Beginning to Breathe

How does one start a blog? or a business?  It feels like you have to write a War and Peace-sized post to introduce yourself and to tell everyone why you're starting a blog.  And a business.  This blog is no different.  Except I can't possibly go back and tell you everything that has brought me here so I feel like we're just dropping a pin on this day in my life and moving forward.  But I do have to tell you what today is for me.  Today is so different from yesterday.  And the day before that.  I'm in a transition phase right now and it's both exciting and, honestly, scary as hell.  Everyone who has coached me has said that's exactly how I should feel right now.  (Okay, so we'll call that "success".)  And, that's where I am.

One of my favorite authors, Brene' Brown (whom I will quote with reckless abandon), penned, "You can choose courage or you can choose comfort, but you cannot choose both."  She is right.  I chose this.  I chose scary and humbling and difficult and exciting.  I chose this. 

MLV Interiors was originally to be the name of a design blog.  No, I'm not a certified designer.  I'm actually a certified accountant.  I left my job as a CFO of a large company to pursue something different.  Not necessarily better than...as this is not a competition and I have a whole lot of friends in the corporate world who I love and respect.  But God was nudging me and He had been for a long time to drop everything and walk away from that job to do something different.  He had a different plan than I had for myself.  Or maybe He saw potential in me that I didn't see in myself.  I don't know.  Either way, here I am.  I'm writing this blog.  This blog that I thought would be about design, but I decided the other day that if it was just a design blog, I would only be showing one little sliver of me to you.  I thought maybe MLV Interiors was not only about the interiors of houses, but about the interior of all of us.  So, this blog is about doing the really uncomfortable stuff in life, about being a professional and a mom all at the same time, about being a good team member in this "village" where we raise our kids, about those days when our hearts hurt, and about those days when we can't stop laughing.  I pray for a lot of laughter.  Oh, and I might even share some paint colors and wall tile on here, too.

To make such a drastic shift in careers, first I feel like I have to "unbecome".  Yes, I have stolen the meaning of that word from Glennon Melton, but it so perfectly describes what I'm going through right now.  I knew how to be a CPA.  That was easy because I had been one for so long.  But I don't know all the ins and outs of design.  Far from it.  In building a business around something that I'm so passionate about, I also realize that I have much to learn.  So, first, I must unbecome.  I must be vulnerable and humble and willing to learn from my experiences.  That is hard to do when you're at the top of your game in one field and starting at the bottom in another, but part of me is ready for this.  I'm very excited and eager to learn a new business.  I'm excited to peel back and shed all the layers and unbecome what I am so I can become something new.

This transition has allowed me some time and space to breathe.  Peeling back the layers and shedding the old me has granted me the space and time to just... breathe.  Even as I write that word... breathe... I can't help but think how unimportant that word was to me a couple of years ago.  There was always time to breathe later.  Until I couldn't.  I couldn't find my breath.  When you can't breathe, it doesn't matter the benefits or the lifestyle or the "what will people say?" any longer.  All you care about is the life-giving oxygen that your body and mind desperately craves.  God made it clear to me that if I would quit supplying my own oxygen, He would provide the oxygen I needed.  And I was finally able to breathe.

So, I'm learning to breathe and doing lots of things differently.  I'm going to unbecome so I can become again.  I am going to peel away the layers and allow the raw, unrefined, vulnerable me to connect with friends who are probably going through some of the same challenges as me, but didn't know they could or how to talk about it.  Maybe there are some other people out there learning how to breathe just like me.  Or maybe there are some new friends out there who just need help picking out new lamps for their guest room.  Either way, I'm excited about the launch of MLV Interiors.