Welcome to Litsy!

I got to stroll the local used bookstore this afternoon. 🤓📚❤️ #bookstorebooty #booklove

This slim read is full of moments I can relate to, but the essays jump around quite a bit. It felt like a collection of unrelated newspaper columns.

“When we do the hard, intimate work of friendship, we bring a little more of the divine into daily life.”

“When you're traveling with someone else, you share each discovery, but when you are alone, you have to carry each experience with you like a secret, something you have to write on your heart.”

Visited a few of my local Little Free Libraries. Have any of you read any of these? Any good ones here?
#littlefreelibrary

Sometimes a book hits you at the right moment. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#essays #memoir #nonfiction

This.

#everydayjoy #memoir

I actually liked this book more than I thought I would. It‘s a collection of short essays focused around celebrating the little things in life. (Who doesn‘t need a reminder to do that?) It was a perfect book to keep in my car to read in carpool and feel refreshed for part two of my day.

“Great art says the things we wished someone would say out loud, the things we wish we could say out loud.”

#AprilBookShowers
#Subtitles
I looked through all my books I have to read next and found not one with a subtitle. So I have to go back to one of my favorites that I keep close by.

"cold tangerines -celebrating the extraordinary nature of everyday life"

It‘s always makes me want to eat an orange after looking at this book. (Not a tangerine) Why is there no orange emoji?
??????

#AprilBookShowers
#Onthenightstand (okay so I don't have a nightstand..I have a ledge behind my pillow on our obviously very 90s style headboard) I have 2 pairs of glasses, my kindle, and uplifting books like "Cold Tangerines" "One Good Deed a Day" and a few religious based books from family- "The Confident Woman Devotional" and "God's Power to Change Your Life". Easy to pick up and read a few pages if I don't have a book that I'm involved in.

"I want to eat cold tangerines & sing loud in the car with the windows open & wear pink shoes & stay up all night laughing & paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean sheets & throw parties & eat ripe tomatoes & read books so good they make me jump up & down & I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift, who will use it up & wring it out..."

Oh, how this speaks to me. It seems that for many of us, insecurities about friendships emerge in elementary school & resurface in our twenties. It's hard to be vulnerable when you're trying to have everything figured out. #friendship #love #wordsofwisdom

I will read anything this woman writes.

I really enjoyed Shauna Niequist's book PRESENT OVER PERFECT and so I am now reading this book of essays "celebrating the extraordinary nature of every day life." If you like Brene Brown or Elizabeth Gilbert, this is right up your alley. ##selfcare #dontcareifitsgirlie

I've been waiting to read this book for so long. I'm a type-A person who has always been more concerned about what has to be done and how to do it right -- rather than enjoying a life that "sizzles and pops". I hope this book changes me a bit. #nonfiction #joy #christian

"Let‘s get dirty, in his name. Let‘s sizzle and pop in his name. Let‘s dance and shimmer and scrawl out our stories across the sky, like he taught us to. Let‘s echo his words, and let our lives speak those words: It is good."

"Because we were made for motion, for arching up toward God with all the energy and passion of a thunderstorm, lightening slicing through a sleepy world to remind us that we serve a fast-dancing God, a God who set this world whirling and crashing through space so that we could live from our toes and drum out the pulse of a billion veins carrying lifeblood to a billion hearts, temples to a God that got his hands dirty making us from dust. "

"What if, all at once, all the shabby, tired, used-up bodies and minds start to wriggle and pop like they‘ve been dropped into a deep-fryer, sizzling and dancing,transformed into motion? And something that has been deadened and distracted by the tension and noise of this world comes to life anew, wakes up and wiggles like a fritter in a frying pan, anointed, and taught to dance."

"I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift, who will use it up and wring it out and drag it around like a favorite sweater."

"I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don‘t want to get to the end, or tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now."

“What can I do today to remind you again how good this life is? You think the color of the sky is good now, wait till sunset. You think oranges are good? Try a tangerine.” He‘s a crazy delightful mad scientist and keeps coming back from the lab with great, unbelievable new things, and it‘s a gift. It‘s a gift to be a part of it."

"I think it‘s our job, each of us, to live each day like it‘s a special occasion, because we‘ve been given a gift. We get to live in this beautiful world. When I live purposefully and well, when I dance instead of sitting it out, when I let myself laugh hard, when I wear my favorite shoes on a regular Tuesday, the regular Tuesday is better."

"It‘s rebellious, in a way, to choose joy, to choose to dance, to choose to love your life. It‘s much easier and much more common to be miserable. But I choose to do what I can to create hope; to celebrate life, and the act of celebrating connects me back to that life I love. We could just live our normal day-to-day lives, saving all the good living up for someday, but I think today, just plain today, is worth it."

"But being angry didn‘t change those things. It just wasted time. I can‘t take away the things that have happened to you or me, but what we have, maybe as a reward for getting through all the other days is, is today. Today is a gift. And if we have tomorrow, tomorrow will be a gift."

"I can‘t live there in the disappointment anymore. I‘ve missed whole seasons of my life. I look back and all I can remember is pain. I guess I went to work or to class during that time, but I don‘t really remember. I wasted a lot of time wishing I were different. I didn‘t love the gift of life because I was too busy being angry about the life I was given. I wanted it to be different."

"Because there is another reality. A better one. Hope and redemption and change are real, and they‘re happening all around me. So I choose to act out of that reality, because the other one makes life too hard, day after day. Life is painful, and we carry with us so much disappointment and heartbreak. But I‘m fighting to save some space inside me where I can create hope."

"I have a dark, worst-case scenario sensor, and it takes over. It‘s all true. There are crumbs on the counter. I am definitely getting wrinkles. I just don‘t want live in only that reality."

"I have to remind myself that it is good. I have to create hope in my life, because there‘s something inside me that has radar for the bad parts of life. I walk into the kitchen and all I can see are crumbs on the counter, and I look in the mirror and don‘t even see my face, I just see all the potential wrinkles forming."

"I have to remind myself that it is good. I have to create hope in my life, because there‘s something inside me that has radar for the bad parts of life. I walk into the kitchen and all I can see are crumbs on the counter, and I look in the mirror and don‘t even see my face, I just see all the potential wrinkles forming."

"What God said when He made the world is a prayer: It is good. This world, it is good. The beauty of a perfect green apple is good. The first steps of a child are good. Watching grandparents dance in their kitchen is good. It is good."

"There are glimpses and whispers of the divine all through the daily, if we let ourselves look again, if we let ourselves believe that the world all around us is threaded through with divinity."

"The sacred mixes in with the daily when you have a conversation with someone you love, or when you read a great book, or when you do something courageous. It‘s still just a normal day, but there‘s something bigger, something more compelling going on, too."

"There‘s normal life, kind of day-to-day, make-breakfast, do-the-dishes kind of life, but just underneath that, like a throb of bass you feel in your chest, I feel a whole other thing going on. In the midst of taxes and email, there is something sacred, something special dipping and weaving within that same old thing, like a firefly, like a great song, and it reminds you that the dishes and the taxes are real, but so much more is real, too."

"If life were a sweater, I would wear it everyday. I wouldn‘t save it or keep it for a special occasion. I would find every opportunity to wear that sweater, and I‘d wear it proudly, shamelessly, for days on end"

"That‘s what I want my life to be, like a well-loved gift. I think life, just life, just breathing in and out, is a great gift. God gives us something amazing when he gives us life, and I want to live with gratitude. I want to live in a way that shows how much I appreciate the gift."

"I know that Death knocks at our doors and comes far too early for far too many of us, but when he comes for me, I want to be full-tilt, wide-open, caught in the very act of life. I think that‘s what we‘re here for, not for a passive, peaceful life, but to stand up in the face of all that lacks peace and demand more."

"I believe in a life of celebration. I believe that the world we wake up to every day is filled to the brim with deep, aching love, and also with hatred and sadness. And I know which one of those I want to win in the end. I want to celebrate in the face of despair; dance when all we see on the horizon is doom."

"Pick up a needle and thread, and stitch together something particular and honest and beautiful, because we need it, I need it. Thank you, and keep going."

"So to all the secret writers, late-night painters, would-be singers, lapsed and scared artists of every stripe, dig out your paintbrush, or your flute, or your dancing shoes. Pull out your camera or your computer or your pottery wheel. Today, tonight, after the kids are in bed or when your homework is done, or instead of one more video game or magazine, create something, anything."

"Everyone has something to say. Everyone. Because everyone, every person was made by God, in the image of God. If he is a creator, and in fact he is, then we are creators, and no one not a bad seventh-grade English teacher or a harsh critic or jealous competitor, can take that away from you."

"And if, for whatever reason, you‘ve stopped-stopped believing in your voice, stopped fighting to find the time-start today."

"....that values you more for going to the gym than going to the deepest places in your soul. Please keep making art for people like me, people who need the magic and the imagination and honesty of great art to make the day-to-day world a little more bearable."

"I know that life is busy and hard, and that there‘s crushing pressure to settle down and get a real job and khaki pants and a haircut, but don‘t. Please don‘t. Please keep believing that life can be better, brighter, broader, because of the art that you make. Please keep demonstrating the courage that it takes to swim upstream in a world that prefers putting away for retirement to putting a pen to paper, that chooses practicality over poetry..."

"...and you take back everything you said in your head about never painting again, about never singing again, and at least for that moment, you feel like you did what you came to do, in a cosmic, very big sense."

"There‘s nothing scarier than that moment when you sing the song for the very first time, for your roommate or your wife or when you let someone see the painting, and there are a few very silent moments, time stops and you quit painting, you quit singing forever, in your head, because it‘s so fearful and vulnerable, and then someone says, essentially, thank you and keep going, and your breath releases...."

"It matters, art does, so deeply. It‘s one of the noblest things, because it can make us better, and one of the scariest things, because it comes from such a deep place inside of us."

"Art slips past our brains straight into our bellies. It weaves itself into our thoughts and feelings and the open spaces in our souls, and it allows us to live more and say more and feel more. Great art says the things we wished someone would say out loud, the things we wish we could say out loud."

"We‘re desperate for great storytellers, great painters, great dancers, great cooks, because art does something nothing else does."

"Thank you.Thank you, and keep going. Please keep writing songs. Please keep believing in music, because we do, we need it, specifically we need yours. We need the sounds, the words and the rhythms of hope,longing & beauty. We need the drums,the strings and the haunting twist of your voice. We need the poetry of your lyrics and the spirit and force of your sounds. We‘re desperate for great music, there‘s so much out there, but never, ever enough."

"The thing about a truly great song is that it becomes, truly and deeply, about our very own lives, regardless of what it started out as when it was written."

"That makes me feel both honest, like she‘s seen the very worst and there‘s nothing else to be exposed; and safe, like she‘s not going to leave or make fun of me. When you find those things coexisting peacefully in one friendship, I think you‘ve got a good thing going there, and you should let them see your basement."