Tag Archives: lauren lankford

July Discoveries

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Last month, I gave you my June discoveries. All the beautiful things I’d found in June. Today, I’m committing to making that a regular deal. And as I said last time, please please please let me know if you’ve found something wonderful you’d like to share with me. I am waiting, with arms wide open, to embrace some amazingness.

Here’s July’s list.

Baking For Good. I subscribe to Lindsey Pollak’s blog because she’s amazing and is my biggest resource for all things Generation Y career-related. She interviewed Baking For Good’s founder Emily Dubner a few weeks ago. I’m a sucker for baked goods, so anyone who bakes sweets and then lets the buyer choose which charity to donate 15% of the profits to wins me over.

Jessica Swift’s Kickstarter project. Bright patterned rainboots with mysterious empowering messages scrawled inside. What’s not to love?

Forever’s Not So Long. I found this short film (with its busload of accolades) on StumbleUpon and fell in love. If the world was about to end and you just got dumped, how would you spend your last 9 hours on Earth?

Make It Mad Love. I’m a big fan of both Lauren & Max. Take two beautiful writers and social media pros, a design guru, and some serious faith in God and you’ve got a recipe for one of the greatest love stories yet. Read their story, sign the guestbook, restore your faith in the institution of marriage.

John Green’s vlog channel. He talks faster than the speed of light and conquers everything you’d ever want to know. I fell in love with his books after Paper Towns made me laugh out loud while reading for the first time in, well, my life.

I’d bring you sugar. You could borrow flour. Hannah’s awesome. Let’s just leave it at that. This post kills me because I’m growing up and have an unhealthy addiction to Target. And the Internet has been a serious game-changer for many of us.

Save The Words. My mother’s turned me into a word lover. Words go extinct like dinosaurs when they’re not loved. Adopt a word.

Blaine Hogan. I watched the video about his digital release of UNTITLED: Thoughts On The Creative Process and instantly knew he knew what he was talking about. Even just the video will give you plenty to think about.

25 Quotables from the 99 Percent Conference. I love the 99 percent. If you’ve never been on it, go now. These quotes from the conference deserve to be plastered on any creative’s wall for inspiration and moments when perspiration outweighs that inspiration.

Found Magazine. Found something on the street next to your car? A slip of paper blown onto your doorstep? Send it in. The whole concept started with one note from an angry, possibly jealous, girlfriend.

That’s all for July. What did you discover this month?

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.

If Jesus had a car thousands of years ago, you think he would've passed that up in favor of walking across the desert for 40 days?

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My mom never told me not to talk to strangers on the Internet. If she had, my life would’ve turned out drastically different.

my own road trip through virginia

My dad wouldn’t have driven me—on his 40th birthday—to a golf course down the road from our house where I would, presumably, meet a boy I’d never met face-to-face. Running on pure faith that he wasn’t a child molester.
Well, maybe not that much faith. He turned out fine.

I don’t remember how it started six years ago. The beginning doesn’t matter.

What matters is that my parents have, for as long as I can remember, trusted me to befriend the right people. Whether they live 20 minutes or 20 hours away. Doesn’t much matter.

The fact is, I’ve met so many wonderful people through this crazy Internet thing. And a lot of them are doing absolutely awesome things with their lives.

But I have a little story about two of them for you—Lauren and Max—who know a bit more about blind faith than my 16-year-old self did, standing in a golf course parking lot on a hot August afternoon.

More than two months ago, Max decided to travel the country. Counting on the kindness of strangers to carry him from one end of America to the other. And about a month ago, he stopped in the middle of Ohio to pick up Lauren—a girl he fell in love with through the Internet—for the ride. The two of them are devout Christians with a love so intense it puts a lot of people to shame. A lot of people.

And as they drive through the country on a wild road trip that many openly disapprove of, I am giving them major credit. Because even though I have never met these two wonderful individuals, they taught me one of the most valuable lessons:

That Christianity does not demand perfection. That to sin is to be human.

I’ve lost my way, steering toward all the other directions in life that are screaming out with flashy lights and bright colors for me to come toward them. They’re more exciting, more real, more right-here-and-now-oh-yeah. I have trouble sitting still, reading a book that wasn’t published within the last ten or fifteen years, and going on blind faith that in order to be a good Christian, you don’t have to be perfect.

For some reason, it doesn’t matter that making mistakes is in our nature, or that I’ve heard people write that and tell me that hundreds of times. Even Miley Cyrus. Or should I say Hannah Montana?

For the girl who makes her share of mistakes on a daily basis – yes, daily – but has a boatload of trouble accepting herself for them, this is a big deal. World changing thinking. My shins will thank you for stopping me from kicking them (figuratively speaking, of course).

Nobody who wanders the world on the generosity of others has everything perfectly tied up. And neither does someone who jumps in the car to follow, ready and willing to leave her city behind. But that’s good. That’s what’s real.

They don’t devote every single moment of their lives to other people. They devote a lot, but not all of it. They’ve both stumbled through moments in their pasts and they’re both trying to figure out what they want in this world, but they know they’ve got God in the backseat, making sure everything is safe.

They have houses to crash at, friends to depend on, and love to hold onto and spread out. And you know what? If Jesus had a car thousands of years ago, you think he would’ve passed that up in favor of walking across the desert for 40 days? Yeah, didn’t think so.

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.

"Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I've ever known."

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day 30 – a letter to your reflection in the mirror

Look at yourself in the mirror. You look almost the same as you did three months ago, don’t you? You cannot always see the progress that results from ninety days’ time, but it’s real.

via weheartit.com

I am a result of a collection of the wonderful human beings who take a few seconds out of their day to acknowledge my presence. To admit that I exist. I’m a part of their life. I don’t think any of them realize how wonderful that it.

I have a best friend who calls me every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:30 in the morning. Sometimes, I reach for the phone and it starts ringing.

I have a sister who keeps me looking (somewhat) fashionable. Parents who believe in the power of a liberal arts education but wouldn’t stop me from doing whatever my heart desires after college.

I have dreams that reminded me to roll out of bed on last Tuesday at 7 in the morning when I didn’t have class at all that day. And strangers who offer advice and insight in 140-character segments.

I have an ex-boyfriend who taught me how to fall in love and heal back together.

I have a friend in the middle of the Bronx who has offered writing and sheer strength to heal my wounds of depression and self-hatred.

I have a musical idol whose heart-on-her-sleeve attitude reminds me to do the same. To write these words now.

I have a God who keeps me from careening into oncoming traffic. A gymnastics coach who taught me how love can change the world.

I have been bullied by girls who remind me why I love being different.

I have a best friend who keeps me in her life despite all the strings tugging her into the Real World. A roommate who decided to love me before she even met me. A friend in Canada who taught me that age doesn’t matter when it comes to friends and that wisdom is invaluable.

I have friends from my childhood who taught me how to be a flexible parent someday and how to take giant risks.

I have a friend in Ohio who taught me how to take initiative if I want to see the world change and reminded me of the power of verbal affirmation.

I have friends in North Carolina who love my sister the best way they know how.

I have a friend whose indecisiveness about me has taught me how to be firm in my own feelings and actions.

I have a track team who taught me to believe in magic, persistence, and the power of the underdog.

I have a best friend who deserves to live in California, far away from the destructive people in her life.

I have three beautiful and talented cousins who taught me to believe in miracles, and a stranger who showed me the power of a mother’s love. A friend in Wisconsin who changes the world each week in less than 15 minutes.

I have a best friend who’s been a big part of my life from 300 miles away and who is always there for me without question.

And I have me. I am the only Kaleigh Erin Somers you will ever meet. I’m almost sure of that.

What do you have? Who are your people? What are their lessons?

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.

Girl, 23, makes impression sans cement truck.

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letter 18 – the person that you wish you could be

Dear Lauren Lankford,

I don’t know your favorite color or your biggest fear. I don’t know what the seven-year-old version of yourself thought you wanted to be when you grew up or if you wanted to be anything at all. I don’t know anything about where you came from or how you survived your teenage years.

But I do know the small segment of your life that you choose to share with the world. And I do know that by sharing your heart, your energy and your time, you’re changing things. In a big way.

via laurennicolelove.blogspot.com

When I was eight, I wanted to be 16. And then it was 18. And then 20, now 21. I’m almost there, but sometimes, I want nothing more than to be 23.

There’s two and a half years, hundreds of miles, and a world of experiences separating us. And there’s no eloquent or diplomatic way to say this, but I’m jealous of you.

There are days when I wish I was my best friend who has the comfort of living at home still. There are other days I wish I was my little sister, just starting off her freshman year of college, anticipating four years of opportunities. But most of the time, there are days that I want to be out in the world making a difference.

If I had the nerve to hijack a cement truck, spreading the sticky concoction all over cracked sidewalks, it wouldn’t patch this small hole in my heart. I could snap a twig from a nearby tree branch, etching my initials into the wet mess if I wanted to leave an impression, but it wouldn’t be the right one.

You have got the impression-making down to a science. A science that throws out the principles of modern chemistry and biology. Instead, you favor the chemistry of love and the biology of the human heart.

Someone once told me that the people who have the least to give are usually the ones who give the most. You are no exception. You give hours and hours a week to perfect strangers whose stories capture you through words on a page. People whose faces you know through a computer screen. But that doesn’t stop you from loving them.

Your energy and excitement about the Love Bomb project has attracted an impenetrable army of equally passionate and loving individuals who corral together each week to instill hope in a lost soul.

That’s why I want to be 23 and driven. Twenty-three with a voice, a project, a mark of goodness on the stained scraps of the world. The faraway corners that are more comforted by darkness than light. The neighborhoods who do not believe in an endless repertoire of Tomorrows following such dreary and desperate Todays.

You have so very many talents and you do not hoard them for your own purposes. You photograph all the beauty and love in the world. You are a storyteller, a decorator, a designer, an artist. An eternal optimist who continues to remind me that we are not who we were in the past, but who we wish to be today and every day from now on.

I can only hope to be halfway to someone like you in two and a half years.

Love,
K

Side Note: Kellie just interviewed me for Exposure Worthy and posted it yesterday. I totally freaked out when she asked me. So excited.

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.