Hi there, thank you for taking time to read this post. Time sure flies by and we are already in July! For Americans, we celebrated Independence Day yesterday and it was fun to hear firecrackers going off in my neighborhood. I'm just grateful my lovable cat wasn't bothered by the noise. I began my journey of simplicity a little over a decade ago and have noticed that I don't celebrate holidays, birthdays, or anniversaries as elaborate as I use to when it comes to material elements. I started to shift my focus more on the intangible things that a specific holiday may mean to me.

Therefore, I wanted to share with you what Independence Day mean to me. When I think of Independence Day, I think of freedom and God's grace in my life. Without His grace and the compassion of Christian missionaries who sponsored my childhood family from Cambodia to the United States, I would've remain in a country during a time in which it was recovering from the devastation of being overtaken by a socialist, communist regime. I wouldn't have been afforded rights that I've been blessed with and privileged to have. I wouldn't have had access to awesome opportunities and, for these things, I'm grateful to be an American. But if I was to dig deeper in regard to freedom, what is most important to me is the freedom that I have when I place my faith in God and I'm thankful to be a child of God. So, even if your story is filled with simplicity and isn't filled with tragedies, I hope that you may see, that there is freedom in loving Jesus and there is always hope when we place it in His hands. Thank you for reading my words and make it a creative day today. Image captured, 2011.

Since I was a young girl, I've had such a fascination with words and enjoyed writing poetry, journaling or putting my thoughts on paper. Realizing that it was due to my introversion that I find I express myself better on paper (or keyboard keys) than in spoken words was a relief. Lately, life has been challenging and in the busyness of it all, I had to learn to slow down once again. Navigating a chronic illness definitely requires one to slow down. And despite these challenges, I'm grateful to learn to slow down and I'm excited to be able to return to writing when the days aren't so hard. A few months ago I started to write poetry and focused on Haiku poetry, as it uses less words but still challenges creativity. Read more about Haiku here and I hope that you'll challenge yourself and try writing one too. Here's a Haiku I wrote as a tribute to the winter season, which is usually a challenging season for me: