OH YOU ARE JUST TOO EXCITED

I have the privilege of helping people birth books. I call it a privilege because I learn so many wonderful and amazing things from these authors. What I have found is that what is intended to be a simple literary coaching session often becomes times of empowerment and therapy for them and for me. That is so cool! I am also privileged to be able to be on the perimeter watching the dreams of people touch the rising sun. That is something to behold.

I will say that with some of the my clients, I am often overwhelmed with their excitement. To answer a phone call and a voice has risen two octaves higher or a speech pattern that is normally very deliberate is suddenly fast paced throws me. I get distracted by the excitement and I get so intrigued in it, that the reasons for the excitement are sometimes lost on me.

I realized that I get a kick out of that adrenalin and emotion that pulsates through people when they are genuinely and wonderfully excited about something that is happening in their life. That thing is so absolutely amazing. Life can be so very enchanting and embracing that it urges a typically slightly tenor voice to become more alto-soprano; and a normally mousy personality is suddenly giggling loudly like a school girl on the merry-go-round.


I think it is okay to not focus on the reason for the excitement - instead focus on the joy. It is the thing that tickles your spirit - that emotion of contentment - that will hit the ears of someone who has been crying all day and softly dry away their sorrow or discouragement. The reminder of what tears of joy sound like, brings a smile to a temporary dark moment and now there is the thought that I can reach for some of that excitement too. There is sweetness in the belly laugh of achievement that a friend shares with you and I am appreciating the blessing of someone sharing it with me.

There are times when I am sitting in a waiting room at a doctor’s office or even in a meeting and I feel a little excitement tickling that spot right behind my navel and right next to my heart. Yes, I’m sure it’s not gas. When it happens, I cleverly move my hand over my mouth to refrain from just losing it in laughter. I believe that God tickles me from time to time, just to remind me that He wants me to be happy, He wants me to smile and He wants me to be excited about everything that is me. He wants me to laugh at my joy and at my pain; because in both things I am yet alive and able to feel and able to wait for Him to tickle me so I can smile.

God tickles you too. Tell me today in your writing, when was the last time you felt God tickle you? Your tickle may come when you suddenly find a candy bar you haven’t seen since you were five (for me recently it was finding a box of Boston Baked Beans - OMG!). Or your tickle may be in a silly joke that keeps playing over and over in your head. Sometimes a tickle can come in those most unusual things that kids say - like when my four year old niece told me that she would not push the skateboard beyond the fence, because "we don't to have a situation, right auntie?" (Well okay then!)

There are little tickles that happen in our lives that say you have the right to laugh, to dance, to giggle until you have to run to the bathroom, to cry at the touch of a little ones hand on your face. Write about the tickles you have encountered, smile about them, laught about them and then rest your head on the Father’s chest and tell Him thanks I sure needed that.

I MAY NOT BE A FIST-TO-FIST FIGHTER, BUT I SURE THINK LIKE ONE

I am not a street fighter. The more accurate statement for me is I really am not a fighting type of person; though I do have a fighter’s personality. While in my high temper days I would quickly grab someone – actually hitting them was never necessary. It is all in the way you grab and look! Aside from childhood tussles with my sister, I think I have actually only been in maybe three school-aged fights and none as an adult. I mean after all you do have to grow up at some point.


One fight sticks out in my mind. This girl, who had been a friend since elementary school, decided one day in eighth grade that we needed to fight. To this day I do not know why and I do not know if she even offered a reason. Well, the bell rang, my sister our usual crew and I headed home. This trip however we were accompanied by my sudden and new rival, who was taunting me to no end. I ignored her and kept walking. This I assumed enraged her even more because out of nowhere she produced a knife and told me if I would not fight her she would cut me. THAT WAS IT!

Books hit the ground. My oversized purse hit the ground. I started beating her like a crazy woman. Then everyone encircled us and our normal walking crew was trying to pull me off of her. There is a certain point though in rage that makes pulling back difficult if not impossible. My sister was yelling for me to get off of her. Everyone was yelling for me to stop. I do not remember asking myself if I was really inflicting that much damage or if somehow she had in fact managed to cut me and I was bleeding horribly over every crack in the sidewalk.


I do remember my sister finally yelling something about the truck. I had seen the truck heading towards us but still in the distance. In fact, I remember pulling my opponent into the street so that the truck would help me stop her from ever taunting and tormenting me again. My sister was yelling for me to let her go and move, because if the truck hit her it would hit me too. Well, that was not the plan. If I wasn’t going to let her cut me, I certainly wasn’t going to let her make me get hit by a truck. So I instead slung her to the other side of the street and when the truck passed, I picked up my purse and my books and went home.

Like I said, physical fights are not my thing. But I do have a fighter’s personality. Even when an opponent comes on them suddenly, that personality will move into a course of action: face the opponent, size them up quickly and do your very best to get on the offensive not the defense – if you take control of the attack you can determine the outcome or at least force the attack into a more positive outcome for yourself. A true fighter approaches each and every opponent with a winning mindset; being defeated - even if they have never one a bout - is not a possibility.

My life has presented enough battles for me to hone my fighter’s personality and has taught me to do whatever I can to strategically and purposely keep my life on the offensive. It takes losing some fights to learn those lessons. It takes getting some foul punches. It takes you initiating some fights that never should have been. It takes you jumping into some fights that were none of your business. It takes you getting a knock out here and there. But developing that fighter’s personality also means you condition yourself, you train yourself for the fight. That for me has meant re-aligning my spiritual, emotional and mental thought and behavior patterns. Talk about some tough conditioning and training! Yet, I have had to realize that the tangible things that happen in my life could not be purposely designed for my success until I believed with everything in me that they could.

You know I think this kind of training is even harder than the bag, rope and running drills that championship boxers undergo. This is the kind of training that makes you beat down some inside stuff that keeps allowing the outside stuff to knock your behind out. This is the kind of training that will make you stagger but not fall and most importantly keep punching.

I am KID EC, the HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION of my battles. What are you? Who are you? Today, define your fighter. Is he BEATSTREET PAUL or SHANTE THE BRUISER JONES? What is the inside stuff that you finally have to condition and train yourself to defeat and what do you know about these opponents? Study them and then get on the offensive, so you can move in victorious circles around the enemy and no matter the attack you will be okay. By the way, I am not putting on any of those shiny shorts – oh boy!