Speak Now

For those of you who know me well you know that I'm pretty much unhealthily obsessed with Taylor Swift and anything involving her music or life. I love her love for people, I love that she goes out into the audience and hugs her fans. She gives so much to them. When Cooper and I broke up I couldn't listen to her music for about a week because it all reminded me of Cooper. Today Taylor's new CD came out I was at Walmart at midnight to get it, BUT I failed to realize that the delivery truck wouldn't be there until the next day. Today I purchased Speak Now at my local Target along with a Speak Now shirt which I am proudly wearing right now. Its a great CD and I would recommend it to anyone. :) 

Now on the the purpose of this blog post, I've been trying to think of a way that I could incorporate my love for Taylor Swift to my blog about Love. I was bitter toward Taylor for a few days for giving me an unrealistic view on how falling in love should be but she says it best herself "Its all wrong until you get it right, right? I have to keep telling myself that". I don't normally go all crazy with celebs, I see them as normal people who just happen to be a little more popular than myself. I think why I like Taylor so much is because I can relate to her, we have so much in common. Her personality just puts a smile on my face, and I've been told my personality does the exact same thing. Her sense of humor is almost exactly like mine. We have the same interests, singing and writing. She expresses herself through her music and I express myself through journalling and blogging and writing the occasional song. I realized that I can use her new CD's theme in my blog "Speak Now" as in "Speak now or forever hold your peace" in a wedding ceremony, she states in her secret message that I decrypted from the album booklet "You Always Regret What You Don't Say" I can't say how many times that I have wanted to say something or felt like I needed to say something but didn't. Why didn't I Speak Now? There are countless reasons, the biggest one is fear, the next is pride,and then the awkwardness it could cause. I regret it every time (unless it was something mean) and I wish I could go back and say what I needed to say. I've felt the urge to share the Gospel with someone and didn't I felt the need to talk to someone more popular than me, but I didn't. I get so shy, especially around older more mature adults. I always get worried that I'm going to say something stupid. That's why I hate phone conversations I would much rather send a text message or a facebook message than talk on the phone. I'm learning to Speak Now because the right moment is just that, the only right moment to say something. 

Difficulties

Sometimes I fail to follow my own advise. While on my journey for True Love I didn't quite get the "Loving Others" thing down. In loving others that also means loving and praying for people who I may not particularly like. Now I like MOST people, I give anyone and everyone a chance but some people completely demolished my trust and well...the friendship just kinda failed. Recently I was put into a situation where I was at a social event and a girl that I don't really care for was there, I said hello to everyone else but completely ignored her. I felt bad for it later and wanted to talk to her, just to see how she was doing. Before I did that though I kind of made a joke about it to my friends, and I didn't really handle the situation maturely or in a Christlike way. After I approached her and told her hello and asked how she was doing I felt awkward, and I knew I shouldn't have, well I mean I should have, but I shouldn't have sugar coated it. I felt bad for faking kindness and love...Thats not what Christ would have done. Later I was approached by her and we ended up fighting. For those of you who know me, I'm a lover not a fighter. I tried to flee from the situation but I was pursued. I felt cornered and lashed out. I'm not in any way justifying things that were said on my part. I ended up leaving the social event early because I was so worked up about the situation. When I got home I called Liz right away and talked to her about the whole thing. After she got me calmed down I started to really think about what had gone on. Part of me was replaying everything in my head and thinking of things I SHOULD have said, and the other part of me was thinking about how I was extremely stupid. I wish I could get a chance to apologize to this girl and really share my heart with her. But I doubt I will see her again and that is heartbreaking to me. I hate leaving on a bad note and I hate not settling drama that is half way my fault.

I learned that loving those who have hurt me and loving my enemies are two separate and two difficult things to do. I learned that you're only affected by what people say and do if you CARE and LOVE them in the first place, like when Cooper broke up with me, I cried for days BUT I still love him with every fiber of my being. With this girl we are hard core enemies, I didn't care what she said because I had no connection in my heart with her. She didn't hurt me, and I don't think I hurt her, I didn't say anything hurtful anyways. I am still called to love her though, even though I have NO connection to her in my heart. I'm called to pray for her. That has been the hardest sitting down and praying for her. It shouldn't be, if I'm a pro at Loving others like I think I am. I guess I'm not as good at this as I thought I was. I guess you could say I hit a bump in the road on my journey to mending my spirit and finding the True Love God wants me to have. As the saying goes "We live and we learn" but I wish the learning process was a little bit easier than this.

If the person that this is about ever reads this, know that I'm sorry for my actions and I wish I could go back to last night and change words that were said on my part. God Bless you in everything that you do.

Peace. Love. Blessings.
Brittany Lauren <3

Loving Others.

I just got done Skyping with my lovely Mentor, it's really difficult for me to be so far away from her (she's in Florida for college). But she always gets me thinking, When I think about people who love others Elizabeth is the first person to come to my mind. I've known her since 8th grade, I met her the first time I attended my now home church and we became friends pretty much instantly. She is someone that I look up to and someone who inspires me. She is one of those people that I can share my deepest darkest secrets with and KNOW she doesn't judge me. When I first met her I was this awkward middle schooler who just wanted a friend and she showed me love by listening to me, and hugging me and taking me to star bucks. Tonight we skyped for two hours when she still had homework to do. I don't really know where I'm going with this paragraph, but I guess I wanted to let y'all know that I have an amazing sister/mentor who keeps me in line.

While I was talking to Liz I was thinking about witnessing and I also was thinking about loving others. My friend Zach preached to my youth group and he said "How much do you have to hate someone to NOT share the gospel with them" and that hit me hard, if we are to love others, why don't we share the greatest gift of True love with our neighbors and their neighbors and their neighbors neighbors. I've always heard the saying "You can't love others until you love yourself" I would think "yeah right" but recently I found that statement to be true. In loving ourselves we are accepting Christ's love for us. You can't stand in front of a mirror everyday and hate yourself and then turn around and say "Hey, God made you and he loves you just the way you are" No, because thats hypocritical. You must accept that God made you who you are and embrace it...humbly of course, their is always that line between seeing who you are and being prideful and conceited. My thoughts for this evening are this, Love yourself and love others don't be afraid to share your faith with someone, it's always worth it.

Peace, Love, & Blessings<3,
Brittany Lauren

True Beauty

True beauty has SO many definitions, models, tv stars, and musicians are what most people seek after when looking for beauty. To me, there is nothing more beautiful than a confident, happy, tender hearted girl. To me their is nothing more beautiful than a girl embracing her inner princess. To me there is nothing more beautiful than a sun dress and cowboy boots, flowers from someone you love,figure skating, or a horse running.

 But in all reality true beauty is Christ. True beauty is the cross and what Christ did for you and me on it. True beauty is when the prostitute washed Jesus' feet with her own tears and precious oils. True beauty is Ruth and Naomi who stayed together and were true friends. True Beauty is Esther humbling herself to her husband and asking him to save her people, even if it was to cause her own death. True beauty is Mary's faith in God when she was to give birth to His son. True beauty is when Mary of Bethany sat at the Lord's feet and listen to his teachings while Martha rushed around the house cleaning. 

There are so many examples of true beauty in the Bible, and I hope to live up to all of them someday in one way or another. For me, I take joys in the simple beauties: Mountains, rivers, animals, music, indie clothing, flowers in hair, and kind words. I felt like I needed to share with you what I've discovered true beauty to be, I know I want to be found beautiful. I've struggled with seeing my true beauty and worth for a long time, you see, I looked at the worldly definition of beauty and not my own inner beauty. I would see all these gorgeous girls on TV on CD covers and even at my own school and church. I didn't see that I was knitted together in my mother's womb by my Father in Heaven, I didn't see that I was fearfully and wonderfully made. I got my worth from compliments from people or from a boy telling me I was beautiful. I still sometimes struggle with realizing just who I belong to and just who gives me my worth. It is something that I lay down at the cross over and over again. God loves me and He loves YOU too.

Peace, Love, Blessings,

Brittany Lauren.

New Blog, New Motives.

I've tried this blogging thing before and it just didn't catch on. I used to write on baking, but I don't have time to bake anymore. What I do have time for, though, is God. God has taught me so many truths in just the past two weeks. I'm going to make a simple list of what I have learned and then elaborate on it (for the sake of my scatterbrained ADD self)

1. My best isn't always God's Best.
2. God never ignores a child with a broken heart
3. I can't change my past; but I can take what I learned and apply it to my future.
4. Friendships are a gift.
5. Girlfriends beat boyfriends ANY day!
6. It matters more what God thinks of me than what people think of me.
7. God's wants us and loves us and fulfills us more than any man ever could.
8.Heartbreak comes in waves, first you cry, then you get mad, and then you pick up your heart, give it to God and move on with life.
9. The choices I make now, WILL affect my life in the future.
10. God has a plan and call on my life RIGHT NOW. I don't have to wait until I'm in my 20's or 30's

These are the TOP 10 of what I learned over the past two weeks. I know there is a lot of stuff in my list about boys and relationships but that is because two weeks ago the man that I thought was the MY best broke up with me. I'm not telling you this for a pity party or for you to say "awwww poor Brittany" but to let you know WHY I'm growing in the Lord so much. I'm 17, just turned 17 two weeks ago. My boyfriend broke up with me six days before my birthday and it shattered me. I have NEVER felt so broken in my life. I literally laid on my face from 9:30pm till 3:30 am crying. (Again I'm not telling you this for you to feel sorry for me.) One of my sweet college aged friends called me at 2am to talk to me about everything, and honestly talking to her was what got me to this point. Minutes after I changed my relationship status to "single" on facebook I started getting text messages and facebook chats from people I hadn't talked to in two months (because during my relationship I was so focused on the boy that I didn't talk to anyone but him) my friends made me realize that I AM loved in a time when I was so desperate for love and I can't thank them enough for being there for me.

When I say that GOD'S best is better than MY best I mean this, Cooper was what I thought was best for me, I thought I knew what love was and therefore deserved my definition of love. God knows what REAL Love is and wants to fulfill it in me before I can truly Love a man. God's best for me right now is HIM and for me to be 100% in LOVE with him and to learn what True Love is by seeing what he did for me on the Cross and dying to myself every day.

God never ignores any of his children in general, but God has a special place for His heart for the weary and broken hearted. He never leaves us out in the cold. He becomes Abba Father and wraps us in his Holy arms for comfort. How COOL is that?! I mean really that the God of the universe cares about MY breakup! He cares about my hurt, my pain, and my heart. That is so precious to me, that the All Mighty God of the Universe cares about the little stuff.

I was talking to a friend this evening and she mentioned something about regret and I knew what I said back to her was God talking, because I never could come up with it myself, "learn from the mistakes you made this round and apply it to the next time. Can't change the past, might as well use it to make the future better" I made mistakes last round...but I'm applying what I learned to the next time I go out with someone. What's so important about not looking back to the past? In life you don't move forward by looking backwards, looking backwards only takes you in a circle. Examine what you messed up on and say "Okay THIS is what needs changing" and change it. Life is a whole lot easier if you don't repeat the stuff you messed up on.


Friendship is a gift, you don't earn it. If you earned it that would be awful, to constantly work for friendship. I have done NOTHING to earn the friendship of SO many people. I'm a generally kind person, but I also drip with sarcasm, and have a nasty temper when I want to. When I was distracted with this whole boyfriend business I talked to ZERO people. I didn't hang out with any of my girlfriends and if I did ask them for advice I would turn away and ignore it. I was a huge jerk pretty much. But once the relationship ended, like a I said before, SO many of my dear friends contacted me and made me feel so loved.


Oct 8th (my birthday) I went on a Girls Night Out with my church youth group. Just shopping with the girls, staying in a hotel, and iceskating ministered to me so much. I realized then that girl time is MUCH better than date night. Our pastor's wife came and spoke to us the next morning and shared so much of her heart with us. God sent her there to talk to us for me. I needed to hear everything she said. I went up and thanked her after her lesson and she gave me a huge hug, it's so amazing how a simple hug can minister to a girl with a broken heart. I've never felt so much love from a woman I hardly knew.


I'm going to skip number 6 and move on to number 7 and then I'm going to end this because its TOO long. GOD WANTS TO BE THE MAN IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW! How in the world could I know what love is if I don't let the GREATEST example of true love teach me!? For real, I mean, yes as a human I am capable of the emotion of love, but I want to love like Christ love. I want people to be able to look at me and say "she is shining with the Love of Christ." In order to fully understand love I need to let God love me. I need to let Him take the place of a husband or boyfriend right now and rely on him. I need to learn to TRUST Him to lead me to His best and not push Him away in order to get to my best. 


This is just a small summary of what is going on in my teenage brain. I hope to be able to continue blogging and sharing what I'm learning. The purpose of my blog name "Broken Heart, Mended Spirit" is that though a boy "broke my heart" it caused me to come broken before the Lord and for him to mend my spirit. Before the breakup I stopped attending church, but since then I started again and I feel truly wonderful. I pray that this hope, joy, and peace that I fill continues to stay with me for the rest of my life, but I know that will only happen if I continue to stay on God's path.


Peace, Love, and Blessings.
Brittany Lauren.