The 100 Day Project is a creativity challenge. Many people do this on their own, and some as part of a group. There is a large community of people that I will be joining to complete the challenge beginning April 2nd and finishing July 10th.
If you follow my Instagram (@aleshablessed), you may remember that I participated last year. I did 100 days of storytelling, with the goal of telling short stories about my life everyday, in order to grow and explore my storytelling ability.
Although I stopped participating in the challenge around day 50, and I didn’t even complete every day up until then, I loved it. I felt my confidence, and I think, my skill grow throughout the challenge.
This year, I am taking on the challenge again, with the goal of finishing…not completing every day. But keeping on until the end. And my creative goal?
100 Days of Poetry
I plan to write a poem every day for 100 days, about whatever I want.
I have been writing poems since elementary school. I used to carry one of those tiny composition notebooks around so that I could spend the minutes waiting and the minutes in the car scribbling down tiny poems about cows and trees and whatever else ten-year-old Alesha thought about.
I’ve always thought my writing somewhat reflected that poetic bent from my childhood. But lately, I’ve wanted to lean in to that a bit.
And I wanted to write and actually share it again. Regularly.
If you want to follow along, you can join me on Instagram or wait and see the poetry “round ups” I post on here.
I hope, maybe, the poetry will inspire something in you. A reflection. An emotion. A prayer. A poem of your own.
I’m going to try to write more than just poems for the next four months, but even if I don’t write anything else, I am praying that the poems do the same thing all of my words are intended to do…
to reset your perspective with truth.
What is something you were obsessed with as a child that you would love to revisit? Why not?
I have a hard time slowing down enough to ponder and evaluate the past. I can agonize over my own mistakes and mess ups long enough, but truly revisiting the past in a fruitful and positive way is hard.
Maybe you can relate. It’s easier to forge ahead blindly than to slow down enough for an honest evaluation. But the past few years I’ve been learning the value of reflecting on both the good and the bad. So today, I’m taking a peek back at this year on the blog. I want to remember the journey I’ve walked these past twelve months and I want to share that remembering with you.
In January I was soaking up all the excitment of being pregnant and taking all the naps I could get. I was becoming more secure in my desire to write and finally understood why everyone kept saying that shriang your story is important…but I had my own reasons for finally agreeing. It took one, two, and three posts to share all that was on my heart.
In October, I attempted to write for 31 days on one topic…humility. My word for 2015 was humility and I knew that in becoming a mommy I would need lots of it. I truly needed this deep dive into humility, and although I only completed about 20 days of posts, it shaped my heart and soul dramatically.
And that is my year. It wasn’t an easy one, but it was an incredibly blessed one. I’ve experenced more growth and more joy in this year than I could possibly have imagined.
Despite the anxious nights and worried days that dominated parts of the year, I’m closing it out thankful and with an even greater assurance that God is good…so, so good.
I have a hard time slowing down enough to ponder and evaluate the past. I can agonize over my own mistakes and mess ups long enough, but truly revisiting the past in a fruitful and positive way is hard.
Maybe you can relate. It’s easier to forge ahead blindly than to slow down enough for an honest evaluation. But the past few years I’ve been learning the value of reflecting on both the good and the bad. So today, I’m taking a peek back at this year on the blog. I want to remember the journey I’ve walked these past twelve months and I want to share that remembering with you.
In January I was soaking up all the excitment of being pregnant and taking all the naps I could get. I was becoming more secure in my desire to write and finally understood why everyone kept saying that shriang your story is important…but I had my own reasons for finally agreeing. It took one, two, and three posts to share all that was on my heart.
In October, I attempted to write for 31 days on one topic…humility. My word for 2015 was humility and I knew that in becoming a mommy I would need lots of it. I truly needed this deep dive into humility, and although I only completed about 20 days of posts, it shaped my heart and soul dramatically.
And that is my year. It wasn’t an easy one, but it was an incredibly blessed one. I’ve experenced more growth and more joy in this year than I could possibly have imagined.
Despite the anxious nights and worried days that dominated parts of the year, I’m closing it out thankful and with an even greater assurance that God is good…so, so good.
I’ve walked through seasons of doubt and discouragement and bitterness and loneliness, each time turning to the Psalms. And each time, I’ve left with a radical shift in my heart and mind, a shift that has refocused my mind onto Jesus and restored hope to my heart.
The Psalms are my PERSPECTIVE RESET…and I wanted to share what I have learned with you.
I pray that as you study through these 28 Psalms you will find your perspective, however much or little it is off, being reset to truth, realigned with Jesus, and reprogrammed for hope.
If you would like to get the devotional, all you have to do is subscribe to the Alesha Blessed Newsletter. A few times a month you’ll receive some extra encouragement and a peek behind the scenes in your email inbox. I promise not to spam you and I pray that it encourages and blesses you each time you read it.
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I was fourteen when the idea first crossed my mind. We were sitting together, dressed in frilly dresses at a mutual friend’s birthday tea party. She had to leave early because she was heading to a lifeguarding class. As she went on about training for the swim requirements and the job she’d get at the end of the training, I had the thought, “Maybe I could do that when I’m fifteen.”
And somehow that fleeting thought turned into almost seven years of teaching group and private swim lessons and six years of professional lifeguarding throughout high school and college. It still amazes me when I think of all the responsibility dropped onto my fifteen-year-old shoulders when I took that lifeguarding course. I remember this weight of responsibility settling onto me…the chilling realization that since I was now educated in how to save people’s lives, I had made a choice to serve in a way I could never take back should the need arise.
Diffibrulator1
Probably the scariest thing we had to learn was how to administer electric shocks through a defibrillator. I still remember learning the two types of shockable heart rhythms: v-tach, abnormally rapid heart rhythm, and v-fib, irregular heart rhythm.
If you don’t fix the abnormal heartbeat quickly, oxygen won’t get to the brain and irreparable damage will occur…wait long enough, and the heart will quit beating altogether.
That’s how my heart feels spiritually at times. Like I’ve gotten off rhythm and I can’t find my way back to a normal beat. And I can feel the abnormal beating of my heart slowly sucking the life out of me spiritually.
But when your heart is beating a life-sucking, soul-destroying rhythm, where do you go for an electric shock to set it right?
I turn to the book of Psalms.
When I open the Psalms, it’s like an electric shock to my heart that’s beating off rhythm. It resets my perspective. It shocks my heart’s rhythm back into harmony with God.
The Psalms are a collection of prayers and songs and meditations before God. Their rawness mimics the broken beating of my own heart and the truth they proclaim shows me where I’ve gone off course.
I want to share what I’ve learned with you…and perhaps help you have a perspective reset of your own.
So I’ve written a 28-day perspective reset devotional based on some of my favorite Psalms. Each day will have a short reading from the Psalms, followed by a short devotional and action point…all truths that have helped me in my own times of brokenness.
The reading itself is brief, so you can probably complete it in 10 minutes on a busy day. But the action points and verse for meditation are designed so that you can settle in if you have more time. You can use those as a starting place to really dig deep into your heart and allow the Word to shift and reset your heart’s perspective.
The devotional is being released on August 11th, and is completely free when you sign up for my email newsletter. Don’t worry, I won’t spam you with email more than once or twice a month. My goal with that newsletter is to pull back the curtain a bit more so you can see deeper inside my life and I can pour encouragement into your soul.
I pray this Perspective Reset devotional encourages, challenges, and refreshes you.
I was fourteen when the idea first crossed my mind. We were sitting together, dressed in frilly dresses at a mutual friend’s birthday tea party. She had to leave early because she was heading to a lifeguarding class. As she went on about training for the swim requirements and the job she’d get at the end of the training, I had the thought, “Maybe I could do that when I’m fifteen.”
And somehow that fleeting thought turned into almost seven years of teaching group and private swim lessons and six years of professional lifeguarding throughout high school and college. It still amazes me when I think of all the responsibility dropped onto my fifteen-year-old shoulders when I took that lifeguarding course. I remember this weight of responsibility settling onto me…the chilling realization that since I was now educated in how to save people’s lives, I had made a choice to serve in a way I could never take back should the need arise.
Diffibrulator1
Probably the scariest thing we had to learn was how to administer electric shocks through a defibrillator. I still remember learning the two types of shockable heart rhythms: v-tach, abnormally rapid heart rhythm, and v-fib, irregular heart rhythm.
If you don’t fix the abnormal heartbeat quickly, oxygen won’t get to the brain and irreparable damage will occur…wait long enough, and the heart will quit beating altogether.
That’s how my heart feels spiritually at times. Like I’ve gotten off rhythm and I can’t find my way back to a normal beat. And I can feel the abnormal beating of my heart slowly sucking the life out of me spiritually.
But when your heart is beating a life-sucking, soul-destroying rhythm, where do you go for an electric shock to set it right?
I turn to the book of Psalms.
When I open the Psalms, it’s like an electric shock to my heart that’s beating off rhythm. It resets my perspective. It shocks my heart’s rhythm back into harmony with God.
The Psalms are a collection of prayers and songs and meditations before God. Their rawness mimics the broken beating of my own heart and the truth they proclaim shows me where I’ve gone off course.
I want to share what I’ve learned with you…and perhaps help you have a perspective reset of your own.
So I’ve written a 28-day perspective reset devotional based on some of my favorite Psalms. Each day will have a short reading from the Psalms, followed by a short devotional and action point…all truths that have helped me in my own times of brokenness.
The reading itself is brief, so you can probably complete it in 10 minutes on a busy day. But the action points and verse for meditation are designed so that you can settle in if you have more time. You can use those as a starting place to really dig deep into your heart and allow the Word to shift and reset your heart’s perspective.
The devotional is being released on August 11th, and is completely free when you sign up for my email newsletter. Don’t worry, I won’t spam you with email more than once or twice a month. My goal with that newsletter is to pull back the curtain a bit more so you can see deeper inside my life and I can pour encouragement into your soul.
I pray this Perspective Reset devotional encourages, challenges, and refreshes you.
