Blog Your Blessings Sunday: Blogger Awards

I was very sur­prised, deeply hum­bled and might­ily blessed when I signed on a few days ago to find that Tami at The Next Step had hon­ored me with the Thought­ful Blog­ger Award.

Today, it is my priv­i­lege to bestow blog­ging awards upon some of my favorite writ­ers in accor­dance with the rules estab­lished by Christy at Writer’s Reviews:

Award Rules

1) If you have received an award sim­ply choose either the dark or light back­ground image and save it to your files, then post it proudly on your blog!

2) Pass the award on to five other peo­ple, you can choose any of the awards from the series, you do not have to pass out the exact award you received. Choose whichever of the awards below that you’d like to give out. You can give out one of each or five of the same one, what­ever you prefer.

3) You can change the size and color of awards to suit your blog, that’s up to you, it’s your blog, just leave the titles the same.

4) Please link back to this post so that peo­ple can read these rules and so that the mean­ings of the awards will not be lost.

5) If you feel that you or a friend are deserv­ing of an award and no one has given one to you yet then email me at sayhitochristy(at)hotmail.com and tell me about your website.

So here are the five writ­ers whose work is a bless­ing in my life and to whom, with deep grat­i­tude, I am pass­ing on Blog­ger Awards:

Mert — Almost Some­what Positive

“For those blog­gers who are bat­tling or have bat­tled with phys­i­cal and men­tal ill­ness, those who are sur­vivors of abuse, poverty, or who have over­come other chal­lenges in life. Those who serve in the mil­i­tary or work/volunteer in dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions in order to pro­vide a ser­vice or to help oth­ers. This award is for the strong, the brave, and the courageous.”

Mert writes in such an open, hon­est fash­ion that her arti­cles are some­times shock­ing and emo­tion­ally dif­fi­cult to read. Recently, she described how, along with her brother and sis­ter, she got a tat­too. The descrip­tion of the process and accom­pa­ny­ing pic­tures assure that you will never find me within 500 paces of a tat­too parlor.

But when you read about why she ended up endur­ing the painful process of get­ting a tat­too — and it is a beau­ti­ful work of art — you will see exactly why I am giv­ing Mert this award and be inspired to read more of her writ­ing. She does ram­ble on some­times, but she would be the first to admit it. That raw emo­tion that shines through in her writ­ing is def­i­nitely what makes it so com­pelling and allows her read­ers to over­look the occa­sional stream of consciousness-like tone. Her writ­ing is most thought-provoking and engag­ing when she talks about her back­ground, as in “I’ve got a dirty lit­tle secret, and my dilemma.”

Explain­ing why, as a thirty-something mother of two, she wanted to get her first tat­too, she wrote about the var­i­ous marks on her body:

These marks were not my choos­ing. I didn’t want any of them, and yet here they are. I’ve had a life time of marks placed on my body, and my life — I hope– is far from over.

After think­ing for a night on what image I would want on my body for­ever– despite know­ing that my hus­band was still very angry about the whole thing– the lotus flower kept com­ing to my mind. I told my brother and sis­ter about the sym­bol­ism behind it and they both love the idea:

In mod­ern times the mean­ing of a lotus flower tat­too ties into it’s reli­gious sym­bol­ism and mean­ing. Most tat­too enthu­si­ast feel that the a lotus tat­too rep­re­sent life in gen­eral. As the lotus flower grows up from the mud into a object of great beauty peo­ple also grow and change into some­thing more beau­ti­ful . So the sym­bol rep­re­sents the strug­gle of life at its most basic form.

Lotus flower tat­toos are also pop­u­lar for peo­ple who have gone through a hard time and are now com­ing out of it. Like the flower they have been at the bot­tom in the muddy, yucky dirty bot­tom of the pond but have risen above this to dis­play an object of beauty or a life of beauty as the case might be. Thus a lotus flower tat­too or blos­som can also rep­re­sent a hard time in life that has been overcome.

In an ear­lier arti­cle, she shared the ori­gins of some of the marks:

If you are curi­ous why I might jump from a car going 40 mph … I ran away from home. When my mother found me, she forced me into my brother’s car. While I was get­ting in, I noticed a sawed-off broom han­dle in the back of the car. She then pro­ceeded to beat me, mostly by grab­bing my hair and beat­ing me around the front of the car. I was pretty sure she had plans for that broom stick, and I was cer­tain that she would kill me when we got home … so as soon as she let go of my hair for a moment, I opened the door and jumped. It was as if all I could hear was my own breath­ing, and a calm­ness came over me, and I just jumped from the car — onto a freshly grav­eled road. To this day, I still have rocks embed­ded in my left elbow, and luck­ily the scars from my torn-up hips are now cov­ered with stretch marks.

You really have to expe­ri­ence her writ­ing in its entirety your­self, so I won’t spoil that expe­ri­ence for you by shar­ing any more of her arti­cles here. Pay Mert a visit, con­grat­u­late her on being a Thought­ful Blog­ger and sub­scribe to her feed. Her writ­ing will inspire you.

Sandy Carl­son — Writ­ing in Faith

“For those who bring unique and cre­ative ele­ments to their blogs. For those who incor­po­rate art, music, cre­ative writ­ing, photo’s, and other beau­ti­ful visual effects into their web­site. For those who put a unique spin on things and come up with new ideas. This award is for the artsy, the funky, the inven­tor, and even the rebel. This award is for those cre­ative indi­vid­u­als who stand out from the crowd.”

Sandy is a pro­fes­sional writer with a unique view of the world, her faith and, espe­cially, the mun­dane who has served as a Guest Blog­ger here. She will make you look at the sim­plest item or con­cept in a new way, often punc­tu­at­ing her writ­ing with beau­ti­ful anec­dotes about her life with her young daugh­ter. Sandy infuses her writ­ing with art, music and poetry. She will make you see anew the beauty in some­thing sim­ple or complex.

One of the ways she does that is her love of graf­fiti. She has cer­tainly made me look at the tag­ging on the side of a build­ing in a new way. In Explore Grafitti and Learn How Blue is the Sky, How Green is the Grass she pon­ders whether the act of cre­at­ing graf­fiti is right or wrong:

The truth of the mat­ter is that right or wrong is not a worth­while ques­tion because it pres­sures us to take sides, and side-taking never accom­plishes any­thing good, cre­ative, or even mildly inter­est­ing. Over the past sev­eral years as I have pho­tographed graf­fiti, I have let the ques­tions go. I just look and let it be and fol­low the lines and col­ors wher­ever they lead. The effect is that I take a close look at the world around me–in cities and sub­urbs, under high­ways and bridges, and into all the lit­tle spaces in between.

Graf­fiti is about the close look. It is about the tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief, the neg­a­tive capa­bil­ity that defines pure free­dom. Sus­pend the ques­tions and the judg­ments, the pre­con­ceived notions, and live in aware­ness of the walls around you and you can’t help notic­ing how blue is the sky, green the grass, still the water.

Artists are not moral arbiters but seek­ers. For artists, cre­ators, poets, peo­ple who live here and now in a this world, the ques­tion is not what’s wrong or right but what makes it beau­ti­ful. Take a look: Strange Attrac­tions: Explor­ing Graf­fiti.

Viola Jaynes — Spir­i­tual Things Matter

“For those blog­gers who inspire oth­ers through their words and actions. With a pos­i­tive atti­tude, and an uplift­ing spirit these blog­gers make the blo­gos­phere a bet­ter place, and encour­age oth­ers to do the same. This award is for blog­gers who rise up to set an exam­ple but con­tinue to reach out and sup­port others.”

Viola explains her spir­i­tual phi­los­o­phy and journey:

I want to embrace all peo­ple and there­fore I will not limit my writ­ing here to any reli­gious beliefs or quo­ta­tions of scrip­tures. That is a jour­ney each will have to make for them­selves. I sim­ply want to share that in and through pain, a full life is still pos­si­ble. It has been for me.

Because of this view point that I have adopted, I am not so much inter­ested in one par­tic­u­lar reli­gion, as I am about true spir­i­tual devel­op­ment and growth. When one is ded­i­cated to God and truth, many schools of thought present them­selves. It is inter­est­ing to look at a broad spec­trum of mankind’s spir­i­tual hunger and search for truth. It is also wise to allow var­i­ous view points to be con­sid­ered and to lis­ten with the heart what some of our great­est spir­i­tual teach­ers have taught us. Bud­dha and oth­ers taught enlight­en­ment and many great spir­i­tual prin­ci­ples. Jesus Christ, how­ever, was the only one who descended from heaven as the Sav­iour to mankind. The ulti­mate search brings all of us to God — this path­way is a rev­e­la­tion of His Love and Peace.

Viola’s words stay with you long after you close the browser win­dow. Her thoughts, rev­e­la­tions and expe­ri­ences shared are uniquely hers but she writes about them in a way that makes you under­stand how inter­con­nected we all are. For instance, she wrote about a brief encounter with a young preg­nant woman that reminded her of her feel­ings about becom­ing a mother and the trep­i­da­tion she felt because she grew up moth­er­less in an orphan­age. Upon the birth of her son, how­ever, she was pro­vided, by grace, with the tools she needed to par­ent. Her poignant conclusion:

This beau­ti­ful young woman today, whose shoul­ders I barely brushed, reminded me that grace is suf­fi­cient in every area of our lives. Each of us has been given a mea­sure of grace and none of us could stand if it were not so. Per­haps this will help us to be gen­tler and kinder with those with whom we come in con­tact. And per­haps, if we look deeply enough, we will rec­og­nize that we too can extend the gift of grace — to oth­ers and to many of our cir­cum­stances. Grace is trans­form­ing by its very nature. When you’ve been touched by grace, it is impos­si­ble to stay the same.

If you read noth­ing else at Spir­i­tual Things Mat­ter, you must read Viola’s beau­ti­ful poem, In the Still­ness of the Night. I’m con­fi­dent that once you visit, you’ll want to read much more of her elo­quent and inspir­ing writing.

Katiejen — Emerg­ing Grace

I knew the moment I saw KatieJen’s posters for the emerg­ing church in A More Gen­er­ous View that she was a blog­ger with whom I could relate. This is an exam­ple:

She’s not afraid of writ­ing about what mat­ters to her and her eight-part series on Spir­i­tual Abuse res­onates with me because of my own expe­ri­ences that sent me run­ning out of the “sanc­tu­ary” of orga­nized reli­gion, deter­mined never to look back. Only some­one who has been through a sim­i­lar ordeal could write about the mis­use of power within the patri­ar­chal, tra­di­tional church in such an authen­tic and author­i­ta­tive manner:

Inten­tional, mali­cious action against me by a church leader blew me away. The unwill­ing­ness of oth­ers involved to chal­lenge the leader’s actions, but instead look the other way in denial, pre­serv­ing their posi­tions, shat­tered my trust in church leadership.

The ten­dency of those who have not expe­ri­enced spir­i­tual abuse is to min­i­mize the expe­ri­ence. Hon­estly, it is some­thing you do not truly under­stand unless you have expe­ri­enced it.

Those who leave churches are often por­trayed as overly sen­si­tive, embit­tered, and dif­fi­cult to get along with. While they may be reac­tionary imme­di­ately fol­low­ing their abuse, most recover and grow beyond that.

Their expe­ri­ence is a con­tribut­ing fac­tor in form­ing dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions of what the church should be. How­ever, their views should not be inval­i­dated by the fact that they were born out of a time of pain.

I urge you to read the entire series of arti­cles even if you are for­tu­nate enough never to have been sub­jected to spir­i­tual abuse because 1) you might be in the future and her writ­ing will help arm you to rec­og­nize and sur­vive the expe­ri­ence; and 2) those of us who are sur­vivors seek under­stand­ing and sup­port from our fel­low Chris­tians. Only through com­pas­sion­ate wis­dom can you be a sup­port sys­tem for us.

As some­one who has no “con­ver­sion” story to tell since I was born into and remained in the church until this past Jan­u­ary, I appre­ci­ate this refresh­ing and help­ful approach to Chris­tians who insist we must all expe­ri­ence an earth-shaking, Jesus-accepting moment:

Our tes­ti­mony is not our con­ver­sion story, our tes­ti­mony is our under­stand­ing of who God is, tes­ti­fy­ing of how we have per­son­ally known God, who He is to us. Can I prove that I know God? My only proof is expe­ri­en­tial, although to me it is more real than our cur­rent reality.

Those are just a cou­ple brief exam­ples of the riches to be found at Emerg­ing Grace, a site that inspires and enlight­ens me. You will be enriched by a visit, as well.

Angel Mama — Pearls of Wisdom

“For those who answer blog com­ments, emails, and make their vis­i­tors feel at home on their blogs. For the peo­ple who take oth­ers feel­ings into con­sid­er­a­tion before speak­ing out and who are kind and cour­te­ous. Also for all of those blog­gers who spend so much of their time help­ing oth­ers blog­gers design, improve, and fix their sites. This award is for those gen­er­ous blog­gers who think of others.”

If you know Angel Mama, it comes as no sur­prise that I would bestow this award upon her. Hers is that one sweet voice that rises above the cacoph­ony, offer­ing val­i­da­tion, sup­port, and utterly uncon­di­tional love and friend­ship. Her com­ments are the ones that brighten my day and lift my spir­its. When she isn’t spread­ing cheer around the Inter­net, she is off spread­ing it in her com­mu­nity and to her fam­ily. She writes about her ser­vice to oth­ers in a casual but never cal­lous way that sends a clear mes­sage to her read­ers: It just comes nat­u­rally to her. To find an exam­ple, you have to look no fur­ther than her most recent article:

We never know why God has us cross paths with the peo­ple that he does, or how we might effect their lives or they ours until some­times much later. As a mem­ber of Gods pre­cious chil­dren it is our honor to help oth­ers, min­is­ter to their needs, give grace and share our faith as oth­ers will with us.

Being prayer war­riors for oth­ers, look­ing to God and not the prob­lem and being a true friend are the keys to a joy­ous life in the Lord. Jesus has given us such a gift of love it is so won­der­ful to pass it on in his name.

I have had the joy this past few weeks to share my faith with a new friend to Christ and help her set up her prayer jour­nal which was such an honor. I love doing my daily devo­tions and prayer jour­nal and going back through the pages later and see­ing how God has been there for me every­day of my jour­ney with him.

I always feel refreshed, uplifted and hope­ful after vis­it­ing Angel Mama’s site. If you haven’t expe­ri­enced her warmth yet, you must visit. You will see pre­cisely why she is so beloved among bloggers.

Wel­come back to On the Hori­zon! So glad you’re vis­it­ing again. Be sure to leave a com­ment and add any posts that you like to the var­i­ous social book­mark­ing sites using the links just below the posts. Thanks for stop­ping by!

Tech­no­rati Tags: Blog your Bless­ings Sunday

You might also like:

• Blog Your Blessings Sunday: Forgiveness
• Blog Your Blessings Sunday: Thankfulness — A Way of Life
• Blog Your Blessings Sunday
• Blog Your Blessings Sunday
• Blog Your Blessings Sunday