas summer heat is no joke, y’all. We called our trusty AC guy, who we had just paid $2,000 about a month before to fix our ailing unit… and he came out and declared our AC dead. As a door nail. Unfixable.

I cried. Like, ugly cried. And then we quickly threw a bunch of clothes in a bag and headed to my in-law’s house for an extended stay.

I wish I could tell you that my first response was, God’s got this. Not fear or worry or anxiety, just trust. But no, my first response was to ugly cry. And feel sorry for myself. (Not to mention I had dinner reservations to take Mr. Right out for an amazing Father’s Day dinner in Dallas… all the details arranged… and instead, we were hurriedly packing our things. In the heat.)

That was Sunday. On Monday, I woke up with my stomach in knots, and cried some more. Sweet Wrenn even prayed for me, that God “would help mommy feel better.” I took her in the car to run an errand, and in the car, while she slept soundly, God and I had a heart to heart. Here’s how it went:

Me, crying:

God, I’m so scared. I don’t know what we’re going to do. We have worked SO HARD to save money for {that thing}, and I know it’s your will. I KNOW IT. And now, we’ve got to spend all that money on an AC instead. Why? It’s not fair! We can’t afford it right now. That money has a NAME. What are we going to do???

Here’s what we’re going to do. God, I trust you. You are a good God. This didn’t surprise you. You knew all along our AC would break and we’d have to pay for it. I have to trust you. HELP ME TO TRUST YOU. I have to give you my fear. I don’t know what to do, so I am giving it to you. I trust you with this problem. I trust you to provide. I trust you to give us wisdom. Help me to FEEL that trust in my gut. I am laying this at your feet. I know you can handle it.

Y’all… God loves real, raw prayers. Don’t be afraid to tell Him you trust Him, but you are going to need Him to help you FEEL that trust. God can handle it.

Here’s what I know. My God isn’t just worth trusting when things are going smoothly. When everything is falling into place. When it’s easy. No… my God is worth trusting when the you-know-what hits the fan. When there is no good solution. When things hurt. REALLY HURT. That’s when I’m going to trust him too.

My friend is claiming Romans 4:20-21 as she walks through something hard. Really hard. She asked me to design a print for her, so she could continue to keep this promise in front of her. It turns out, I needed to dwell on this verse as well. This is mine, too. It can be yours, too. If you need to remember that God has the POWER to do what he had promised to Abraham, and to YOU, then please enjoy a free print. On me. Just download it here.

Let’s be people who cling to God’s promises when we’re being tossed around on the waves. When we feel like we’re drowning. When there’s no way out. When our feelings don’t match what we know to be true. When it’s really, really hard to trust God. When we’re holding on for dear life… He can handle it.

I love you, friends.

August 19, 2014August 18, 2014 by Bethe

Dream BIG, Little Girl

2014 - Dream Big, babies, be brave, Motherhood, Printables, quotes, Texas Lovely, Wrenn
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I can’t tell you the amount of joy this little girl of mine brings me. Her giggles, her sloppy kisses and generous hugs, the way she climbs into my lap when she wants to be held, and then climbs right back out again to go back to playing. The way she kisses each page of her book, or gets SO EXCITED about ice cream (like her mama).

One of the greatest joys in my life is watching little Wrenn discover the world, one tiny piece of it at a time. Whether it’s discovering that if she rubs her hands over our chalkboard, she can make pictures from the smudge marks, or learning how to stir water in a bowl, or getting up the courage to take her first steps (her record is five in a row).

I want my little girl to DREAM BIG. I want to show her what that looks like by DREAMING BIG myself. After all, I have these little eyes watching my every move.

The Dream Big, Little One print is available for instant download in my Etsy Shop.

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For prints and baby dresses, visit Texas Lovely on Etsy.

Other places you can find Texas Lovely:

On Facebook: www.facebook.com/texaslovelyshop
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August 12, 2014August 12, 2014 by Bethe

How I’m chasing after my dream, and it scares me to death

Before we got married, Mr. Right asked me what my biggest goal was in life.

To write a book.

It was an easy answer, something I’ve always felt compelled to do, from the time I sat in my high school English classes and savored every word of so many great authors. The dream continued through college, and my love for writing became more and more obvious as I pursued a journalism and English degree. Words are like water to my soul – as I go through my day, I narrate it in my head, looking for interesting ways to frame my ideas and observations, entertaining myself with a running dialogue and trying to find the right words to turn something ordinary into something interesting.

Maybe that’s how I ended up in advertising?

But back to the book. I was meant to write a book – my soul longs for it. But the rest of me had no idea where to begin. Books are just so… long. And intimidating. How could I commit to just one story, one set of characters with which I would develop such an intimate relationship? I would have to live with them forever – such a daunting idea that it made me terrified to even begin.

Besides, what if I wrote my book, and nobody liked it?

But good old Mr. Right, who pushes and pushes me toward being brave. He told me that if writing a book was my biggest goal, then he would do everything in his power to help me make it a reality.

Sometimes that kind of support is so annoying. He told me that he wanted my first chapter from me that Christmas, but I wasn’t ready. I wanted to put it off further.

But that Mr. Right is pretty persuasive, and so he got his first chapter, not by Christmas, but by the following Christmas.

And then life happened. I got pregnant, and very, VERY sick, and then, you know, I had a newborn and things like showering and feeding myself seemed like luxuries, so there was no time to write a book. As always, the seasons changed, and life became a tiny bit more manageable (I will never, ever, use the word “easier”), and so Mr. Right started pushing again.

What a waste of years to have a dream, and all you do is think about it, wish for it, but never actually do anything to accomplish it. That’s what I was doing. Mr. Right saw that, plus the fact that I needed a break from being a responsible adult every once in awhile, and told me that he was going to start giving me Monday nights off to work on my book. Between you and me, I was kind of hoping for Monday nights off to get pedicures and have dinner with girlfriends and do mindless things. But he specifically said it would be for my book.

And so, every single Monday night for the past 13 weeks or so, I have handed off the baby, driven alone to a coffee shop, and worked on my book for a few hours. Some nights I churn out five pages, one night I churned out 15. At the beginning, I took what I had already written (about 30 pages) and rewrote everything, which took several weeks. And then, after studying the work flow of other authors, I learned that the best thing to do is to just throw words on the page and get through a story, and not get caught up in editing and re-editing and getting lost in the weeds. First, birth the story, then make it beautiful. And so I’m in the process of birthing a story, something that is more than half-way through (although, with plenty of holes that will need to be filled in later).

You guys, I am more than half-way through with my book! With my life dream! Do you know how mind-boggling that is, to actually DO what I have always felt like I was made to do?

It’s not easy. Every Monday I make five excuses of why I need to stay home instead of go write. And every Monday night Mr. Right shoos me out the door, and once I get settled in with my decaf latte or hot tea, with classical music playing through my headphones, I get lost in this story that I’m trying to tell.

It’s terrifying and outside my comfort zone, and yet I am so… proud.

I’m being brave. And guess what… it’s fun.