This is worth reading.

Alright I’m gonna try to get through this without crying. But no promises.
  
This is Dean. She lives at a Nursing Home for elderly people with special needs. I got the pleasure of visiting this home while I was down in Alabama. When I first walked into the room there were several residents who smiled, waved & said hello. They were happy & glad to see us! But as my eyes wandered the room they settled on a woman in a wheel chair who was looking down at her hands quietly. My heart went out to her so I walked over and sat down by her & introduced myself. She didn’t look up, she didn’t say anything and the look on her face broke my heart. It was a look that seemed as if she hadn’t felt happy in a very long time. I asked her several questions that yielded no response. So I just sat there & held her hand. I was beginning to feel discouraged when I remembered watching this documentary on Music Therapy and how it can bring people out of dark states… It seemed like my only option so I asked her if she she liked to sing. 

She quickly shook her head “no”. 

I laughed, “at least she responded.” I thought. I smiled & said “okay, well would you like me to sing?”

 She waited for a moment and then nodded “yes”. So I quietly began singing the song His Eye is on the Sparrow. 
“Why should I feel discouraged.

Why should the shadows come.

Why should my heart feel lonely.

And long for Heaven & Home.
When Jesus is my portion.

A constant friend is He.

His eye is on the sparrow.

And I know he watches me.”
I had held her hand before I began singing, but as soon as I started… She held it back tightly. She reached out and grabbed my other hand. 

  And as I kept singing she began to cry and whisper…”yes…yes…” And then, as I sang the last word of the song, for the first time since I had met her…she looked up at me with tears in her eyes and with a smile she said,

“Thank You.” 

I couldn’t believe how much her entire demeanor had completely changed. It was as if she was a new person. She was alive, she was smiling and she seemed happy.

 Before I left she pulled me in for a long hug & so as she was hugging me I asked her if I could pray for her and she said “Yes, please..” I prayed that she would know her worth, that she would not feel forgotten but loved, and that she would have a song in her heart even if she could not sing. And as I walked out to leave I could not stop the tears from streaming down my face… (And yes, I am crying right now….At least I made it halfway) 
But I wasn’t crying because I was sad… I was crying because I was so incredibly thankful. 
I have so much to be happy about. It should be easy to find joy when you can sing, when you can dance, when you have family that loves you, when you are young & free, when you know that you have a purpose in this world. But yet… it’s not. I’ve had all those things and still struggled with depression… 

Dean cannot sing, she can’t dance…she can’t even walk, she has no family or friends around her anymore & she isn’t young or free. The workers at the home told me they couldn’t even remember the last time they saw her smile… So how is someone like Dean supposed to find joy? 
Well I believe the answer is in the very song I sang to her. Joy is not found in our circumstances, but in the promise that there is a God who loves us & will meet us in heaven one day. I believe that Dean will be completely healed. She will walk, she will sing and dance. But whether that’s on earth or in Heaven is not for me to say. I don’t think Dean smiled because she thought I had a pretty voice. I think she was filled with joy because as she heard those words, she was reminded that this life is temporary & that God’s promise is eternal. I pray that she keeps that joy inside her til she goes to meet her Father in Heaven. And I pray that whoever reads this will find joy in the midst of their trials. We may not be able to avoid the circumstances in our life, but if we trust in God, we will outlast them.❤️

-Molly Kate

CONFIDENCE

This isn’t gonna be a super long post, but it is something I am very passionate about. So just hear me out. Several times over last few months I’ve heard girls say “I wear makeup cuz it makes me feel confident.” Or guys say “well I work out because it makes me more confident.” And before I go any further I want to say that I love wearing make up & I love working out! This is isn’t a post against either of those. Okay? Okay, awesome. 🙂

The part that I want to address is the confidence bit. And that is because from my experience… real, lasting confidence does not come from anything that you enhance or change about yourself. What I mean is if I only feel confident when I wear makeup, then is that really confidence? As soon as I take it off, what am I then? If I’m confident when I’m in shape, well then what happens when life gets stressful & I lose my “great bod”. Guys, confidence is SO much deeper than your appearance. That is why there are girls and guys who have “perfect body’s” “perfect skin” “perfect clothes” and yet they have the lowest self esteem possible. Because when you are trying to find your confidence in your appearance, you will always be missing something. There will always be someone prettier, stronger, cooler. And even if you think you look great, or if you are in the best shape of your life… Let me ask you something, if all of that was taken away, would you still be confident?

I wrote this post because it’s something that is very close to my heart. Confidence is a battle I faced for years because I was searching for it in all of the wrong things. I thought if I looked the right way, acted the right way, said the “right” things… Then everyone would think I’m confident. But just cuz everyone else thinks you are confident does not mean you are. You can fool others but you can’t fool yourself. Thankfully, I had somewhat of a breakthrough.

REAL confidence does not need to be proven. If I am confident, then I could have no makeup, a bad complexion, a soft body & average clothes and I wouldn’t feel insecure because I know that I am beautiful no matter what my outer appearance may look like. And once again, NOT saying it’s bad to wear makeup or work out… But if your soul reason is because you think it will make you more confident… You are kidding yourself. You cannot create confidence with a temporary enhancement. And honestly, I am not going to tell you HOW to be confident, because it is different for everyone. But for me personally, it was finding what I am passionate about & doing it as much as I can. I think once you find your purpose on this earth…(notice I said purpose, not career) but once you find it, The confidence just comes…because you know that THIS is why you are here and nothing else really matters. And because of that, no matter what you look like, no matter what people say, no matter how you may be feeling temporarily… You can be confident.

#NoFilter

As I lay down after an exhausting and exhilarating weekend as a leader at my church’s youth retreat… I am thankful for life, love, and laughter.

But especially tonight, I am thankful for who I am.

You see, I lived most of my life trying to “filter” out everything that I thought made me look less than my idea of “perfect”. I lived in a constant state of feeling like I wasn’t pretty enough, wasn’t talented enough, wasn’t popular enough and I was never satisfied with who I was because no matter how many “filters” I used…there was always someone who seemed to have their life a little bit more together than me.

But then I realized something.
If I try to judge my worth from the world…I will NEVER feel like I am enough. But, if I find my worth in a perfect God who made me in His own image… even though I am not perfect,
I AM enough and who I AM is no mistake.

I may fall, for I am fragile & flawed.

And life may not get better,
but I will.

For I am a story yet to be written.

A painting yet to be finished.

A life yet to be fully lived out.

And THAT is the most beautiful thing about me.
It is the most beautiful thing about you.
And as we all know, the most beautiful things in life do not need to be filtered. #nofilter

MY FIRST BLOG POST EVER / WHAT AM I DOING

WELL HELLO! Happy Thanksgiving and THANK you to whoever is reading this! (which if we’re honest is probably my mom and possibly a few other people who feel bad for me)
Anyway! Here’s the dealio. It’s late and I am tired but I am not the kind of tired where I wanna fall asleep, I’m the kind of tired that is SO tired… I feel awake. I’m the kind of tired where all of a sudden, you feel like anything is possible and you have the urge to clean your entire room or teach yourself guitar in one night. Well…unfortunately my room is clean, I have no guitar, and so my friends… I have decided to start a blog. This is something I have wanted to do for a while but it took that crazy, late night, motivation and some deep late night thoughts to get the ball rollin. So if you are curious as to what goes on inside this head of mine, then by all means keep reading…and if not, then I am actually pretty impressed that you already read this far.

So, I know what you are thinking….is there ANY point to this? And surprisingly, there actually is. So hold on to your hats kids cuz it’s about to get real serious REAL fast. Duh duh duhhhh… Tonight I am going to talk about something that has been so evident in my life lately and is present in so many people’s lives all over the world.

Worry.

I have been struggling with this so much lately. Whether it is worry about my family, my relationship, my grades or my future…it has been like a dark cloud hovering my daily thoughts and decisions. Now if you don’t know me, I am usually a very positive person and so this fog of fear just threw off my groove. (Yes, that was an Emperor’s New Groove Reference) So I have finally had enough. I decided to get to the root of this problem TONIGHT and maybe if I can find some answers, and some one who reads this has been dealing with the same problem, then this crazy, late night, motivation was actually worth something. So here goes nothing.

Why Do We Worry?

I mean we know that it can’t possibly change the outcome of anything and yet we do it constantly. It is like our emotions have hopped on a swing they can’t get off. It is moving but it isn’t taking us anywhere….just back and forth. So why can’t we get off the swing? I think what it comes down to is trust. The world is not fair and so as much as we would like to trust it, we can’t. People have and will fail us and so once again, we can’t trust. So what do we do? We worry. Think of it this way, If each potential problem we can think of is a brick…we start to build a box around us with these bricks. We convince ourselves that we are protecting ourselves from the issues we worry about, because if we surround our mind with them, then no outcome could possibly surprise us. But the problem is… as we build this “box of worry” around our mind, we block out any light and we begin to suffocate. And no not literally suffocate…it’s a metaphor! (Sorry, I am a songwriter…Figurative Language runs through my veins.) What I’m saying is we can become so consumed by the fears that we let into our mind that they actually suffocate our joy. And if we are living without joy… it becomes hard to live.

How Do You Know it’s Worry?

I’m NOT saying it is it bad to be cautious. I am naturally a very cautious person and I think it’s generally a good thing! It kept me out of trouble growing up and I ALWAYS look both ways (twice) before crossing the street. But there is a difference between caution and irrational worrying. One is a thought. The other CONTROLS your thoughts. If something controls our thoughts then it might as well control our life, because everything in our life: every word and every action is stemmed from our thoughts. Ultimately, our thoughts determine the path we go down in life. Now I don’t know about you, but I wanna go down a path were I am happy and taking time to “smell the roses” not the one where I am running frantically to the end because I’m afraid of the lions and tigers and bears. OH MY! (I’m sorry…I need to stop)

So How Do I Stop Worrying?

Man….so much easier said than done. But I think the first step is to realize that our future is inevitable. We are going to face pain and loss, that is going to happen. It is okay to recognize that. In fact, it is GOOD to recognize that. But leave it at that. As Soren Kierkegaard once said “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Stop trying to figure out what MAY happen and start focusing on what IS happening right now. Also, (and I apologize if you are not religious…but you know what, I actually don’t apologize because this is my blog for pete sakes and I can write whatever I want) You need to trust in someone and His name is Jesus Christ. Honestly, the more I have thought about this…the more I realize how true it is. If I believe that my God has a purpose for my life, then I need to TRUST that He knows what the heck He is doing! Once again, easier said than done. Especially if you are like me…I mean, I’m the kind of person who will skip to the end of the book just to make sure my favorite character lives so that I don’t have to wait in horror. But you can’t do that in life. All you can do is trust that the Author of your life has written a story worth reading. So instead of living each day just worrying and waiting to see how it turns out, why not enjoy the intricate details of this masterpiece called “Your Life” that is being written?

So God, I just pray that you would would give my soul rest tonight, when I wake up and each day after that. I’m casting all my fear, all my doubt and all my worries on you because I know that You are faithful. Thank you for being my strength when I am weak. You are the arms that I can run to no matter where I am or what time it is. Like pieces of a puzzle, you place every person in my life for purpose, to connect and complete the work you have started…and I may not be able to see it now, but I know one day when I look back on my life I will be able to see how each piece fit together. So until that day, I will not let the devil steal my joy with worry or fear, but I will take each day as it comes, with Your word as a lamp unto my feet. I love you so much God. Amen.

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” 
Matthew 6:34