A Girl and Her Heart: Girl, Meet World [BIRTHDAY release!]

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I could not be more excited to introduce you to A Girl and Her Heart. TODAY is the release day in celebration of my favorite HEART, and the fact that we are LIVING a miracle

Girl, meet World.

video-linkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R4foBqY7ME

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Also, a SPECIAL BIRTHDAY OFFER.

For every order this week that includes the note

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY JASON”, Jason and I will BOTH autograph your copy.

(available only on orders through this site – silly Amazon won’t let me into their warehouse)

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Also available at

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(just remember, I can’t add anything extra, adorable, or extra-adorable to Amazon orders)

 

 

 

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Last Day to Pre-Order and Win some of this Girl’s Favorite Things

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The final giveaway for release week A Girl and Her Heart includes a few of my favorite things, like a Tee of your choice from Tacos and Tees and Road to Hana loose-leaf tea from Tranquil Tea Lounge. ALL entries from this week will be included PLUS you can still enter today by sharing and tagging – bonus entries with every PRE-ORDER before midnight tonight. Winner announced tomorrow 😘

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On Being Enough. And being Beloved. (spoiler alert, you’re already both)

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When I wrote A Girl and Her Heart, I was listening. Finally. To the still small voice that was fighting through all my noise and hurts and was asking me if I really believed I was enough.

And here again, on the most beautiful of mornings, with incredible things to celebrate like, oh you know, LIFE and BIRTHDAYS and BOOKS, I have to pause and hear that voice again. Because it’s still saying the same thing. Do I really believe I am enough? It’s tricky, the more you put a message into the world, the more you have to fight to believe it.

Because there are just so. many. other. voices. And they tell us that we need to BE … something. Something more. Something else. Something ‘better.’ Something _______. It’s an ever-moving target.

Last month I had breakfast with a very successful and well-respected Attorney here in Orange County. He was telling me a story of an earlier ‘failure’ in his career. He started to say, “I’m embarrassed to tell you this …” and then stopped himself and said (“No, I’m not embarrassed. That’s not my name. I’m Mark, the Beloved.”) as if in a parenthetical.

At the time, I thought it was kind of a corny exercise – especially to do out loud. In front of a stranger.

I’ve been doing it ever since.

Because oh my goodness, THAT is the word the Father’s voice is speaking. And it already tells us exactly what we need to be. Be loved. Because you are. Without anything extra. Without anything you can add or do. You are so, so loved. Because I am. I am so, so loved. Without being something else, something more, something ___________________. We are BELOVED.

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And we need to hear it over and over again. And sometimes, we need to hear our own voice repeating this truth. Out loud. No matter how corny it might feel.

We need to practice this Big Truth and preach it to ourselves, even if it sounds silly: “No, I’m not Brooke the Author/Wife/Friend/Boss. I’m Brooke the Beloved.”

I’m not ________, the Athlete, I’m the Beloved.

I’m not ___________, the Straight-A student, I’m the Beloved.

I’m not __________, the Mom. I’m the Beloved.

So participating in today’s giveaway is going to be a bit harder than the rest – a bit more risky, a bit more vulnerable, and a lot more powerful: It will mean being this voice to each other and to ourselves. Practice telling yourself that you are already enough. You are ______, the BELOVED.

I’ll be practicing and preaching right along with you.

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And also, I think giveaway competitions can be kind of corny too. But I’m trying them this week because they are a tool, and because I want to get this message to as many big and little hearts as possible. And because I want a way to say THANK YOU to everyone who’s helping spread it. So in that spirit, here’s how to enter TODAY’S GIVEAWAY:

  • Share this Big Truth on your Facebook or Instagram. You can use this image or a selfie.
  • Use this caption or something like it: “In a world with so many competing voices, I’m listening to the One that tells me the Truth: that I am enough. That I am the Beloved.”
  • Use the hashtags #iamenough #iambeloved #agirlandherheartbook
  • Tag girls who you want to tell: YOU ARE ENOUGH. YOU ARE BELOVED. One extra entry for every friend you tag – and when you tag them, they are automatically entered to win too.

Entries close at 9pm (pst) tonight because … vacation. And now, I’m going hiking.

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So there’s this Girl [new book giveaway!]

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So there’s this Girl. And I love her. And I’m so excited for you to meet her.

I met her about six years ago as I was living her story. The story of a Girl who needed to remember some big things. Some big truths – like who she is, Whose she is, and what makes her heart truly beautiful. She needed to remember that she’s enough without any of love’s trinkets. Because love itself is already hers. Priceless love. Without cost. And timeless beauty. Without expiration.

So I took this Girl to meet an artist friend of mine, the amazingly talented Jenny Lewis. And she loved her too. And she poured that love onto page after page of beautiful hand-drawn illustrations.

And now, thanks to the cheerleading of countless friends … A Girl and Her Heart is ready to meet you! This is the first illustrated storybook of a series I’ll be releasing under Big Truths for Little Hearts – and it’s only right that this first one starts with the core, the heart of everything, reminding us that love and beauty don’t start with us: they are gifts we receive and share.


This Girl is ready to bring those big truths into the hearts of all the littles – and bigs – YOU love. She releases on October 23, 2016, in honor and celebration of my Jason’s (miraculous) birthday.

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So it’s BIRTHDAY WEEK! Which means GIFTS – I’ll be drawing a name each night to GIVEAWAY an autographed copy of A Girl and Her Heart! Watch every day for how to enter.

ENTER TODAY’S GIVEAWAY:

One entry for each of the following:

  • Comment below
  • Share on your Facebook or Instagram
  • Tag girls who you want to tell: YOU ARE LOVED, SO LOVED, JUST FOR BEING YOU!
  • One entry for every friend you tag – and when you tag them, they are automatically entered to win too! (Be sure to tag me too so I can count it!)
  • Entries close at 7pm every night (PST). You can also skip the wait and GO PRE-ORDER HERE. Books will ship immediately after October 23 and I’ll personally sign every pre-order 
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That Walk Around The World: Dreams > Plans

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Ten years ago today we started a walk that took us around the world in 225 days.

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Sometimes it seems like yesterday. Other times like someone else’s life.

But as the sweet naïve babies that we were (look at that natural hair color, I mean come on!), we hiked up our backpacks and set off. We had one-way tickets and dreams that were much bigger than our plans. We wanted to see the world. And it was before the days you wanted the world to see you back. We were anonymous. Our cell phones didn’t work where we were headed, we took pictures on actual cameras, and WiFi was still relegated to Internet Café’s. Blogs and Facebook were barely a thing, and Instagram/Twitter/SnapChat weren’t even a sparkle in Social Media’s eye. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? It was.

I remember surrendering my phone to a friend as she dropped us off at LAX and snapped this picture. I remember thinking I felt a little lost without it as we wandered into the airport and I knew I’d be without that lifeline for the next eight months. And it was a flip phone.

So, my hair color isn’t the only thing that’s changed in the last ten years.

And I decided that in honor of this ten-year-mark, I’ll be recounting our steps, wandering back down the cobbled streets of Istanbul and Jerusalem and re-climbing Table Mountain and the Great Wall and remembering the sights and sounds and, yes, even the smells of that walk. Because I need to remember that dreams can be bigger than plans.

So I invite you to join me over the next 225 days – I’ll post some old photos, some old blog posts from the trip, and every now and then some current perspective. Some of the what-I-know-now stuff that I would tell my sweet 27 year old self. Though Lawd, I don’t think I’d tell her everything. I wonder, sometimes, if she would have wanted to know that ten years after strapping on that backpack, she’d know the loneliness of an empty womb, and the rythym of a heart monitor. Or that she’d see life restored in both of those places. That she’d be living a miracle. Or that she’d be living in a terrifying SNL skit about the 2016 Presidential Ballot.

I think she would have curled up into a fetal position. I know that’s how she felt about just reading up on Dengue Fever and the other diseases they were told they might encounter in their travels. Which they did. Fears came true. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Because today, today is about those dreams. Those sweet doe-eyes of ours that dared to dream of a year spent walking around the world. And then did it. You guys, it was so fun. And so hard. And so great. And so tough. And so something I’d like to talk myself into again. It could happen.

Our plans were about as simple as they come. We sold our stuff. Filled our backpacks. Bought a few one-way plane tickets to places where we knew some faces. We didn’t even have all the places mapped out. We just knew our first few stops. We bought our plane tickets in stages, once we knew when and where we were headed. Yeah, I wanna do that again. For reals, though. Who wants us to come visit?

From the very first inkling of the idea, we knew we wanted the trip to be about people, and a puzzle started taking shape that involved missionaries and teachers and ex-pats and locals and different faiths and very different foods and, well, maybe one of the most beautifully relational years of our lives.

And today, this week, this year, I just need to remember that dreams CAN be bigger than plans. That plans are good and right and responsible things, but they are also inherently smaller than what we can dream. Because a plan is something you can figure out. A dream is usually something you can’t.

So I invite you to join me. In re-living one dream and exploring others. In asking yourself what dreams are bigger than your plans? And if you don’t have any, to open your heart to something that’s bigger than what you can figure out. Because maybe, just maybe, I’m not the only one who needs that reminder today.

Because the plans were oh so small. But it was the dream that took us around the world.

 

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