Natalie Wise - Happy Pretty Messy: Cultivating Beauty and Bravery When Life Gets Tough

Copyright 2017 by Natalie Wise

Illustrations by Emily Batchelder

I Have Confidence by Richard Rodgers, copyright 1964 Williamson Music (ASCAP), an Imagem Company, owner of publication and allied rights throughout the World. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

All poetry is by Natalie Wise unless otherwise indicated and was originally published in Darling Magazine .

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Abigail Gehring

Cover image courtesy of iStock.com

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-0941-6

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0942-3

Printed in China

Dedicated to my friends and family. I say with conviction: I choose you and

Im so glad we get to do life together.

Thank you for everything.

Contents

Introduction

B eauty and bravery. Tough words, right? But they are the foundation of a deep life and are well worth cultivating. And learned skills they are. Even if you were never taught how to live with beauty and bravery, dont fret. True, tending a life of purpose is no easy feat, and requires deep heart-work. But, oh, oh, it is worthy heart-work. A free heart is so joyful and light that it simply radiates beauty and bravery into the world. This is what we seek, to carry beauty, to be brave, to live with love and passion, and to let everyone know this: We are here. And for that, we dont apologize.

Living with beauty and bravery are often one and the same thing, and sometimes they are polar opposites. Sometimes beauty requires bravery and bravery requires beauty. Sometimes bravery and beauty each require the deep-down not-so-pretty stuff of life. But we go therefor the beauty that comes afterwards, for the beauty that is found in the soul of the human spirit, especially in suffering. We show up. We do the work. We get some dirt under our fingernails and on our hearts because that is the stuff of life, too.

I will go, I will stay, I will cry it out and breathe through it, and I will be purposely present, and I will be passionately patient, hard as it is. Ive been sifting through this idea of passionate patience in my heart. It comes from Romans 5:35, in the Message translation. I am here. No more lackluster living and loving. And Im really going to try to cool it on the anxiety thing.

I want to be beautiful and brave.

There, I said it out loud.

A builder-upper, not fixer-upper. A brave-hearted giver, lover, daughter, sister, friend. A beauty-filled beauty-finder who celebrates life because I deem it worthy of celebration. Who lives a happy-pretty-messy life, as I like to call it.

I want to be someone who says it out loud. Someone who speaks. Someone who gives voice to the vulnerability inside me so that others can embrace their own brave.

I want to tell you something else, too. I want to tell you this: Your life doesnt have to have a sad story. There are enough stories like that.

No one is hopeless. No one is utterly unloved. And if you feel like you are, come here. I will give you a hug, I will feed you, I will hand you coffee just come.

I am a writer and I wish I could change the words of many stories weve lived. I wish the version in my head played out on the streets and we all stood amazed at the fact that sometimes there are pink clouds on a blue sky in August. But sometimes it rains for weeks on end and we lose heart.

I have been where brave was nowhere to be found, where beauty seemed a distant concept. Im really nothing special. Im half tummy flab and bad decisions, another half bad jokes and bad timing. But I found my way back to brave. You can, too.

Its time now. Time to open our hearts. Take it all in, take it all in and move it around our hearts like salve for the weary soul. May this book be your guide to a heart wide open, a balm for your broken bravery, and a siren call of the best version of you there can possibly be: beautiful, brave, happy-pretty-messy. Sounds good to me. You in?

What is Happy, Pretty, Messy?

Happy, Pretty, Messy is my life motto. It signifies my philosophy for just about every area of life my heart, my style, my home. It is that extra something that some people carry with them. It takes everything in life, all the happy pretty things and all the messy things, and puts them under one banner: brave and beautiful. Its a spring in their step, a little bit of a breeze that seems to follow them wherever they go. Its a smile, always, and gumption, moxie, and grace for themselves and others. Its my version of the French joie de vivre . A conviction that life is good and worth living, mess and all. Its about bravery and stepping out on lifes uncertain terrain with certainty of ones self. What a beautiful thing.

It is all about adding beauty to the small things of everyday life. It is about being open but retaining the slightest bit of mystery. Its a way of being, a manner of self that offers beauty and intrigue at the same time. This is no easy trick to master, and involves a whole lot of self-confidence and assurance of ones own beauty and bravery. But once you get it, you get it: Happy, Pretty, Messy. Yes, please.

Calibrating One's Inner Self

THINK OF ALL THE BEAUTY STILL LEFT AROUND YOU AND BE HAPPY. ANNE FRANK

W e are fragile creatures, really. Sometimes we dont even realize our hearts are broken. It is this funny thing that we can be torn apart inside-out and not realize it, not admit it to ourselves.

I have been there. I have gone down that road that leads to destruction. My boyfriend of two years died very suddenly one spring Sunday morning. It was a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot to the lungs, about ten minutes after I had seen him. We had breakfast together that morning and I sent him to his apartment across the street (we lived directly across the street from each other, isnt that cute?) to get ready for church. He never came back to get me. He never came back.

I get it. I get that its really hard to do life with a broken heart. Sometimes nigh impossible it seems, and many deem it so. I mired in those thoughts for a while, realizing what drives people to vices, to madness, to self-destruction. Empty-hearted, quicksand grief that makes you want to spill your guts. Instead, we run until we puke, cut until we bleed, drink until we die enough ourselves. Grief is not pretty. Its pretty darn ugly and exposes the underbelly of your psyche. It hollows you out, blinds you, binds you up, and spits you back out.