Hi my Gorgeous Friends in Christ!

I have been wanting to create a logo for this little corner of the internet for some time now. Yet, each time I worked on it, it never quite came out right.

Well, Wednesday morning at 3am, Maxwell our puppy, decided it was a good time to have a party. He was crying to get out and then crying to come in and then go out again. He was chewing up odd items that I kept taking away. He just turned 5 months old this week. He may look big, but he is still all puppy! Here’s a pic from about a week ago.

During his 3am party, I found myself awake and talking to Jesus. I was wide awake and felt inspired to try creating a logo once more. This time I used Canva. I have been enjoying this app! I am also currently creating small scripture cards using Canva as well.

As I played with fonts and layouts and colors, a logo was birthed. It includes the name of the blog and also encompasses the truth that it is God who names us.

I started this space in August 2016, and the name has been something I have gone back and forth about. In the beginning, I worried that people would read the title and move on thinking the site wasn’t for them.

But, it felt so right to name it Brave, Blessed, and Beautiful because in that season, God was revealing to me who I was based on His Word. And these three words were part of my daily affirmations that I was speaking over myself. I was coming out of a painful marriage. I was breaking free from old lies spoken into me since childhood, and I was learning to allow the Lord to breathe my true identity into me.

I was learning to speak life and truth over myself to fight against every lie the enemy had whispered and sometimes screamed into me. I was rising everyday and saying. “I am a child of the King. I am brave. I am strong. I can do hard things. I am blessed. I am a good mommy. I am beautiful because God made me. I am redeemed by Jesus Christ. I would get stuck when it came to believing that I really was brave and beautiful.

So I boldly named this site after my three hardest I am statements to believe. Then, I dedicated this space to helping others believe them too!!

When I first started writing, this site hadn’t quite transformed into a Christian blog yet. But Jesus knew what He was going to do with this space even before I did.

Here is what I wrote in a blog post from 2016 explaining the name.

Brave, blessed, and beautiful. What’s in a name? Everything. Names define us, and words either empower us or enslave us. The power of the word is mighty. Written words, spoken words, and even words left unspoken all have power.

Over the last year, I have become mindful of the power words have. They can be sweet and healing or sharp and deadly. I know the power of both types and I’m sure you do too. On my healing journey I am realizing the only person I have control over is myself. My words and my actions, so although I can’t force others to speak words of life, I can try my best to use my words for the healing of others and not for harm. Speaking words of life begins with how we speak to ourselves and then flows onto others.

I believe that women are brave, so brave. We face so many obstacles, storms, ever changing seasons, and the expectations society sets for how we should look, speak, act, or feel are unnattainable, unrealistic, and completely unfair. Just to walk the earth as a woman is an act of bravery. To grow in courage and in bravery is to become a woman intent on accepting and loving herself for the amazing, wonderful woman she is and to reject the pressures of society to be anything other than who she desires to be. Bravery is to love oneself.

I believe that women are blessed. Abundantly blessed. We have power inside each of us. Power to influence others through kindness, power to share, power to raise up families, power to influence our workplaces, power to speak words of life into eachother, and power to change the world. We are so abundantly blessed even in hardship. I know what the depths of pain feels like. I know what fear of the next minute feels like. I have known deep loss, deep dysfunction, and deep grief, and yet still I choose to call myself and other women blessed. We are blessed because even in the mire and the mud when your insides are screaming from the searing pain, there is blessing to be found. If not in the night of mourning, the blessing may come in the dawn.

The blessing is there, but sometimes we must mine for it amongst a deep trench of soaking mud. I know. I get it. It’s still hard. Let’s allow ourselves room to grieve the losses, room to cry in the mud puddles or mud ditches or vast muddy swamplands, yet when the season of mourning has ended, we can rise and find blessing.

Why beautiful? The beautiful part of the name was difficult. I wanted to remove it. I wrestled with that part. What will people think? Will they think I am saying I am beautiful? And who does that anyway? Who calls themselves beautiful? Here’s the raw and honest deal. Generally women don’t call themselves beautiful and honestly when someone else calls us beautiful, we blush and sometimes even disagree. Why? Why has society placed such a ridiculous amount of pressure on women to fit a certain mold of beautiful and also somehow made it taboo to believe in your own beauty? How cruel is that?

We are raising girls who can’t stand up tall and say with confidence and love, “I am beautiful.” This aha moment came to me during some honest, heartfelt conversations with two of my closest friends who both shared that when speaking their “I am” statements, they could not say, “I am beautiful.” I listened in awe to each of them and then shared, “me too….”

It was then that I began to think, “Have I ever had a friend or known a women who could honestly and confidently say, “I believe in my beauty. I am a beautiful woman.” ? I could not think of one person. Then I thought of my beautiful, amazing, innocent 6 year old daughter who spins and twirls and still believes in her beauty.

I realized I will fight for her to be able to always believe in her beauty. I will teach her to be a beauty warrior for herself, for her friends, and for any girl she meets that needs a reminder. Society has lied to us. They have sold us a big lie about what beauty is and what it’s supposed to look like. Not only that, I don’t know a single woman who feels like she has achieved society’s version of beautiful. That’s because it’s not real. It’s a lie that we must defeat in order to capture and believe the truth. We are beautiful women and we should be proud to say to one another, “I am a beautiful woman, and so are you.”

That was my heart four years ago when I began blogging, and it’s still my heart today. The difference in my posts now is they all point to Jesus.

And so as I designed this logo, it includes the truth that we can partner with being brave, blessed, and beautiful because the Lord Himself sees us that way. He is who names us and He is who designed us from head to toe, inside and out, personality traits and all!

So now, instead of writing for the sole audience of women, I write for all of the Gorgeous People of God!

And here is the new site logo. I added it to my previous two blog posts, so you may have already seen it!

Just another step taken with Jesus steadying my hand. He is good! He is good! He is good. And in every season I will declare it with my whole being. “He is gooood!”

Dear Heavenly Father,

Thank You for naming us. Thank You for defining who we are in Christ..We are redeemed children of the living God who are saved and set free. Help us to live out all of the names You call us and to break free from any name that is not from You. We praise You for choosing us to be Yours. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

Blogger friends, do you have a story or special meaning behind your blog name? I would love to hear! Feel free to share and add a link to your blog in the comments!

Blessings my Gorgeous Friends in Christ,