Trisha Mugo

Real Grace. For Real Life.

Laugh or Cry—Just Live Your Crazy, Quirky Life

by 8 Comments

me and mike

“Just be. Do you know how to just be?” my mother asked as I jetted out the door.

“I’ll try,” I said, waving goodbye to my kids.

Truth is I’m not so good at “being.” I’m a doer who loves to keep moving. Perhaps you are too.

When busyness beats heavy on our lives, sometimes we need to push away and find a quiet place. For me that happened a couple weeks ago at the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference.

I even took the time to watch the Chewbacca Mom’s video. (I practically live under a rock, so you know that the entire internet saw this video.)

When I saw Candace Payne laughing hysterically, I didn’t need for the successful authors to explain personal branding to me. Candace’s video brought it all home. Just be yourself, your crazy, quirky self.

Just be.

For me, this means I need to lay aside people-pleasing.

Last week at church, I heard Matt Chandler preach this thought-provoking sermon, where he said all our idols stem from four basic sources:

  1. Comfort
  2. Control
  3. Approval
  4. Power

While I might struggle with all four, the approval idol holds a stranglehold on my life. It keeps me measuring up to other people’s standards. It ruins authenticity and shatters confidence.

Here’s the thing about idols. The devil doesn’t want us to see the ways our hearts crave and praise other things. He loves busyness because it masks our idolatry.

Those five days I spent at the writer’s conference gave me time to pause and listen to the silent driver behind so many of my decisions. So much of my fear is rooted in the idol of approval.

Finding some breathing room in the midst of life’s chaos also means we can reconnect with the One who conquered sin—the stunning One that heals and cleanses us of idolatry.

At the conference—besides running smack dab into my disease to please—I cried a lot. I even broke down crying in front of several well-known authors.

I cried tears of joy at the realization I’m not the only struggling writer. I broke down in frustration. I wept as I laid down the writing/approval idol.

I even teared up during pitches to agents and publishers, too. You know what? I don’t even care if everyone remembers me as “that weepy girl.”

It was real. Turns out just being requires honesty. Maybe Candace Payne has raucous laughter, and I have buckets of tears?

God wants to set us free moment by moment as we live and breathe in His presence.

What are some ways you can slow down and create some breathing room in your life?

How to Hit Home Runs in Real Life

by 1 Comment

Don't LoseFocus

I remember the heat, the red dirt of the field, and my coach feeding the yellow softball into the pitching machine.

And with an explosion of power and a WHACK—the ball soared over the center field fence.

Instant home run. Oh, how I wished that had happened during an actual game.

With raised brows—and grabbing a ball from the bucket—my coach simply said, “Let’s try it like that again.”

I never did. Sure I had great hits afterward, but I never hit the ball over the fence again.

Maybe I lacked the muscle, talent, or discipline. I don’t know.

A decade and a half later I’ve begun to see that hit as hundreds of variables colliding in just the right way—like an amateur golfer who hits his first hole-in-one.

The conditions lined up—the right pitch, speed, and wind. The perfect swing of the right bat meeting the ball at just the right spot, that “sweet spot.”

Life is like this, isn’t it? Sometimes circumstances line up, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity opens to us—a great job or running into the person you end up marrying.

On that day 15 years ago the only thing I really did right was to keep my eyes trained on the ball.

Focus.

Keep your eye on the ball. It’s simple advice that coaches hand out in T-Ball dugouts.

Though I haven’t touched a bat in years, I need this maxim now more than ever. Work, marriage, and motherhood grapple for my attention, and it’s easy to operate in emergency mode, where I lose myself to the day’s distractions.

Sometimes I convince myself that I control outcomes, but I know the only thing I really control is my level of focus.

Maybe your own dreams are sidelined, and it’s time to prioritize them again. Share on X

We can work on our swing, sure, and improve our technique. But maintaining focus seems to trip up even the most practiced athlete.

Staying focused requires a mental fortitude, what my longtime coach and mother always called, “mental toughness.”

We must practice the art of training our eyes on the ball. But even still, every batter reaches a point where the ball falls out of their peripheral vision. Around mid-swing or so, batters must rely on muscle memory and . . . chance.

After every swing, there are only two outcomes—a hit or a strike. All we can do is try to connect with as many pitches that come our way, and know that God is in control of the outcomes.

And even if we strike out, we need to go down swinging. Because in the game of life, there’s always another pitch coming.