Let Your Imagination Run Wild!!!!! Beachy Love note, October 2019.

“By all means let your imagination run wild it loves to be free but make sure it is running in the right direction” ~Karen Key Smith

I have heard people say before, ” I just don’t have an imagination.”  But oh yes you do, we all have imaginations but what are we imagining? When we are young we think of all the things we can do. In just a day’s span of time a child may tell you she will be a doctor, lawyer, firman, writer, poet.  Many times they don’t want to chose so they just pick several, Thankfully the world is more of a great big YES than a NO YOU CAN”T.   Hopefully a well meaning adult will not spoil it by telling them to be practical.  PLEASE!!!!!!!

When I was a young girl around 6, I believed I may one day be a minister.  I wanted to be an illuminator of others, I wanted to tell them that they had gifts inside and they can if they think they can and WHY NOT and all those great and happy imaginings.  Somehow self doubt crept in as I got older  and not sure what caused it but it was there. This low level anxiety that I was not what I first believed inside myself to be, but rather what you said I was became more of my reality.  I started being more concerned about what and who others believed me to be. The danger inherent in this is they are speaking from their own unbelief. And because of this lack of self worth I allowed myself to be tossed to and fro by the opinions of others. In so doing this you tend to  atract the wrong people into your life. You attract that which you believe you are worthy of or maybe not worthy of.

I think that is why I ended up with a starter husband, now let me add that this in no way implies that there was something wrong with my starter husband. What is does imply is  that when I am not fully and authentically Karen I will draw into my life those that are not fully meant for me.  Thankfully I have had a grace covered life that has allowed even the poor choices and wrong turns to be the very stepping stones to a more authentic life.  Because of the grief and deep sadness that arose from divorce I had to dig deep into my faith and chip away all that was not me, all that did not serve  the life I was meant to live. I remember those imaginings of a young child and I asked God to make me more fully me, so I could serve more fully.  I became more of the girl that God had designed me to be, full of purpose and passion and unbridled enthusiasm.

As I was telling an abbreviated version of my story and touched on the gift of my keeper husband, someone pointed out that I had turned my pain into my passion.  I love that. I accepted that as my truth at that moment and it makes sense to me. We are born with gifts that are ours to share, gifts that sometime have their fertile ground in our grief and wrong turns.

I think today, I am more of that girl, who believed she could, so she wanted others to feel that way too. I believe I am able to minister, not because life was easy but because God helped me see in the disruption of limited beliefs that I could do so many things, be so many things and accomplish all that I could imagine.  If you have allowed yourself to become less of who you imagined you could be, grab hold of someone who knows you are MORE and be that person that God has called you to be. In doing so you will not only illuminate your world you will brighten all the lives around you.

Oh you precious ones!!!!!  I don’t have enough words to tell you how much I love you and how very much you are the fuel that fires me to re-imagine my life to be full and bright and all the things that the little 6 year old knew she could be. Mostly I am happy and grateful and filled with wonder of just how full a life fueled by grace and faith can be. Thanks for being a part of this grand imagination.

I adore you!!!!

Karen

ps. When I first started seeing myself as a minister I was in a tub, with Prell shampoo piled on my head and I was standing with hands outstretched proclaiming….”You can be anything you believe yourself to be.”   Whew…. good thing, I had no audience.