Happy Friday, Bravehearted Beauties! Are you ready for a weekend? I sure am! I’ve got a treat for you today. Instead of writing out of my own heart, I’m going to share some goodness from a few other brave and beautiful hearts. ENJOY!
1. What Suffering Does by David Brooks – One of the best things I’ve read on suffering. And in an unexpected place…the New York Times. Here’s what’s sticking with me:
“People shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering.”
“…people who endure suffering are taken beneath the routines of life and find they are not who they believed themselves to be.” {And I would add: we often find ourselves to be MORE than we believed ourselves to be.}
“[Suffering] smashes through what they thought was the bottom floor of their personality, revealing an area below, and then it smashes through that floor revealing another area.”
“Even while experiencing the worst and most lacerating consequences, some people double down on vulnerability.”
2. How to Win What Your Brave & Broken Heart Needs in Real Life by Ann Voskamp – This sister gets it. I love the way her heart spills out in writing, and I just know we’d go deep in an instant if we ever get to meet in person…on one of our farms preferably! A blog reader once told me she only reads two blogs: mine and Ann Voskamp’s. Honored, but if I could choose only one, I’d pick hers every time! Amen to every word, but here are some favorites:
“The Brave are the ones who trace the inside of their everyday wounds and don’t grow hard.”
“The way you find the threads to suture up the fractures of your heart — is to let your frayed places be tied to someone else’s frayed places. Don’t think for a minute that anyone heals a broken heart alone.”
“We need the broken parts of your story to fill the the cracks of our hearts — and you need the broken parts of our story to heal your own broken heart.”
3. Podcast with Christine Caine – She’s asked about platform, but hones in on character. She talks about the “selfie” vs. old school photography, and where she goes with it will surprise you. Her words about the darkroom spoke right to my photography loving heart. I spent countless hours in the darkroom 15 years ago. Little did I know, I’ve been in a different kind of darkroom for the last two years. And thanks to Christine, I have a new perspective:
“The darkroom is where the image of Christ is formed in you…through suffering.”
4. The Courage to Be Vulnerable, an interview with Brené Brown – This woman is on fire! I claim her as a hometown hero {she’s a professor in Houston}, but she’s known all over now thanks to a TED talk that left her with nearly 15 million views and a vulnerability hangover. Everything she says about vulnerability is remarkable and noteworthy, but here’s what sticks with me from this interview:
“Can it be that our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be brokenhearted?”
“Vulnerability is courage.”
If nothing else, this list gives me an easy way to find these articles and podcasts again, but I hope they speak to your heart, too. And you know me, I can’t leave without sharing a bit of beauty!
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Spring is finally here!
Love from one Bravehearted Beauty to another,
christine - So funny that you mention Brene Brown. Recently, I had someone tell me to read the book, The Gift of Imperfection by Brene and I’ve been downloaded the audio book and I’ve been listening to it and I thought, I wonder if Linsey knows about this book? 😉 Hope you don’t think that’s strange, but the thought entered my mind because of what you’ve written about. Thanks for the links!
Mom - Lins, I read David Brooks’s column, too. There are volumes that could be written about his very thought provoking words, and as the comments reflect, everyone has a different take on suffering. As for me, life without some suffering is not very much of a growth experience. Whether or not it makes you a better person, well, that is not always obvious.xox
Holly - It’s amazing how you can happen upon a blog so unintentionally and yet find yourself feeling that it was indeed….intentional. This post really spoke to me and I thank you for sharing the other resources which I plan to take some time to really read and absorb. With two little kids, I just realized that I haven’t focused on any “soul nurturing” in a long time. It’s much needed. It is so easy to just stuff all our baggage into a little box…never to deal with. Courage is facing that box of stuff, junk, baggage or whatever you’d like to call it! Thank you, Thank you!
And to think, I was just looking on the internet for information on relocating my family to the Brentwood area from Atlanta. Go figure. I came out ahead on this one.