#IAmAChristian

"I know your heart been broke again.
I know your prayers ain't been answered yet.
I know you're feeling like you got nothing left.
Well lift your head. It ain't over yet.
Hold on, hold on...Lord ain't finished yet.
Hold on, hold on...He'll get you through this.
Hold on, hold on...these are the promises. 
I never will forget.
I never will forget."
~ from "Move (Keep walkin')", by Toby Mac*

I am not the preachy type, and it always annoyed me when Christians would testify to anyone who would listen**. At the time I just didn't get it. Now that I feel it in my heart and feel it in my soul (haha -- more Toby Mac lyrics), I want to shout it from the rooftops, but like I said, I am not about being preachy. People need to get there on their own, in their own time. I am still not super comfy talking about God, but I can write about Him. I have already begun work on a book called "Skipping Church: Confessions of a Reluctant Believer" but with all the talk of Christianity lately, I wanted to take a few minutes to share an abridged version of that story.

I did not take the traditional route to belief. I was not raised with God at the center of my life, although I did have to go to catechism and Sunday mass, and went through all the sacraments until I got to the sacrament of marriage (now wish we'd been married in a church, but at the time it did not hold the same meaning). Instead I took the scenic route to God, through Catholicism, Atheism, Agnosticism, Paganism, Gnostic Christianity, and others, but I still got here. Many people grew up practicing a religion that did nothing to feed their souls. In my case it was Catholicism. Now before you get all defensive, if being raised Catholic worked for you, that is awesome, but for me, it was ritualistic chanting that I had to drag my butt out of bed for on Sunday mornings. I knew all the words by heart, and I literally could have said the mass in my sleep, which would have been a win-win. It was not a social gathering like you see in many churches, and I did not leave feeling any different or more spiritually filled up than I did when I walked in.

I don't knock other faiths at all--if your religion gets you closer to God and you have unshakable faith, that it all that matters. It's like baseball. I don't care if you are a Red Sox fan as long as you love baseball. Just because I worship the Yankees, does not make your devotion for a different team any less valid. [Disclaimer: If you are a Red Sox fan whether they are winning or losing, I can respect you love for the team, but if you start talking about the Patriots in July because your team sucks, I will most likely call you a fair weather fan, and whatever you say about my Yankees is irrelevant because you are not a true baseball fan. Likewise, if you choose to worship a God that is okay with rape, murder and extreme gender inequality, I may not like you or your religion, but I still respect your right to freely worship. And if that God you worship tells you to put a gun to my head and make me renounce Christianity, pull the trigger, because it's not gonna happen. I'll give your regards to the 77 virgins...]

Trust me, I was no angel for most of my life...especially my twenties when I was trying to shake the good girl image I had fought my whole life to escape. (Cool typo--when I first typed that it said 'God girl image') At times I was afraid the church roof would cave in if I set foot inside. Once in college, I spent the weekend at my roommate Jude's house, and her mom made us go to church on Sunday. Jude's grandmother was visiting, and she was going to watch church on tv, and I remember suggesting I stay home and watch it with Grandma, to no avail. At church, a small miracle happened. It was stifling hot that day, and when it came time for the priest to say the homily, he stood up and said, "Do unto others." We all waited for him to continue when he said, "That's it. It's too hot for anything more." It seemed like God was trying to get me out of there before the roof collapsed. His angels' wings must have been getting tired from holding it up.

I have been seeking out something to believe in for over a decade, so this did not happen overnight. However, many miraculous things have happened over the past few years where I know that God was clearly taking over. It is probable that these type of things were happening before, but once I started paying attention, I saw these small miracles happening over and over. Because of this I know that even when I am gong through the worst times of my life, things will get better. I trust Him for the first time in my life. I know I was not put on this earth to struggle financially while working at a less than fulfilling job. Having seen how many times He has come through for me at the last possible second, I know he won't let me stay in my current situation. I never understood the whole 'let go and let God' or 'Jesus take the wheel' attitude, until I saw it work. I have seen God make a way when I couldn't see a way. I just have to have faith. And THAT is what faith is.

I have faith that my big break is coming. I have faith that we will not die in this crappy, run-down trailer. I know that we are only living here while we regroup, and now that we accept being here, we are thankful every day for this place. Out in the pond behind it there are swans, blue herons, cranes, ducks and peaceful solitude -- something that reassures and reminds me that God meant for us to be here. I have faith that this is the "water property" that my psychic Francesca mentioned in every reading I ever had with her. To appreciate success, you must have failure to have a frame of reference. This is my Behind the Music-type back story that I'll look back on when I am successfully living my purpose.

I was partially saved by Christian rock. I was missing Christmas music. Yes, you read that right. A retail manager just said she missed Christmas music. See, this particular Christmas I had started to pay more attention to the lyrics. Of course I knew every word to all of them since I was always in the chorus, but I had never really heard them until that year. Maybe it was because I was about to go through a very rough time. When the student is ready, the teacher appears, right? I was getting choked up listening to Christmas carols, the way I always get choked up when I hear Lee Greenwood's song "Proud to be an American". Now that it was January, I was missing that feeling. So I was searching for radio stations on my hour-long commute when I heard "Amazing Love" by The Newsboys. This was my first favorite Christian song.

I had just discovered KLove Radio. It was January 3rd, and they were talking about New year's resolutions and taking the KLove challenge, which is listening to nothing but Christian music for 30 days. It is supposed to improve your life because you are listening to positive messages. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some good 80s Heavy Metal, and Kid Rock's "Devil Without a Cause" is still on my top ten list, but I know about the effects of music on emotions, so I decided to give it a try. I only could tune in the station for half of my commute (Hello KLove? You need a station southwest of Boston), so I bought a WOW Christian CD that had Amazing Love on it for the rest of the ride. I swear to God doing the KLove challenge got me through that first month and I haven't turned it off since. Well, I used to switch it back to the rock station when I got home, in case my husband used the car after me. But sometimes I'd forget. He told me once, "You're Puddy in the car!", referring to the Seinfeld episode where Elaine's boyfriend David Puddy has all his stations preset to Christian rock.

So, yeah...I'm pretty new to this talking-about-my-faith thing, but because I let myself fall so far into it spiritually, I understand now how someone could choose their belief in God over a life-sparing lie. Or how someone could feel so intensely about doing something that goes against their beliefs. Or how we can feel like we want other people to know what we know, so that they can live with less stress and worry. I finally get it, just in time for people around the globe to start being decapitated for being Christian--and this outrages me. Call me self-righteous, but that would be untrue. I have done my share of sinning (and probably a few others' shares too), but that was the old me. The me whose identity was determined by other people.  Who am I to judge the choices of anyone else? I no longer care if someone judges me unfairly. Now I only care about what my buddy Jesus thinks of me.

So when I finish my book, you can get the whole story, but for now, I just felt compelled to say #IAmAChristian.

*This song, in fact this whole album, is the current soundtrack of my life, so I felt the need to share the lyrics. If you have never heard of Toby Mac, you don't listen to Christian music! :)

**Not you Shanann Goodwin! :)

My Miracle Is Imminent

Too many coincidences, which I believe are signs, happened to me this weekend, that I felt compelled to share.

On Saturday I had a rough start to my day. I was under such a heavy cloud of depression that I was struggling to get ready for work. This is not normal for me, as I'm usually pretty happy. Before I left the house, I prayed to God that He not only help me get through this day, but to please rescue me from my current struggles. I asked Him why I had to continue to endure the same petty, unfair treatment that I have been subject to for over a year now. I have smiled, been patient, turned the other cheek, let things roll off, given it up to God--everything I could think of. What else was He expecting me to learn? I said that I understood that this was only temporary and He had something better coming for me. I truly believe that. I just wished that he could give me a break.

On the way to work, I was still in a major funk, so I continued listening to Joel Osteen's book "Breakout". I listened to it before, but started again a few days ago. I knew I would get some positive vibes and change the channel on my thoughts. I was up to the part about how God can speed things up for you.

I know that I am meant to do something great with my life. I have a novel 98% finished, and a memoir started that has potential to be the key to my success. The memoir is called "Skipping Church: Confessions of a Reluctant Believer", and I believe that getting this book out there is the first step on my path to eventually becoming a Life Coach and Inspirational Speaker. It occurred to me that since I had always written fiction, I never really paid attention to articles on publishing non-fiction which is totally different. With fiction, your manuscript has to be complete and perfect before you can even think about sending a query letter to try to get a literary agent. With non-fiction it is all about proposing your idea to see if there is interest in publishing it. I made a mental note to look into that at some point.

Usually I would have procrastinated 'looking into that' for months, years or never. That night I Googled "How to write a non-fiction book proposal". The Google results were all good, the first written by an agent I had heard of, the second by Writer's Digest. I knew I would be able to find everything I needed to know, so I bookmarked the search page to read tomorrow. Before I closed the window, I had scrolled down just enough to see the title of a result that said "Sample Book Proposal". The subtitle said something about submitting to Christian publishers. I opened it and not only did it give concise and specific information about what it should entail and how it should be formatted, but the sample letter was for a Christian book that had a lot of similar themes to mine. (Just to be clear, I will not plagiarize the sample letter. I will just know what specifically should be included, but the info would be my own and about my specific story).

I was LITERALLY given the tools I needed to make it easier for me to take this huge step in determining my future happiness. If I don't take these obvious gifts from God seriously and do something with them, then my life forever sucking is entirely on me. This is how He is helping me to speed up my rewards. He knows I am at my breaking point, but He knows I am ready now to break out. I have been at my breaking point before, but I have not been mentally ready to take the steps to live my purpose. Until now, I also did not believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that my miracle was imminent. I have work to do and it is going to be a lot, but least now I have a road map and a jumping off point.

At this point, I thought this blog was done, but the signs kept coming on Sunday.

First thing in the morning, we caught the Blue Heron swooping in and landing across the pond where it was then totally camouflaged. If we hadn't seen it flying in, we wouldn't have seen it at all. I took this as a sign it was going to be a good day. Any day that we see the heron is already a good day.

On my drive to work, I asked God to use me today and to put the right people in my path. Today I helped a girl to figure out that she needed to read The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, because I had gone through similar experiences and it had helped me. When a couple asked where they could find Heaven Is For Real, I walked them right over to it, and then grabbed the copy of Akiane's book so that they could see the painting of whom both she and Colton Burpo believed to be Jesus.

My last customer of the day was looking for the workbook for A Course In Miracles. I wasn't aware of a separate workbook, but we had a copy that had the complete text and workbook. I mentioned that I had not yet started reading it, but I have it, and that just yesterday I had bought a copy for my cousin.  The customer and I were having a great conversation. She had read A Return To Love by Marianne Williamson, and I had read Spirit Junkie by Gabby Bernstein, which both explain the teachings of A Course In Miracles, and we convinced each other to read the one the other had not.

As a side note, It is amazing how many customers happen to cross my path who are looking for something that I know I am probably the only person in the building that has read it or even heard of it. From Inspirational authors like Gabrielle Bernstein and Joel Osteen, to life changing fiction like The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. At least four times in the year and a half that I have worked in a bookstore, I have been approached by a customer looking for books by Abraham Hicks. If they had happened upon almost any other employee, they would have looked it up, found nothing, and the customer would have left empty handed. But I ask, "Are you looking for Law of Attraction books on the teachings of Abraham by Esther and Jerry Hicks?" The answer is always yes.

I came home from work to find that my husband had started reading The Bible. He said to me, "You had another book over there that I was going to read if I couldn't find my Bible...something about Miracles". I said "You'll have to narrow that down for me. With my books that could be anything". He looked over my shoulder at the bookcase and pointed it out. I put my hand on the book he was referring to and said "Seriously? This book? This is the book I was literally just telling you about twenty minutes ago. The book I bought for Nancy. The book that was the reason I was late coming home from work because I had a customer looking for the workbook to go with it. The book that basically launched Gabby Bernstein's career." Oh. My. GOD.  On my way home from work I had been thinking that in January I would start reading it, but evidently I am not meant to wait. This will be my next book to read.

Elaine Reflects on The Alchemist, Part Two

"The candy seller had a smile on his face: he was happy, aware of what his life was about, and ready to begin a day's work. [He] isn't making candy so that later he can travel or marry a shopkeeper's daughter. He's doing it because it's what he wants to do."

They say if you do something you love, you never work a day in your life. I know that is true, because if I could just be a bookseller at work, without all the manager responsibilities, I would be as happy as a clam! As it is, I am still about 94% happy to be at work. Every customer gets a huge, genuine smile, and I laugh and have fun with them while finding the books they are seeking.

I am in my element, being in a bookstore. I love the book business, I want to be a writer, I follow writers and publishers on social media, and care about getting great books into the hands of voracious readers. I love introducing my favorite books from my childhood to kids who want to read. If I need to work to survive, there is no job that would make me happier. I am sure I could settle in for the long haul and be content doing this job forever, but there is something I can't ignore: I am a not destined to be a retail manager.

If I get too comfy, I will slack on my writing, and will eventually give in to the responsibilities of life. I would still be happy--no question about it--but I wouldn't be realizing my Personal Legend, and I wouldn't be satisfied, because there would always be something missing. If I did not have this deep soul need to do something more significant, I would be like the Candy Seller, having a ball selling books. I am so close to 100% happy doing that, I cannot imagine how delirious I would be if I were able to make a living as a writer, but I do know that life would be exponentially better.

I have decided to put more energy into my writing. I am not working 60 hours per week anymore, so even if I give my all to the day job, I'll still have something left over to be creative. I still want to get promoted when and if the time comes, but I cannot be so focused on that anymore. If I put half the effort into writing that I used to put into advancing my career, I would have a book released every year! Finding that balance is much easier than I once thought it would be, and writing blog posts has kept me in practice.

I have also come to realize that I have been shortsighted in my quest to be a writer, and that has been holding me back from my true purpose. Writing is a part of it, of course, but my focus on being a writer was only beneficial to me. I want to be more than that. I want my books to inspire and motivate others. I realized that I need to be a Life Coach, Self Help Guru, Positivity Generator, or something of that nature, and through that, my writing will find its audience. When I finally realized this, everything changed. I will not be a bookseller forever. My job does not define me, and it is not a life sentence.

Elaine Reflects on The Alchemist, Part One

"That was what made travelling appeal to him--he always made new friends, and he didn't need to spend all of his time with them. When someone sees the same people every day...they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own."
~Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

I am a friendly person who makes friends easily, but in the later years of my life, I have learned not to let anyone get so close that they develop expectations. I had a lot of long-term best friends in my life. The key word there was 'had'. The more I gave to each of these relationships, the more I was expected to be whatever they needed me to be, and they had come to expect more and more. I am sure it was not all one-sided, as I probably had my share of expectations, but having always been a people-pleaser, I gave and gave until one by one, they learned that I had had enough.

Shout out to my BFF Michelle, who is halfway across the USA, therefore making it nearly impossible to have unrealistic expectations of our friendship. Even if she and I lived closer, I still think our friendship would be the same for two reasons: 1) she is one of the most genuine people I have ever met, and quite self-sufficient in her own life; and 2) she is the first friend that I made where I didn't have to live up to any preconceived notions. We met a week after I moved from Connecticut to Florida where I didn't know anyone. I was away for the first time from my family and the people I had grown up with. No one knew me, so I could be myself. I was the authentic Me when I met Michelle, which is why our friendship has endured for 23 years. (We still laugh that we proved our then boss wrong. He mocked us for planning to meet at the Hard Rock in Orlando in ten years. He said in ten years we wouldn't even remember each other. HA. We may not have made it back to Florida, but we were at each others' weddings!)

The reason this quote resonated with me, is because I am finally at a point in my life where the only person putting demands on my time is me. The husband and the dog get as much of my time as they want, because that is the deal, but other than that, I am the only one standing in my way now. If I want to spend the evening writing, reading or even playing Candy Crush, that is up to me. If I never get that book finished I have no one to blame but myself.

The dream is real now, because I have cleared away the so called clutter in my life so that I can focus on MY dreams, on what I want from MY life. I am sure that sounds selfish, but I spent most of my life being unselfish and that did not get me anywhere. I am not suggesting you ditch your friends and family to go after what you want, but set some healthy boundaries to ensure that you have time for yourself. After a lifetime of being the good friend, the good daughter, the good employee, the good cousin, et cetera, I had a hard time setting boundaries. I had to literally move out of state to truly have my own life.

Now that I have it, it is time to do something with it.

Elaine Meets The Alchemist

Last month I blogged about books falling off the shelves, and wrote that since I work in a bookstore, not every book that falls off the shelf in front of me is some kind of sign, though some are. What I neglected to mention, because I didn't think it was relevant, was that The Alchemist was the book I was picturing on the floor when I wrote that. I had assumed that since it was on every school's summer reading list and we had too many crammed on the shelf, it was only normal that one would fall...every day.

That blog was about the teacher appearing when the student is ready, and that lately most of the books I have been reading have shared a theme: It is never too late to follow your dreams and do what you know in your soul you were meant to do. For me, that dream is to be a writer, and everything I am reading keeps reminding me that I can still do it...I just have to DO it.

Anyway, all summer when someone asked for The Alchemist I thought, "I should read that book", but I never even read the back cover to see what it was about. Something just told me I should read it. Still, I resisted for some reason, until this week.

Oprah's guest on Super Soul Sunday was the author of The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho. It was his first ever interview on American television. I quickly learned that the book was about making choices to achieve your personal legend. In other words, don't give up on the one thing you really want to do. What? I was stunned. Did I want to read The Alchemist? That was no longer a question. Now I HAD to read it.

I am short on funds, and had already bought a book this week (The Daily Love by Mastin Kipp, fyi) so I couldn't justify buying a copy. I can borrow books from work, but they have to be hardcover, with a jacket that stays at the store, and we only had it in paperback, so that wasn't an option. I compared the Amazon price and the Barnes & Noble price for the ebook but still couldn't swing it. I checked my library app but it wasn't available. I had to wait.

I hate to wait when it is time for me to read something.

That was Sunday. On Tuesday I had an unexplained bad day where I could not get out of my funk. I have maybe four of these days a year. Every other day I am the happiest person you could meet. Because of this, I wasn't paying my usual attention to the New Releases. I didn't notice until Wednesday that a hardcover copy of the 25th anniversary edition of The Alchemist was released. The Universe literally shoved this book into my hands. I borrowed it, but will most likely buy it now.

In no time I knew that this book would change my life. The theme is "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it". As I read, if a particular part resonates with me, I am going to share how it affected me in a blog. I hope you will follow along, and perhaps start reading it yourself and you can share how it affects you.


Watch Part Two of Oprah's interview with Paulo Coelho this Super Soul Sunday morning on OWN.

Follow @Oprah @OWNTV @SuperSoulSunday @paulocoelho @MastinKipp @TheDailyLove

Books Are Falling Off The Shelves

It is time to stop playing Candy Crush and get a book (or three) written.

It's time. I need to do it now or it may never happen. I am a month shy of my 45th birthday, and it is affecting me worse than my 40th did, because I have been beating myself up about where I have landed at this point in my life, and how this was not where I wanted to be. Not everything sucks--great husband, great dog, I am healthy, I have a job I am finally happy with--but in just about every other aspect, I have hit rock bottom. There is nowhere to go but up.

The problem is, I am not going up unless I get up off my butt and do what I was put here to do.

I have used every excuse not to write: I don't have a computer; I have a computer but it is inconvenient and uncomfortable; I work 60 hours per week and can't justify going in the other room to write when I could be spending time with my husband; I have a laptop but also have a lap dog, who will win the spot on my lap every time; I have to put so much energy into my paying job that I have nothing left at the end of the day to do anything creative. The list went on and on. I was waiting for ideal conditions to work on my writing, but that day is never going to come.

At least now I am in a job that I love and I only work 40 hours per week, so there is more left over for my passion. I am also not looking at getting published as a way to be rescued from a job I hate. A) That is not even a possibility anymore since publishing has changed so much in the past ten years that a first time writer is not getting that huge book deal that will allow the quitting of the day job, and B) I don't hate my day job, so I can happily continue working while getting my writing career off the ground.

There is a book that I am feeling compelled to write, and I am now writing with a purpose to get my story out there. I believe that it is my contrbution to the spiritual awakening that is happening in the world. It truly feels like it is my purpose, and it is very topical. If I procrastinate much more, I will miss the boat. Every which way I turn, there is something nudging me to just write it!

This past Sunday was the first in a while where I was home to watch Super Soul Sunday on OWN. I always record it, but then it could take weeks to actually find time to watch. Today when I saw that Gabrielle Bernstein (@GabbyBernstein,author of Spirit Junkie and May Cause Miracles) was going to be on, I was psyched because I love her! She was on with two other spiritual teachers for a new generation, whom I hadn't yet heard of, Marie Forleo (@marieforleo,founder of MarieTV), and Mastin Kipp (@TheDailyLove, founder of TheDailyLove.com). I have often remarked that I procrastinated finishing my book because I was not only afraid of failure, but afraid of success. At one pont, Mastin quoted Joseph Campbell, "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek". I remember thinking, "Oh, that's who Joseph Campbell is?" I had heard his name before, but knew nothing else about him.

Gabrielle said that when she went to the bookstore to buy A Course In Miracles, the text on which her teachings are based, she literally felt the energy of the book pulling her to the cash register. One thing that she said really stuck with me: "Once we become willing to know more, books fall off the shelf*...don't act like nothing happened when the book falls off the shelf." In other words, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Often times for us seekers, those teachers come in the form of books. Evidently, books can also fall off the shelf electronically.

I was updating my blog, and added some of my favorite authors' blogs to my blogroll. One of these authors was Claire Cook (@ClaireCookWrite). I briefly met Claire years ago when she spoke at a writer's workshop in Hartford, CT. She was at a fabulous point in her writing career--the point where she was saying to every person she came across, "Guess what? My book is being made into a movie with Diane Lane and John Cusack!" I will never forget her talking about that, because she was so elated and I wanted that to be me someday.

I admit that I have been lazy about reading even my favorite blogs lately--a lapse I plan to rectify--so it had been a while since I had checked out her blog. She has just released a book about not giving up on your dreams, called Never Too Late, and if you signed up for her newsletter, you could download the workbook for free. So I did. And that's when I saw this:

"Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before." ~ Joseph Campbell

This quote had a page all its own in the "Never Too Late Workbook". This quote by JOSEPH CAMPBELL.

It took about 30 seconds for me to download the book.

(Well, to be fair, a sample of the book because I don't have 4.99 to spend on it until Friday, but I am chomping at the bit to read the rest.)

There is no way for me to paraphrase what she wrote on page 14 and still convey how much this was the same thing I was going through, so I quote:

"...right at that moment it hit me with the force of a poolside tidal wave that I was the one who needed to get a life. A new one, the one I'd meant to have all along. I was not getting any younger, and I was in serious danger of living out my days without ever once going for it. Without even trying to achieve my life-long dream of writing a novel. Suddenly, not writing a book became more painful than pushing past all that fear and procastination and actually writing it."
Then at the end of that chapter:

"Not many days go by that I don't take a deep breath and remind myself that this is the career I almost didn't have."

I don't want this to be the career I didn't have because I have been waiting for my books to get magically written, or because I gave up on the dream altogether. These options aren't acceptable to me at this time in my life.

A few years ago, we were watching The Today Show and Jillian Michaels was on promoting her book. A bit later in the show, Ice-T was on promoting his book. My husband said, "Geez, who doesn't have a book out? Oh yeah...you." That opened my eyes. Halfway. I still felt like I had time left to accomplish my dream so I still lacked the necessary urgency. Both of my eyes are wide open now. No more excuses. I don't want to die before I even try.

Claire's story about almost missing out on the life she was meant to have was just the push I needed. I have said before that I was ready to take my writing seriously, but even though I wanted to, it never happened. This is different, a switch got flipped in my brain. I mean it this time. I am putting the effort in, I am doing this.





* Since I work at Barnes & Noble, not every book that literally falls off the shelf is a message for me, but some of them are. More often I help the right books fall into people's hands. For example, twice in the last two months a customer approached me asking for books by Abraham Hicks. With the exception of one other bookseller, anyone else would have searched for books by Abraham Hicks and concluded that we do not carry any books by him, leaving the customer book-less. What both customers were looking for were books on the law of attraction and the teachings of Abraham, by Esther and Jerry Hicks.