Elora Nicole Ramirez's Blog, page 23

a mom with a dream

Dear One,

When you announce your entrance into this crazy dance called motherhood, there is going to be cheering and laughter. There will be parties! With presents! And hugs, and tears, and crying and congratulations. Then, there will be questions, so many questions. What are you having? Do you have a name? Are you planning a natural birth? Have you considered birthing in water? Are you going to breastfeed? (Get ready for it darling, perfect strangers will ask you about your breasts in the middle of the cereal aisle.) Is it an international adoption? What country are you going through? Can you accurately express for me your views on adoption ethics in three minutes or less? 

Beware the questions that are only asked as an opening to an opinion you do not want. The follow up opinions will be frequent. You can’t name your baby that. You really should consider natural birth. You will ask for the epidural when the labor starts! Breast is best! My kids were raised on formula and they are fine!

People will have opinions about sleeping and eating and baby carriers and strollers. There will be endless debates about breasts and bottles, epidurals and water births, the merits of open adoption. I don’t have any advice about any of that. I only have my story. I know what worked for me and you will learn what works for you. Listen closely, you have the answers inside. You are, after all, the mom God picked out special just for that perfect babe of yours. And lovely new mom, there is grace, oh so much grace in the motherhood dance, there is permission to get it wrong.

But there is one thing they will tell you that I am sure is wrong. There is one piece of advice that I will hand out freely and earnestly to anyone who will let me put it into their hands. Bring your whole self to motherhood, even the creative pieces, even the messy parts covered in paint and ink, soaked in un-attained dreams. Your baby needs their momma to dream.

Some will tell you to fold up your creativity, to tuck it away safely into a box labeled “maybe when the kids are bigger” and hope for the best in ten plus years. There are those who tell you that this time filled with onesies and blankets, binkies and bottles is the time when the creative piece of yourself will need to go dormant. There simply is not time. 

Don’t listen to that garbage. I may not know whether or not you should work, but I am sure your child needs their whole mother. All of her. If you are a painter, paint, if you are a writer write, if you are a culinary genius bake it out (and send me a care package, I’ll leave you my address.) Your babies need all of you, even the creative part, especially the creative parts, the parts that make you feel alive and whole and hopeful. Your babies need their momma to be all of those things. They need to see you being your whole entire self. It gives them permission to be their whole-selves too.

As mothers we have the responsibility to keep our children safe and fed and mostly clean. But we have the privilege to show them a wild and free life with a God who delights in our offerings. Don’t let yourself be put into a box that you don’t fit into simply because it is labeled “what a mom looks like.” You already are a mom, you are what a mom looks like now.

I am learning all of this too. I am learning to put away the dreams of writing by the seaside with nothing to hear but the tide coming in and my own thoughts swirling in my head. I declare that chaos is my muse and crank up the Pandora kids station. I am interrupted mid-sentence by a one year old begging for a dance party. I shove away the fear that all my thoughts will be gone and throw her on my hip. I trust that the words will be there when I can come back to them and watch the naked three year old learn to shake her hips. If the words aren’t there when the dance is over, I find something new. I am learning to trust that my creativity can shout over the chaos. It can if I let it.

Some days, when I am sure I am at the end of my rope and ready to pack all of my dreams in, I instead shake them off and spread them wide. I call my husband, my sister, my friend, and beg for a few hours at the coffee shop. I invest in myself, in my creativity. 

Lovely lady, your sons and daughters need a mom who values herself as a woman, as a creative, who values her whole life just the way she was created to live it. All of what you do every day is valuable, and it is good and wonderful to pour value into it. Even when it feels silly and frivolous, maybe especially then.

So here’s to you and your wonderful news, you are entering this crazy dance called mother hood. May our babies grow up and proclaim, of course moms paint and write and dance, mine did! If we have to sacrifice a picked up living room some days or pick up a pizza to get there, if we have to begin our great works using the moments after bedtime with blocks under our feet, so be it.

Love, 

Abby - a mom with a dream

 //

Abby lives and loves in the city of Atlanta. She has two hilarious children and a husband that doubles as her copy editor and biggest fan. If two in diapers and a full time job teaching English at a local high school don’t keep her busy, you can find her blogging at accidentaldevotional. Abby loves all kinds of Girl Scout cookies, and carries a dream of one day writing a book about teaching in her heart.

 

cover reveal :: every shattered thing.

I texted Kelly, my publicist, yesterday afternoon.

"So how does this whole cover reveal thing work? I can post the cover at midnight, right?"

She promptly texted back. "Nope. I'll email you the times." 

I laughed. Even after being in the publishing world for over a year, there's still so much to learn. So I told her  "I wouldn't trust anyone else with this, you know." And it's true. This manuscript still holds so much of my heart—maybe even more through the edits. I cried when I got the new cover art from Sarah, and when I figured out the new title, I whispered it to a friend and she broke out in this huge grin. 

"Elora. It's perfect. Keep it."  

And so I did. 

So much of this re-release has been a community effort, and I'm so thankful for the bloggers who posted the cover reveal on their site today. Twenty-nine of them said yes to hosting my novel, and I am thrilled and giddy and nervous and the butterflies haven't left my gut since Kelly told me yesterday.  

It's happening, y'all. Stephanie's story is spreading. Mark it on your calendars? It releases August 27.

Here's how you can help --  

Add it on Goodreads
 Join us on Facebook
 Sign up for my newsletter
 and SHARE THE POST WITH ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS!

 [Cover design by the amazing Sarah Hansen at Okay Creations]

knowing radical self care :: reluctantly listening

Editor's Note: during the month of June, members of my Story Sessions community will be posting about what it means to pursue dreams, engage in self-care and practice active boundaries. They had free reign on what they wrote, and the topics come from my 30 Days of Prompts. I'm so excited about the wisdom these ladies will share with you, and I know you'll be inspired.

xoxo,

Elora Nicole  

 // 

The pain shoots down my left leg, straight through my kneecap.

Up my rib cage. Down through my fingers. I open my hand and close it, quickly. Over and over again. No one ever notices.

Two years ago, we made an out of town appointment with a pulmonary specialist assuming I’d inherited the rare genetic condition that runs in my family, after an evening spent in the Emergency Room, only to be dismissed with a clean bill of pulmonary health.

It’s happened enough now, though. Now we know. Nerves. Not lungs.

And when my legs go hollow, as if the sinew is melting and draining right out of my heels, I start to beg.

“No, no, no…please no…”

But, I’m no longer a stranger to this disease. I know it can’t be bargained or begged away. Although it’s unlikely I’ll give up trying either.

I knew this would be one of the hardest things to overlap with motherhood. I wondered how the days would go, home alone with my son and absolutely no strength left in my legs, pain throbbing inside my skull begging to get out.

These are the days I have to make choices I hate. Choices that leave my family, friends, obligations and commitments out to dry. While I soak in a hot bath.

On the outside, it all looks just fine. Hair curled. Blush and mascara as always. Sometimes, I wish it were more obvious so I wouldn’t feel like I have to do the convincing on the outside, of the wreck on the inside. The truth is, I always wonder if my friends who know about this part of my life really believe me when I say, “I just can’t today” or if they think it’s an excuse. I’ll always wonder that.

And not because of them. But because in my brokenness, I’d be skeptical.

The guilt swarms all around as I crawl under covers desperate for even more sleep. My tired-from-the-late-shift husband fills another baby bottle with formula. He always asks if he can bring me anything. I’ll say no thank you, and bury my head in the pillow to absorb frustrated tears.

This is where I was the morning I begged him to take an hour out of studying his training material, so I could escape to church alone. My bones ached for a dark corner in our cozy new east side church, after fourteen straight days of over-doing it and giving more than I felt I could. Honestly, I just wanted to sit still, in the same place for a while. He really didn’t have an hour to give me, but he did.

I went to church.

Singing. Yes.

People who don’t press. Thank you.

Gentle words of truth. Amen.

Communion. Yes.

It was what I needed. I was so so so tired. Everything hurt.

But, I had this one thing I needed.

Then, my husband called.

Our living room was filling with water. I needed to get home.

Immediately: Guilt. Why did I leave?

I walked in to the scene of every towel we own laying on our floors, furniture strewn and my husband in the rocking chair feeding our son, sweat dripping from his face.

This began another five days of what felt like really organized chaos. We went to work, we took care of our boy, and we got bad news. This cycle repeated as water extractors brought giant fans, so loud I couldn’t hear myself think, into my home and covered my walls and doorways in thick plastic. On Monday I came home from work to concrete, drywall, giant loud fans, plastic and the bad news of the day- tomorrow, they jack hammer.

And that’s when I decided we were going to a hotel. Guilt ensued again. We had some running water, a functional bedroom and functional bathroom. And, well, people are starving in Africa.

But I didn’t have the energy for normal life. Certainly not this. My head. My joints. The constant noise. I felt myself begin to crack. This was too much turbulence. I was losing my footing. 

I reluctantly asked our insurance company if they thought it was reasonable to get a hotel at least until there wasn’t a hole in the middle of our house. The five giant fans, and creeping haunted house plastic, I was tolerating. But, a jackhammer? No.

So I started packing.

Formula.

Baby food.

Big people food.

Clothes.

Pack’n play.

Diapers, diapers and diapers.

I packed for the trip I longed for rather than the one night in an extended stay down the street; a week’s worth of clothes. Beer. Bathing suits. I even considered taking my passport. You know, just in case.

I really hoped I’d open my eyes the next day and find our family on a sandy beach in Mexico. But, unfortunately Disney doesn’t run my life.

Unfortunately.

The next morning, I strapped my little dude to my chest and began loading our bags and food.

Dig deep, Erin. Dig deep. I whispered with every few steps, loaded down with bags.

“What’d the insurance company say about this asbestos on the concrete?”

I stopped and stared, dumbfounded as the plumber pointed his boot towards the hallway.

My husband and I just looked at each other, knowing neither of us had the emotional or physical capacity to acknowledge what he’d just said to us. We said it was news to us, and headed to the hotel.

Once we checked in and unloaded, my husband left for a mandatory test at his new job. And then it was just my little guy and me. In a hotel room. With my pretend vacation bags and a tub of baby food.

I found the bathroom, shut the door and cried. The cool hard tile was not soothing the pain shooting from my hip down through my kneecap.  I knew the tears were going to aggravate a headache. But, I didn’t care. I needed that. I needed that space.

People were still starving in Africa. And this wasn’t a catastrophe. Neither fact helped.

But my body could do no more. When I looked in the mirror I saw a perfectly normal thirty year old under curled hair, mascara and blush. And I was mad at her for looking so normal. Because on the inside, the pain throbbed and my rubbery limbs felt heavy and hallow.

I needed this hotel room. I finally stopped feeling guilty and melted into the bathroom floor.

There was no plumber or team of water extractors. No giant fans or sheet plastic to duck under.

Just perfectly white towels folded into triangles, and a mint on my pillow.

I wondered how in the world I was still awake and moving when I heard the squeal of the most patient seven month old the world has known. Mommy’s cry in the bathroom time was over.

I’ve never been very good at taking care of myself. In fact, I spent years lashing out at my body through self-harm. Then, I got sick and it started screaming at me, to care for it. During those weeks, my body doesn’t care if I look normal on the outside. It doesn’t care if I have guests in town or work to do. It doesn’t care if I have eighty-seven voicemails or a flooded living room.

All it cares about is a hot bath.

Deep breathing and stretches.

Medicine and good food.

Low light and a soft bed.

Quiet and peace.

I’m learning to follow it. Reluctantly.

 //

Erin began her life at her grandmother's house in West Texas, riding horses and searching for arrow heads. After surviving adolescence, she carved out a life in Austin where she married a photographer, gave-up on writing and recently started writing again. You can find more at A Peculiar Love, where she writes about our adoption journey and at Find Me In September where she writes when she's feeling brave.

 

knowing radical self care :: soaking in nature's healing power

Editor's Note: during the month of June, members of my Story Sessions community will be posting about what it means to pursue dreams, engage in self-care and practice active boundaries. They had free reign on what they wrote, and the topics come from my 30 Days of Prompts. I'm so excited about the wisdom these ladies will share with you, and I know you'll be inspired.

xoxo,

Elora Nicole

//

When you've lived in the war zone of domestic and spiritual violence… a place where sharp, cutting words have torn and shredded your spirit like shrapnel. When explosive actions, like grenades, have ripped your gut in half, choking off your air supply, you need immediate evacuation. Instead, the friends you thought were in your corner have either abandoned you and left you for dead, or worse, they have joined in the slanderous attack against you. It feels like you're drowning, and that is the moment when radical self-care is a matter of life or death.

Radical self-care is essential when you're drowning in the wake of living with a spouse who has a severe mental disorder.

My journey to freedom began in a Wyoming desert, my truck broken down, and not knowing a soul nearby. My husband had just run off with another woman and demanded a quick divorce, after first taking nearly all our assets. An expert mechanic, he left me with a truck suspiciously rigged to fail.

Stranded in the desert, I discovered an "oasis of healing" at a nearby town that was made famous by its "world's largest" hot springs – a place of healing mineral waters. God acted as my Hero as He began showing up in various places, using strangers I would never have normally associated with. A mechanic appeared out of nowhere – two mechanics, specifically – and fixed my truck.  Help, in fact, appeared around every bend, but also more abusers.

Part of radical self-care means being on the look out for the hidden land mines – abusers disguised as rescuers.

I rented a motel room near the hot springs and began to soak in the healing waters every day. I felt a little like Elijah running for his life from Jezebel, who threatened to kill him. Not having motels nearby, Elijah found refuge under a Broom tree, where he sank to the ground, fervently praying that he might die. This dismal scene immediately trailed his amazing victory at Mount Carmel, in an historic "holy man contest" in which Elijah won the tournament with a thundering supernatural display of power.

"Elijah failed in the very point at which he was strongest, and that is where most men fail. In Scripture, it is the wisest man who proves himself to be the greatest fool; just as the meekest man, Moses, spoke hasty and bitter words. Abraham failed in his faith, and Job in his patience; so, he who was the most courageous of all men, fled from an angry woman." (Spurgeon)

How interesting, really, to note how God sees fit to look after Elijah's physical needs first. And that's what God will do for us, as well.

As women, we often forget to take care of ourselves, but God wants us to be whole and healthy: body, soul, and spirit.

I learned radical self-care, that year in the desert. Soaking, floating, swimming in the mineral waters… absorbing Heaven's Light into my soul. Instead of deadly chlorine, the healing waters contain dozens of important life-giving minerals. Due to the intensity of the heat, the minerals are absorbed into the body while at an elevated body temperature. An induced fever. All that is bad is killed off naturally, is how it generally works.

As I soaked in the sunshine and the healing mineral waters, I imagined this gentle, watery, healing substance washing over every cell of my body, restoring my spiritual and physical DNA to normal with its high frequency.

I took time for Susan. After years of caring for my husband during a devastating spinal cord injury, it was time for me to be healed. The disabled get medicine, drugs, therapy, and lots of loving care. Caregivers go through the same trauma with very little or no support.  When my husband got well again, the first thing that happened is he required me to quit my business so that he could enter ministry school in Toronto, hundreds of miles away. Pretty soon we were both traveling as itinerant ministers, as I supported him on this new venture. Everyone admired our strength and courage, but underneath it all, I was dying inside… and no one saw.

My identity had been stolen, as I relinquished my own dreams to support my husband and his needs.

Pretty soon my body got very sick and I felt I was going to die. Not long after that, my husband persuaded people to believe that I was a dead weight and that God had told him to release me so that he could travel more freely for ministry. It was amazing to see how quickly our friends rallied to his side, supporting him in his misery, and encouraging him to get the divorce over and done with so he could be free to minister more freely. He was a charismatic minister that everyone loved to love. I don't blame them - he was charming.

I couldn't change his mind, so I just went to work to get well, beginning with rewriting the story of my life. It began with taking care of my physical needs. To get your life back, your own physical needs must be taken care of, as God demonstrated with Elijah under the broomstick tree.

Wherever you're at, even if it's stranded in the middle of a Wyoming desert, God's loving touch will provide for your needs: physical, emotional, and spiritual. He wants to love you back to life. He wants to restore your fractured soul and to give you His Name, his very nature, of which "I AM LOVE" is the first strand of heavenly DNA.

This is radical self-love. It's not selfish; it's life-giving. Take baby steps. I once knew of a woman who began with returning to the simple pleasure of dental care: flossing her teeth every day. It's strange what we give up, in the wake of living with a narcissist. Learn to give gifts to yourself, even if it's just a little thing like flossing your teeth.

Get your life back with self-love. What is Love like?

Love is gentle; love is kind; love is patient. Love doesn't remember offenses or keep a list of wrongs.

I must remember to love myself just like this.

Even if others do not. Especially when others do not.

Just like the healing mineral waters, Love is a substance, just as faith is a substance. It can be absorbed through soaking in the nature of God. You don't need a hot springs pool; you can touch and absorb nature in your own backyard. A tree, a butterfly, a dandelion flower… they all carry the DNA of our Creator and can minister to your body as well as to your heart.

So I soak a lot these days. I soak in the healing waters. I soak in the beauty of Nature. I soak under the clear blue skies. I drench myself in the beauty of trees. I marvel at a single blade of grass. I am mesmerized by the beauty of moss roses. I drink in the colors. I delight myself in the sound of birds. I let myself be impressed and dazzled by the resiliency and strength of Nature.

What I focus on, what I soak in, becomes a part of me. My identity is restored.

Millions of women have been hurt so much more deeply than I, and they don't have opportunity for high dollar doctors and prescriptions. Neither do I. I've chosen to go the natural route. Not because I don't believe in doctors, counselors, and drugs… but I choose to identify with the millions, even billions, who do not have access to professional help.

So here I am… soaking, floating, swimming, absorbing the healing rays of Heaven. I eat better foods – foods that heal. I use essential oils, made from healing plants, which soak through my skin. I feel Papa's presence, and I hear him say to me, "Well done, my child, well done!"

That's all I need. All I want. Just to hear His voice. To know I've made Him happy. In receiving Love, my identity is restored and my Creator and I begin to create my new world.

It's a time of new beginnings. New friends just show up. People whose heart beats like yours, who help support each other to spread their wings and fly. It's time to fly, my friend. It's time to rise up. The world has enough victims – it's time for change. It's time we create a new world, together. Let's do it, shall we?

With all my love,

Sue

//

Susan Deborah Schiller knows how it feels to lose everything: marriage and family, church and reputation, finances and businesses, and more. Susan's upcoming, interactive memoir, "On the Way Home," tells the story of how she came to be known as "the most abused woman" her counselors had yet met and how she learned to navigate her way out of hell to a rich and satisfying life. In her lifetime, Susan has served in duties ranging from home school mom – to pastor -  to full-time deliverance minister – and to Midwest regional prayer coordinator for a large international ministry. These days you can usually find Susan soaking in her favorite hot springs pool, reading a book (or several), blogging, baking bread, or hanging out with her family and friends. You can get a free copy of Susan's upcoming book, "On the Way Home" by registering here.

knowing radical self-care :: remove the haste and hurry

Editor's Note: during the month of June, members of my Story Sessions community will be posting about what it means to pursue dreams, engage in self-care and practice active boundaries. They had free reign on what they wrote, and the topics come from my 30 Days of Prompts. I'm so excited about the wisdom these ladies will share with you, and I know you'll be inspired.

xoxo,

Elora Nicole 

// 

When I was in the fifth grade, I distinctly remember our teacher standing in front of the class, teaching us how to speed-read.  This new technique was supposed to help our reading be fluid and continuous, more efficient.  To be faster.  

“Before you have finished reading the first word, start looking at the next,” she instructed us, drawing arrows over printed letters on a dusty green board.   

At 10 years old, school came easily to me.

I excelled. Reading was the world I lived in, so a technique that allowed me to consume more books in a shorter period of time, should have excited me.  Instead, it was frustrating.  I loved words, in a way that was somewhat peculiar for a child.  I adored the word globe, how it started at the back of my front teeth, the circular arch of my tongue, mimicking the object itself, before pushing the last syllable through my lips. I struggled with this assigned task.  I wasn’t finished absorbing the first word before I moved on to the second, the third, the fourth.  I’d get to the end of the page and wonder what I had read, never really experiencing it.  But I was a quick learner. It wasn’t long before I was rushing through novels to add them to my “reading log” in hopes of besting my classmates as the most prolific reader.  

Years later, I’m still trying to unlearn that lesson.  To recapture that adoration for vocabulary. To slow myself down, to step into each word and wade into its center, experience its weight.  How the depth of the word audacious feels like curling my toes over the ledge of a cliff.  

The crispness of cucumber. 
The contortions of kinesiology.  

Slowing down is improving my writing.  Reducing the rush in my life is also improving my living.  

Sometimes, self care is as simple as removing the haste and the hurry.

Most days I’m like Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit and “the hurrier I go the behinder I get”.   I rush through my words and days, I scribble them down in a journal, put an X through them on the calendar, without remembering to take the time to engage and process.  To finger their rough edges, the places where they hitch and tear through the story.  The jagged scars they have left in my own life and the searing pain they may cause to others.  I make footnotes for joyful news to be celebrated later, forgetting that now is the time for jubilant dancing, the clanging of pot and pans, and shouting in the streets. 

This act of self care, this permission slip to ourselves to take our sweet time, gives us the opportunity to engage in pain we’d rather ignore, and in the excitement we too easily overlook.  It allows old experiences, and new visions to come to the surface. 

That idea burning in your belly? 
The longing that aches in your bones? 

Slow down.  Feel the itch of it under your skin.  Let it sit for a minute.  Figure out what it will look like. 

Take the time to dream and conceive, to plan and to prepare.  This too, is self care.

I have taken courses dedicated to managing self care in a professional practice.  I have written multiple papers on self care techniques.  If I had to boil it all down to one practice, one application for day-to-day living, it would be to slow down.  Don’t rush through the hard things, feel them, sit with them.  By numbing the pain you’ll only end up diluting the joy of other moments.  And my dear, remember, there is no shame in the jubilation. 

This isn’t new advice.  People much smarter than me have said this before and people will say it again. Slow down. I haven’t unearthed the secret to radical self care. No one will run screaming down the street holding a copy of this post claiming that they now possess the key to good self care practice.   But it does work.  It is not the be all and end all. It is not going to fix your personal or professional life. When the realities of this world capture the breath from your lungs, when you’re working with the cool clay of a sister’s story, and the trauma of her narrative begins to intersect with your own, simply slowing down will not be enough.  Other self care is needed (and sometime the most radical self care is recognizing that you can’t do all that care yourself).  But slowing down will take you in the right direction.  It is the slower pace that allows you to recognize when life is chafing against your skin.  It is the reduced speed that lets you identify the need for further self care. 

These days I am endeavouring to follow my own advice. I am learning to ask for more time, when I need it.  To intentionally leave blocks of blank space on my schedule.  My time is precious.  It is a finite resource with which I am struggling to be purposeful.  I am attempting to disregard my tendency to overcompensate by ensuring every moment is chock-full.  To ease my pace, to taste and enjoy the fullness of what I am doing in these moments.   Slowing down is making me a better writer, a better daughter, sister, and friend.   So today, I am going to wait to hit publish on that post I have been writing.  I am going to make tea and call my dad.  I am going to see about getting a canoe out onto a quiet lake that I’ve yet to explore.  Everything else can wait.

// 

Leigha is a recovering Sunday School Scholar, who is learning to embrace questions without answers. An MSW candidate and lover of words, she believes in the power of narratives, both the personal and the collective. Leigha writes her words and lives her life on the East Coast of Canada. She blogs at www.leighacann.com and is on twitter @leighacann. 

 

knowing radical self-care :: waiting for rain

Editor's Note: during the month of June, members of my Story Sessions community will be posting about what it means to pursue dreams, engage in self-care and practice active boundaries. They had free reign on what they wrote, and the topics come from my 30 Days of Prompts. I'm so excited about the wisdom these ladies will share with you, and I know you'll be inspired.

xoxo,

Elora Nicole

//

The day is dark and heavy with cloud, a rare thing for Colorado. Last year’s drought has left the grass with little nourishment, the ground desiccated, and the low sky promises much-needed moisture. I’ve opened the doors to let the breeze blow through but I keep having to get up to prevent the front door from slamming shut. Eventually I prop it open with a quilted pillow. Something light that still keeps it from closing.

I’ve wasted several precious tea bags today, accidentally letting the water cool and the brew turn bitter as I’ve slept on the couch, waiting out a plane-bourn virus that snatched me from the jaws of productivity this week. I should be grateful for the slowing down, the way I’ve mirrored our dog in these languid, healing hours, laying first on one surface, then the next, in one position, then another. I am restless with dislocation, though, waiting for rain. 

Years before, in our season of desolation, we came across a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. Enfolded in rhythm and mystery, it spoke something that we needed, gave shape and weight to the nebulous and nagging sense of irritation we felt when someone came to us with simple answers, platitudes, Scriptures tacked on to pictures of soaring eagles. Between illness and job-loss, we’d been stripped of the simple, and when people came, holding it as a gift, not realizing it was instead a shield between them and our pain, we didn’t know what to do with our anger.

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

It is the middle fruit, the one overlooked and thought weak, pinned, trembling, between patience and goodness, holding the mid-point between love and self-control. What it is to be kind?  we think to ourselves. It is nothing, really. Why be kind when we can exhort? Why be kind when we can spread joy?

In that season we learned the lessons of kindness, the way that kindness spills out from those who have suffered, the way that kindness tells you who is safe to share your struggles with, the way kindness becomes manna, just enough to survive on for today.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, 
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.  
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

It is in embracing my sorrows that I am learning self-care.

In the season of sorrow, this was easier—kindness kept us both alive. The friend who kept calling, showing up, being with. The one who embraced the tensions and stayed. The emails and text messages, reminders of who we are, what we mean. The ones who refused to tell us what God was doing, but instead came to us and sat, waiting, as we watched for what the Lion of Judah might do with our bloodied, battered offering of ourselves. The ones who held us when we shivered, wondering if this was about consumption more than grace. Now, in this place of burgeoning, when I feel new things just beneath the soil, I worry about how long the drought has been, and if I should water one more time. I forget the ways I need small kindnesses, and in the dailiness of life, those kindnesses need to come from Christ within me, that I need to listen to the ways the Spirit would care for me, bringing forth fruit.

I have managed two cups of hot tea, the water warm and sharp with jasmine. I am about to close the door, as the wind has turned cooler and the rain has not come. Soon, my husband will be home, ready to make quiche and French onion soup for a co-worker who has recently lost her mother. He will kneed the crust and simmer the onions, and I will lay on the couch once more, letting him work the dough, releasing myself from the need to tend others, and receive instead my own tending.

I read Nye’s words again and remember.

This is my act of rebellion against schedules and busyness and the needs that cry out around me. To remember kindness. To offer it to myself. To let healing come, when it will, as it will.

I close the door, and wait for rain.

//

Tara M. Owens, CSD is an author, speaker and spiritual director living in Colorado Springs with her husband, Bryan, and their rescue dog, Hullabaloo. She blogs on her ministry website at Anam Cara Ministries, where she comes alongside others to facilitate healing and soul care through the work of spiritual direction. She is also the Senior Editor of a spiritual formation journal founded by Larry Crabb, David Benner and Gary Moon called Conversations Journal. She has a book coming out in 2014 with InterVarsity Press. You can follow her on Twitter at @AnamCaraTO or @t_owens.

knowing radical self-care :: drink from the cup

Editor's Note: during the month of June, members of my Story Sessions community will be posting about what it means to pursue dreams, engage in self-care and practice active boundaries. They had free reign on what they wrote, and the topics come from my 30 Days of Prompts. I'm so excited about the wisdom these ladies will share with you, and I know you'll be inspired.

xoxo,

Elora Nicole  

// 

You must be willing. You must be wiling to lean in and drink from the cup of care. 

We live in a world where self care is immediately associated with spas and weekends, and a lounge chair overlooking the turquoise sea. 

Care seems gentle and innocent; it cradles the child and sings a lullaby. Care tells stories and blows kisses. It rejuvenates and refreshes, ti comforts and loves the innocent. Care is like a mother. 

I have a mother who cared for me and loved me. She tucked me in and whispered secrets into my ears. She sewed lovely dresses for me and taught me to speak. She bled for me and suffered, she risked and cried and dreamed for me, and care does that too. Care asks so much of us. 

Care requires trust and trust takes time, it requires hope and hope is born from grace. Yet grace is found in places where care seems absent.

I lost my sense of being cared for when I was six. On a warm and sunny afternoon, in a field where the wheat and knee high grasses bent gracefully in the summer breeze. It had always been a place of laughter and wild adventure, a place where I would gaze into the blue sky and make believe that clouds were creatures from a distant land, battling in the summer sky over territories yet unknown to me. Tucked away in the brushes I lost my sense of care. It was taken in one fell swoop, in a few short hours that then stretched for days and years and decades.In that place kisses were exchanged for weapons, touch for a cutting blow, fear became the currency for survival and care was simply a measure for breath. If I had breath, that was enough. 

Somehow, while making promises to return to my robber, pleading to be let go, while wiping tears from my face and running like the wind I escaped. 

I ran so fast that care never had a chance to catch up with me. 

I grew up holding the secret of my abuse, mostly keeping it to myself.
Until well into my 20‘s, I remember sharing with a woman in the church. I was taking her to the place where I had lost a piece of me and had outrun my sense of care, i had forsaken trust of being cared for. 

Innocence was stolen and exchanged for fear. 
I was recalling each detail with tears streaming down my face. I was not looking to her for anything but care. I wanted her to know, to show me compassion, to love and comfort me. I did not need to know why. I was not looking for answers. I could point to that event as the catalyst of so many painful choices and so many lost years. She only repeated “SIN breeds SIN”.  No matter how fast we try to outrun care, we come to a place where we are parched. 

We come empty and broken. We come to one another for the care; we share our stories to find compassion, to share our lives, to bear open the brokenness that we so tightly guard and lock with chains of fear. 

For years I had lived and smiled, prayed and worshiped loud with arms stretched high, I married, and gave birth to the loves of my life. All in an effort to care, always thinking that this would help me capture the elusive care I was looking for in my life. 

In church impurity is the greatest sin. We make a big deal over gaging sins, we pretend to quote Jesus, as though we had forgotten what this Christ did with people who were ready to cast stones against the impure. 

We compare and contrast each others lives, as though they were obscure, static pieces of art in a museum, completely disassociated from purpose and worth. 

We rarely pause and gaze to find in one another the bits of care, like traces of the divine grace, in the midst of sin. 

Eventually I drank from the cup. First it was held to my lips by women who loved and practiced the Way of Christ and grace, my closest and dearest of friends. I drank and choked and rebelled. The cup of care is like the cup of wine, the Eucharist, the spilled and crushed. We serve one another. We do not accuse. We are called to love. We know and celebrate that grace is present in the midst of us. Grace takes to battle in the thick of life and proclaims victory amongst one another. 

Grace is radical. It is unashamed, unadulterated, unapologetic. It goes where care stops short, where care can be outrun you cannot outrun grace. It moves in song and whisper. 

Grace comes uninvited and enters even where you and I would never dare to go. We have to stop pretending that the presence of God is too holy for the ugly places. Can we remember the cross? 

Are we so diluted in our faith that we forget to remember death, the edges of the universe itself, the curse spoken over creation has ben reversed, the darkness has been cast by light. None are too far enough nor is anything too painful for the One into whom we lean in faith. 

I have to ask, does it mean nothing that I call myself a Christ follower? It has to. It has to mean more than an association; more than the blessed assuredness that I am saved.

It means I am seen and redeemed and restored. Grace comes into the brushes and sits with the child and the man. Grace is not absent. 

When my world was broken, when care seemed lost and abstract, suffocated by loss; grace abided in me. All along grace abides, and therein is the care. Radical care allows sin to be while enveloping you and indwelling the broken pieces of your heart.

Drink the cup, know that pain never truly could outrun care. Grace always bridges the gap.

 //

I was born and raised in Romania, my family immigrated to Germany when I was 12. After school I moved to the US in a single fit of defiance and an effort to escape the constrictions I perceived upon my life. To say that a whole new, unexpected adventure ensued is an understatement.  More on that later.....

Today, I am a mother to two amazing young girls, my oldest is a teen - I have multiple ‘pinch me moments’ in a day - "Where does this life hurry off to?”
My family and friends are the best people I could have ever asked to have around my table. I feel loved and abundantly blessed.

My faithfulness rests in Jesus, the only one by whom my story of brokenness and shame is restored.

The hope I hold in my heart is to honor God with my life, and to be reminded of my own progressive restoration. For me, to share life with Love and bravery is the greatest legacy one could live. 

 

knowing radical self care :: rest.

Editor's Note: during the month of June, members of my Story Sessions community will be posting about what it means to pursue dreams, engage in self-care and practice active boundaries. They had free reign on what they wrote, and the topics come from my 30 Days of Prompts. I'm so excited about the wisdom these ladies will share with you, and I know you'll be inspired.

xoxo,

Elora Nicole  

//  

Take a breath in. Hold it. The breath moves through your body bringing oxygen to the rest of your body--healing, restoring. It is life giving.

Breathe out. As the air pushes out of your lungs it release bad things out into the air. Carrying stress and worry from you. It is healing and restorative to let that breath go.

Not one part of the process is more important than the other. The breath as it passes through your body works in harmony to sustain life. It is a natural rhythm to life. You breathe in. You breathe out. The sun rises. The sun sets. You work. You rest.

Rest...

The hard one for us to understand. We push it--testing the boundaries. Finding more fruitfulness in productivity and work than we do in rest. But we are finite creatures. Our bodies need rest and work to not only survive, but also to thrive.

The person without purpose and work in life is lost. Rudderless. Wondering why they are even here. Finding that purpose, running with it, embracing it--is freeing. You take in the world and then filter it through your own perceptions and engage it in whatever way you see fit. It is easy to get lost in the work. To put all our stamina and breath and existence into producing, creating, pushing through until death.

But rest...

The other side.

The side that allows restoration and filling up so that we can continue with the work. The side that helps us find joy and purpose in our work in those dark and dry seasons. The side that allows us to take care of ourselves.

This is my journey into radical self-care.

A year ago we brought our daughter home. I’ve been relatively honest with how hard it’s been--how life-changing and consuming it’s been. I had to learn how to homeschool a third grader this year. We had a new family dynamic that we were all struggling to balance. And Doug’s work load was intense.

I may not have confessed that I was borderline depressed this past year. How there were days where I had an insatiable appetite to read because I just wanted to escape what was happening around me. Often Doug would get home from work and I would crawl into bed and read or watch TV. Rare was the night that I actually participated in family dinner.

I was desperate for time away. But when I would leave, or when Doug would take the kids, the minute we were all together again, the stress would come crashing back in on me.

Things shifted in January. It started with a silly little diet competition. I started eating more leafy greens and cut the sugar/sugar substitutes completely except for one cheat day a week. I found so much joy in being able to eat whatever I wanted on one day that the other six were bearable. It had echoes of the Sabbath to me--six days of work and one day of rest.

And I pondered that. There is supposed to be joy and restoration in rest--so why was my rest so empty?

And something began to click.

I started writing.

I started working out.

I got a massage.

I started taking supplements.

The more I took care of myself, the less time I demanded alone. I no longer shied away from being around my family but I began seeking them out. I started playing with my kids. I started demanding that my husband have time to go rock climbing or play kayak polo as opposed to demanding that he be at my beck and call to make my life easier.

My external circumstances haven’t changed. But the way I take care of myself is completely different from how it was six months ago.

When it’s time to rest I am able to rest. And when it’s time to work I am able to work.

Radical self-care means that there are boundaries that we need. Some of us can’t be around certain people. Sometimes introverts need spaces and seasons of alone time. I have a friend who needs time in the sun. I have another friend who paints. These things are not flippant. They are necessary for us as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

It’s hard to fight for these things.

It’s radical.

It’s life changing.

And it’s worth it.

You are worth it.

As believers our bodies are temples. We use that a lot to express that we shouldn’t cause our bodies harm. But I believe the command is so much richer than that. We are light to a dying world. But if our light is flickering and fading because we’re just straight up exhausted, it is not benefiting anyone.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Making sure that we don’t get so run down and exhausted by life that we’re unable to be the life-giving force that Jesus tells us we are.

 //

Sarah Drinka lives in Austin, Texas and writes about things that stir her soul. You can read more on her blog or follow her on twitter. 

knowing your muse :: giving up was never an option

Editor's Note: during the month of June, members of my Story Sessions community will be posting about what it means to pursue dreams, engage in self-care and practice active boundaries. They had free reign on what they wrote, and the topics come from my 30 Days of Prompts. I'm so excited about the wisdom these ladies will share with you, and I know you'll be inspired.

xoxo,

Elora Nicole

 // 

I lost 20,000 words last month.

I suppose that's what I get for not finding a proper back-up situation. After the initial shock wore off, I took a deep breath and resolved to carry on. As I started to sift through what had happened, I found myself feeling happy for the fresh start. It's always better the second time, right? Isn't that a thing?

I shared this story as played out and the emotions that ran through me on Facebook in real time. Shortly after I posted the blog about it, a friend commented to say that she was inspired because, if it had happened to her, she probably would have given up.

I didn't know what to say. Give up? That's far more devastating. I can put more words on paper. One at a time, they will build up. I have a deep trust in that process. It would be much more difficult to not do it. Losing those words sucked, but I have more. It's what I do.

The War of Art was a pivotal book for me. I read it on an airplane (it's a short book) in 2010 and as I did, I made a promise to myself: I would pursue my dreams. Whatever that means. I am an artist. Whatever that means. I would follow my muse wherever she decided to lead me. 

And, OH, the places I have been! I got to speak at conference once to a group of kid's ministry professionals about how to teach children creative nonviolence in the face of oppression. I got to talk about leaning deeply into an education that includes learning how to love our enemies. I started a crazy life coaching practice called The Shalom Sessions and my questions have inspired people to do such impossible feats as quit their jobs to write full time, be the mermaid they were meant to be, and gather the courage from the strength inside themselves to leave the muck of depression. In the span of nine months, I launched a blog, wrote my first digital book shortly after I found out what a digital was, and gave birth in my living room on purpose. My muse has carried me off to such wild places as Austin TX, Portland OR, and Washington DC. She has strange sense of humor + adventure.

But I can dig it.

In making that promise to myself and to God, I discovered that my dreams aren't the pipe variety.

I want to do this for the rest of my life. And I believe business can be a holy thing. In mingling marketing and shalom, I found something bigger than myself.

I don't know that it works this way for everyone. I think that's okay. But, for me, the reason I didn't fold it all up when those words disappeared was because, well, this is my job. 

And so, there were only ever two options: make the best of it or make the worst of it. If I had chosen the latter, I would not have felt guilty for doing so. I would have eaten my sad cake and been comforted. I would have cried for as long as I needed to. And then, I would have resolved to put more words on the page. And back the daggone thing up this time!

Giving up would have hurt so much more. Because these dreams aren't going to go away. I could stuff them down, but that's not how I want to live. I want to follow my muse. I want her to thrill and terrify and comfort and exhaust me every day. She has me on a wild goose chase, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I've worked really hard to get to this point where I am confident that my work is work. It was an intentional endeavor. Because for a long time, I felt silly, like I was pretending. Finally, I decided to just go for it. If I believed I was real boy, eventually I would become one. That's how the story goes, right?

If you struggle with deep doubt and insecurity but you really want to turn your dreams into real live, breathing, squirming things, this post is for you.

There is magnificent freedom in knowing that you can lose 100,000 and it won't even slow you down. You were meant to shine. And your muse desperately wants to show you how to get you where you want to go. Let her drive.

 //

When Brandy Walker was in kindergarten, she used to get in trouble for daydreaming. Now she works as a professional daydreamer. She writes to change the world. She performs poetic presentations at conferences and colleges in hopes of spreading shalom as far as it will go. She's a mom, a laugher, and an irresponsible optimist. She shares the stories on her heart at http://brandyglows.com and is the founding editor of The Bomb Shelter (http://thebombshelter.us). She helps ambitious women dare to dream even bigger with the Shalom Sessions. 

 

knowing your muse :: the thing that can't not be written

Editor's Note: during the month of June, members of my Story Sessions community will be posting about what it means to pursue dreams, engage in self-care and practice active boundaries. They had free reign on what they wrote, and the topics come from my 30 Days of Prompts. I'm so excited about the wisdom these ladies will share with you, and I know you'll be inspired.

xoxo,

Elora Nicole

//

It’s insanely difficult. This thing we do.

(If we do it, and we do it well.) 

You know. Writers, builders, artists, visionaries, gardeners. You who strive to build a long term beauty. You who conceive and birth and tend. You, the one who plants a seed in the ground and tends it until it grows, you know: 

This stuff is hard. 

There’s a great deal of misery to be survived in order to keep a growing beauty alive. It’s a daily fight, to keep it from being crushed, not by evil, but by something much worse, which is the ordinary: the slightly chaotic: the pervasive creeping meaninglessness: the sands of the day-to-day.

So we do this, all the time: we just quit. The vision comes, and we just let it go away, or make it go away, because we know that building it one stone at a time actually will totally suck, like getting our eyebrows tweezed for a whole year nonstop, and we’d rather avoid the suffering. 

So we quit, and then what do we do? (You know.) We suffer. “I should have been somebody. I had so much potential. I’m a failure. What. A. Waste.”

Then you’ve got to have a pound of salty snacks just to combat the misery. 

You, the one who plants and tends, you know this: The suffering of not doing is just as bad, and maybe worse, than the suffering of doing. 

But where’s the will? Where’s the will to show up, and move a pile of sand one grain at a time? Where’s the strength? Where’s the discipline? Where’s the sense? 

And maybe you know this too, but you might have forgotten.  

It’s in the willingness to write what needs to be written. It’s in the listening.

There is a thing – and I believe this, with all my heart – there is a thing that cannot not be written. It’s a different thing each day. It’s a different thing each life. It’s a different thing each mortal soul. And not all of you write in words, like I do. Some write in stone and wood, or plants. Or food. Some write in prayer. Some in silence. Some in paint. In bodies dancing or struggling on a stage. Truly, if we really told the truth, we all have more than one pen. And to know where to point it, how to wield it, what blood to dip it in: we have to listen. 

The listening takes practice. It takes faith. It takes obedience. Next time, your muse speaks to you, next time it delivers a line of nonsense in the night, a picture of a building, a craving for a certain kind of beauty, try this: OBEY. 

Say, yes. Say, yes it will hurt a little bit, the Doing, but not as much as the Not Doing. So okay, throw it at me, sure, I’ll go across an ocean, I’ll look stupid, I’ll take the risk. YES.

I believe this, too: if you become a channel for the muse, a portal for the eternal to enter time, then the muse will know you, and she will not be unfaithful to you. If you show up, she will, too. 

Actually, what I believe is even worse than that. I believe that your muse is talking to you right now, this very minute, and I don’t care if you haven’t written anything in months, or if you are suffering through a period of confusion and lack of clarity. Chances are, you can hear your muse pretty well. You just don’t like what she’s saying. You don’t want to write that. You’re a writer, not a cook. You’re a cook, not a writer. You’re a solid family man, not an inventor of gadgets. I was looking for something a little more appropriate for my audience. I was looking for something a little more personal. A little less personal. Less dangerous. I was looking for something in green, not lilac.

But, sorry. This. What you get is what you get.  

Eternity speaks through you, and not the other way around.

Sorry, that’s the deal. (You know.) Obey.

Be a vessel. That’s what you are, anyway. The truth wants in, to you, through you. The cost is temporary loss of self. (And that’s the prize, too, you know.) The cost is to be the servant, in a world where everything tells us it’s cool to be the boss. 

But that isn’t entirely true. Try it. It’s worth it. (You know.) It just might set you free. 

//

Esther Emery was a theatre director and playwright before she gave everything up to raise her family in a yurt on three acres of Idaho mountainside. Now she does all sorts of ridiculous things in pursuit of a totally creative life, and blogs about it at www.estheremery.com.