How I Learned to Stop Wasting What I Love

For Christmas a few years ago my husband gave me two beautiful leather journals engraved with my initials. I’m a journal collector. I love writing in them. I carry one with me wherever I go. I can never have too many.

These were different though. For a while the books just sat on my bookshelf. I’d walk by and pick them up. Admire them and flip through their crisp, blank pages. Consider using them for writing poetry or my first novel or romantic letters in script.

But then I’d put them back onto the shelf . . . because the ideas I had for inside these leather covers never seemed to be enough. I didn’t want to waste their gorgeousness. I needed something spectacular to put inside. Otherwise I might as well jot things down in some random marble notebook. (Clearly, I have issues.)

Finally, one day I woke up, marched myself straight to our bookshelf, ripped the journals down and jotted a random list into the first page I found. It was an ice-breaker of sorts.

Sometime between falling asleep and waking up my heart had made a realization: I was wasting what I love. I was belittling the ideas I had now for something better that may have appeared later down the road. And in my quest for “perfect” I was letting all these beautiful, messy, already here words and thoughts and moments pass me by.

In the words of Dale Carnegie, “One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.”

In that moment, ink on my hands and journals at my feet, I made the decision to be the type of woman who enjoys the roses already blooming.

Today … write the story. Paint the canvas. Plant the seeds. Take the road trip. Run wild and free. Dare to dream a little bigger. Dance. Sing. Laugh. Do. Be.

Stop wasting what you love and start living it out.

*This post is from the Living in the Now Series I did for Talk 21 in October. I’m slowly importing everything over and this one spoke to me again. I hope it speaks to you once more, too.

Get to Know Kristen

You can find Kristen at Exemplify Ministries where she loves to help others uncover organic faith. She’s thrilled to have just launched 2:21 – an offshoot of Exemplify – for teenage girls. Through video driven bible studies and regular spotlight shows that focus on the call of the Church, it is Kristen’s hope to equip & inspire women and teen girls to live a life that does. As well as serving at Exemplify Ministries, Kristen is Director of Outreach for A Woman Inspired. When she’s not sitting at Starbuck’s with an extra foam latte in hand, daydreaming up a new idea, she’s hiking in the mountains with her husband, Eric, and dog, Humphrey. Loves: late night latte adventures, all types of music, long weekends, nail polish in every.single.color!, the Doctor, summers spent with her sister, and the family she gets to call her own. She tweets random things @kmschiffman.

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