When I wrote this piece on “finding your roar” for The Story Unfolding, I had no idea what was headed my way. All I knew was that my desires and my rebellious voice were waking up. What about you? Are you finding your voice? Is there something in your gut that is calling for change? Is the voice in your heart demanding to be heard?
The Lion Inside
There is a lion inside me and she is going to get me in trouble. She is loud, and too proud of herself. Her rumbles in my chest make my voice shake. I can’t keep steady. Her large, soft paws land firmly on my heart with a pat, push, pat, push, pat, push, pat, push. I want her to leave so I can keep hiding; people notice lions. I really want her to leave but I think she is pumping my heart.
The lion inside stretches each morning and hunts with restless energy. She stalks in the light making words her food. No fear is in her. There’s still some in me, but there’s none in her. Her lack of fear actually terrifies me. She could do anything, ANYTHING.
As a child, I remember her laying inside my heart. When the dishes flew and the words spun like ninja stars around our yellow house, I could crawl inside my ribcage with her and be safe. Her coarse fur against my skin, a reminder that some feelings are good. Her throat just above my head; a gentle purr soothing me to sleep.
She never roared. Not once. A quiet strength protecting this scared girl until I was full grown. Her fur muffling the screams and shouts of dangers in the night.
But now I am a woman. A full grown woman. And she’s been waiting to {ROAR}. She will not be ignored. She is going to get me in trouble, but her rumbles still shake my chest. My full grown chest, with big lungs and breasts. I am a woman with a roar waiting to rattle the roof.
Words from an old book come to me now, I want to write an old book. Old books always come back.
“A man in the jungle at night may suppose a hyena’s growl to be a lion’s; but when he hears the lion’s growl, he knows damn well it’s a lion.”
– Sheldon Vanauken
When I roar, you will know damn well, it is a lion inside. I will step forward with a pride behind me and I will {ROAR}.
Is there a lion inside you too? It’s time to make some noise. It’s time to get in trouble.
>> What do you feel in your body when you think about letting the lion inside ROAR?
>> What does your ROAR sound like? Do you know yet why or why not
(If you don’t know yet, here are some questions to help you hear your ROAR:
-What makes you angry? -What do you dream of doing? -Who needs protection and why? -What is so close to your heart that when you speak it, you feel vulnerable and shy and immediately want to take it back?
I dare you to look in the mirror and see beauty; see a face that God loves and made.
God loves your face. You are allowed to love your face too.
There has been a lot written about fasting from mirrors. Good challenges have come from good peopleto help end our obsession with mirrors and just go throughout our days without looking at ourselves constantly. These challenges can have important freeing effects for us as we try to stop obsessing about our flaws, but the mirror and the looking is NOT the problem. It’s always the motivations behind the actions that matter.
We may fast from mirrors as a way to realign ourselves with the issues inside these bodies – the issues in our souls about worth and narcissism and the tension-filled dance we all move through each day…
We may fast from “looking” at ourselves so that the next time we look, we look with love and acceptance instead of obsession and self-loathing…
But we do not fast from mirrors because looking at ourselves is somehow less holy or less healthy than ignoring our outsides. It is not shallow to love your surface area.
In this culture, where a specific kind of beauty is power, there is nothing more Jesus-like or revolutionary than loving YOUR OWN face, no matter how it compares to anyone else’s. This is the upside down kingdom of God – where everyone is beautiful, even you. (Even if you don’t believe in God, trusting in the abundance and beauty of all people is powerful.}
Looking at your own face as a spiritual practice is a powerful rebellion.
I dare you to look in the mirror and LOVE your face.
Love your face, not because it can get you things or make you feel powerful (which is narcissism) but because it was made well.
I dare you to look in the mirror, not to fix yourself but to appreciate the glory of God’s creation. Looking at ourselves can be a distraction or it can be like a prayer of THANKS.
When it is not narcissism but gratitude that brings us to look in a mirror or take a picture, I believe we will have figured out a major riddle in life.
You are allowed to like the face you’ve been given.
You can be pretty sure that God wanted you to have your face… why would you ignore something beautiful that God has given you?
This may take work. This may feel harder than just ignoring your face. This may take redefining what “beautiful” means for you. It is hard to hold an opinion that someone else doesn’t agree with. It is hard to believe we are “good looking” when we feel other people disagree with us. But you are “good looking” and the only opinion that matters is your own and that of your creator.
If you love Jesus, You can look to Him and serve other people WHILE liking the body God gave you. You can love your family and be beautiful on the inside WHILE believing in the goodness of all creation, including your own body.
This actually helps us love other people better too. I no longer let the beauty of another person intimidate me or make me treat them any differently than anyone else. I no longer hide because I am having a “bad hair day” or a “fat day.” I can live freely and bravely everyday in the assurance that I am beautiful and made well. Then, I extend that same acceptance to those other people – they may look different from me but they are equally beautiful.
We climb mountains and travel 1,000s of miles to watch the sunset over the Pacific Ocean because it is beautiful. Yet, we are faced everyday with the greatest miracle of nature – the human body. Take some time to appreciate being you. You are beautiful. Take a look!
I dare you to look in the mirror at least 2 times today and say “Thank you, God for all of THIS.”
{It may add oomph to gesture towards your body while saying those words.}
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What if instead of avoiding the mirror, you really looked at your reflection?
What if you looked in the mirror not to fix things but to appreciate things?
What if we believe we are beautiful on the outside and the inside?
What if we started using our mirrors as spiritual tools?
What if you use your mirror as a way to see something beautiful everyday?
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It will take focus and work to believe our beauty. I want to help. Sign up for a worksheet/devotional on seeing and believing our own beauty.
It’s a dirty word to some. It’s a holy word to others.
but can I tell you something…?
I have found new life in it. Let me explain.
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“Wives, it should be no different with your husbands. Submit to them as you do to the Lord.”
– Ephesians 5
Submit.
^^That word burns^^
It burns because it seems to go against every other thing I know about our freedom. Jesus is supposed to bring a new kind of life: A free life. A life of fullness and joy and grace and love. A life where there are no power struggles because all people are equal and valued. A life where sharing a meal with your enemy or allowing the lowest to have the highest honor, is THE WAY. This is the life I want to live.
“Submit” feels like control and loss of identity.
“Submit” feels like a foot on your neck and a gag in your mouth.
“Submit” feels like a kennel you whimper in while your owners go on vacation.
“Submit” is the exact opposite of freedom.
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Gal 5:1
The key came to me just a couple weeks ago and it has blown wide open my relationship to God and to my husband.
As a writer, performer, actress, speaker I SUBMIT my work and my art to companies and publications that I admire.
I put my heart and soul into my presentation, proposal, or piece of writing and I SUBMIT it.
I am submitting to that website. I am submitting to that magazine. I am submitting to that church ministry… for a chance to be accepted and then presented in new, expanded, and exciting ways.
When I submit something, I am saying “Here. Here is a piece of me. What do you think? Will you accept it? Will you take this piece and make it grow – make it even better than it could have been if it stayed inside of me or locked in a drawer somewhere?”
Imagine a book you have written. Your blood, sweat, tears, hopes and dreams are all in that book. An author knows, that book is you in a lot of ways – at least a part of you. You send it off as a submission to an agent or a publisher. You say, “This is what I have to offer. I have been brave and I have worked hard. Will you take this and help it become something bigger and better than I ever dreamed it could be?”
This is the kind of submission I can believe in. Do you see it with God?
Submit to the Lord: I work hard. I am brave. I am honest and covered in terrified freedom, but I am presenting myself – all of me – to God. I say to God, “Here. Here is all of me. What do you think? Will you accept it? I am fearful but I will not hide myself anymore. This is what I have to give. Will you take it and help me grow – make me even better than I ever dreamed I could be?”
This is the kind of submission I can live in my marriage.
Wives submit to your husbands: I am submitting myself to my husband – all of me. I am brave and free. I work hard to be the best I can be everyday. Then, with a mixture of confidence and humility, hope and love, I submit myself to him. It is not a groveling. It is an offering. There will always be things I wish were different. Like any artist, I know the limits of my skills, but I am just me. I can only be me.
Submitting means being willing to stop hiding. You can write a book and never show anyone. You can be married and never really show your spouse your whole, true self; or you can put it all out there – all your words and body and skin and dreams.
This is as beautiful as I am. This is as graceful as I am. This is as brave as I am. This is as broken as I am. This is as scared as I am. This is as complicated as I am.
Will you accept me and catapult me to a new level of freedom and success as a child of God?
^^^^That is a Godly marriage^^^^
Maybe Submission is Romance
To you I give … ME. I give my best, my worst, my ugly and my beautiful. To you, like sunlight on a tight flower, I open. To you I turn and face and unfurl until there is no fear left, only wide stretched petals of soul and body and spirit and breath. To you I show the center of me – the part where new life is born. To you I say, Here I am.
And you respond by receiving. You take me and instead of using me up, you expand me. I submit myself to you and I bloom because of your love.
God calls us to more. By submitting to God, we are offering to live brave, open, daring lives – where each day we show up and give our everything. By submitting to each other, we are called to more – more freedom, more confidence, more beauty, more strength, more vulnerability, more adventure.
In a loving marriage, we have someone to speak to us and touch us with the love of God, the kind that takes our submission not as a neck to stand on but as a beauty and power to expand.
“Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born: – you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.” ― E.E. Cummings
The good girls with their modest shirts and shorts under skirts. The good boys with their zipped pants and respectful words.
The ones who bent over backwards to save another. Did their homework. Did all the group projects themselves. Said no to drugs and yes to Jesus. Or mostly no to drugs and mostly yes to Jesus.
This one’s for the kids who missed their chance to have “wild days” of sowing their oats. Who never yelled back at their parents, never came home late, always played by the rules. This one’s for all those good kids who are now adults and the stakes are just too high to go wild, when you have bills and a family and a job you desperately need.
I am one of you. I missed my chance to rebel. My family needed stability and had been through enough turmoil. I decided, deep in my bones, to be a good girl and not make anything harder for anyone else ever ever ever. I would make life easier and better for all the people. I would get good grades, do as I’m told, show up on time, and smile when I was mad. I would save myself for marriage and stay sober while others drank beer and ate live goldfish.
I was a good girl.
Then I had kids.
And my own beautiful children are teaching me to rebel. Quickly, in the first year of motherhood, I used up every ounce of responsibility and goodness I had artificially created. I used up all my stores, all my reserves. Those kids and their wild selfishness drove me straight into the center of my own storm of needs.
And I rebelled, in starts and spurts. I pushed hard into spontaneity. Hard into living in the moment. Hard against eating my vegetables. Hard against doing chores and needing to keep the kitchen clean. Ah, Cleaning: The little pressure-release valve on my growing, filling rebellion tank. Nope. Not doing it.
But, I was rebelling against the wrong things.
I think God is a wild parent. I think He loves our rebellious streaks because we got them from Him. He just wants us to channel that strength and fierceness into a rebellion that looks more like freeing the captives and less like teenagers at a house party.
When I first started dreaming about what my ONE WORD would be this year, I thought it was REBEL Finally, I would stop rebelling against taking care of myself or doing my chores and I would rebel like a girl who believes God is real. Rebel against oppression. Rebel against anyone who claims power over another human being. Rebel against old definitions of beauty. Rebel against rules that shrink men and women. Rebel against false idols. Rebel against hate. Rebel against limits … but then I taught LOVE & MAKING IT and I was given a new word… ANOINTED.
…. this word is not just for me because it is for all of us. Anointed to free the captives and give sight to the blind…
The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me. He sent me to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken, announce freedom to all captives, pardon all prisoners. God sent me to announce the year of his grace—a celebration of God’s destruction of our enemies—and to comfort all who mourn, to care for the needs of all who mourn in Zion, give them bouquet of roses instead of ashes, messages of joy instead of news of doom,
a praising heart instead of a languid spirit…. Isaiah 61
The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed… Luke 4:18
This one’s for the good kids – for the ones still sitting in their cells, quiet and small. The ones who over-eat because it feels like freedom, but it is still slavery. The ones who feel the needs of other people even stronger than their own.
It’s time. The doors are unlocked. It’s your turn. Let’s go.
We are free. Throw off the old rules. Go wild. Rebel. Run fast. Laugh loudly. Hug fiercely. Speak up! Use the full volume of your voice to proclaim FREEDOM. I will yell as loudly as I can. If you hear me, yell out freedom to everyone within earshot too. On and on we will go until we are all free from the powers that try and keep us blind and oppressed.
You are beautiful.
You are rich.
You are strong.
You are brave.
You are free.
But we have been captive for so long that we are walking on wobbly, hesitant legs – still believing the lies of our oppressors that Jesus did not live and there is no resurrection, that the rules of the power-hungry culture are still true – you are poor and ugly and worthless and small.
Are the last really first? Are all people now equal?Are you sure I am beautiful? Are you sure I am free? Can I really want what I want? Am I worth all this?
{{This is why I love helping women make a workshop and a playground of their marriage beds. This is why we are starting a community for ALL women in May.}}
YOU ARE WORTH IT. You are not alone. Let’s work out our salvation together – when the fear and trembling of these wild, wide open spaces is too much for our wobbly legs, we will link arms and keep going. It’s not too late to start rebelling for the right things.
Love and Making It in Spring session is over… but we have something hot coming this summer.
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Love and Making It – All Women – July 1st {single, married, don’t matter}
Love and Making It – For Couples – June 21st {for both partners to do together}
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Listen. We are bombarded with sights and sounds that tell us we are just not good enough and neither is our spouse. Let’s rebel against all of those messages together.
Let Love and Making It give you hope and show you the beauty you already have inside AND out – whether you are single or married.
If you are married, let Love and Making It help you and your spouse find the fun and desire and communication skills to really take your sex life to the next level.
Interested? Let us know. We are want to start a revolution… a rebellion… where all the people who thought they were disqualified from the “good” or “sexy” or “beautiful” life ALL get together and say, “Starting TODAY we are making new rules.”
We can show you how. This is about us choosing ourselves because it’s just a total waste to let one more day go by feeling bad about any of it.
Sign up to be the first to hear more info on classes and for a few inspirational words to make tomorrow even better than today.
(your time is precious. I have over 50,000 unread emails in my personal email from unnecessary things I signed up for. The emails you get from 1,000 Strands will be infrequent and useful and your information will be private)
THIS IS THE POST FOR OUR SPRING CLASS BUT IT’LL GIVE YOU MORE OF AN IDEA OF WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT… KEEP READING.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. – Pablo Neruda
LOVE and MAKING IT in Spring
(If you already know you are ready to join us, scroll to the bottom to sign up now.)
It’s time, my friend. It’s time for a renewed sense of wonder and connection to spring up in you. It’s time for your body to feel like home. It’s time for you to have greater experiences in your body than you thought were possible. It’s time to feel more awake, satisfied, open, and passionate.
What is the Love and Making It eCourse all about?
Well, sex, mostly. And your body. And your fears. And your marriage. And your sense of humor. And how sex can actually be medicine and dessert. How sex can be more than an obligation or something you do when you love someone and are not currently angry with them… How you can feel sexy and fulfilled NOW in THIS BODY.
It’s time to love your body. It’s just time.
It’s time to look forward to having sex with your husband. It’s just time.
It’s time to learn ways to overcome the obstacles in your sex life. It’s just time.
It’s time to switch from fixing yourself to enjoying yourself. It’s just time.
We spend so much time, money and energy trying to get fit, get smart, get holy, get beautiful… Get through it, Get over it, Get it out of the way.
This class is different. This class is not about getting – although you will get some. This class is about being given gifts.
You will be given gifts. The gifts of FREEDOM, SEX, BEAUTY, SAFETY, COURAGE, PLAY… you will finally own your body and sensuality in a way that allows you to give your whole self – not out of obligation or routine – but out of a bubbling, joyful, sexy desire to share.
In the body you have RIGHT NOW, you can feel beautiful and have truly great sex.
Do not let fear or busyness stop you from receiving this gift.
After years of research and indepth conversations with 100’s of women, I know this class, and the space it creates, literally changes lives and marriages… not because I am awesome (which we can discuss further) but because this way of looking at our sexuality and our bodies works. This is not a prescription, it is a new description of how all of this is meant to be – how we were designed for so much more {in bed}.
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A few words from past classmates:
“I think the thing about this class that has given me the most hope is that there is no assumption that some people will never get there, which is the message often given. Here, it has always been ‘Yes you can. And here’s how. And it will be uncomfortable but keep going.'”
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“He looked at me and said, “I’m SO glad you are taking this class. Because no matter how many times I tell you these things, I know you can’t hear them from me. I’m so glad you’ve heard them from Nicole.” We went on to have the most amazing, connected time together ever. EVER. I’m celebrating because even though there have been high highs and low lows throughout this course, we have never had a dialogue that open about this, and I have never felt so connected to him and to my body before.”
**
“So even though I knew we were both so exhausted, I said to my husband, “Can we go to bed together tonight?” and when he asked why I said, “I really need to feel connected to you tonight, I really need to have sex and be held and know we’re in this together” and I was super nervous, but he didn’t shame me or question it or anything. We just put our laptops away and went to bed. And last night nothing changed with our situation, but something holy happened. I felt connected and known by my hubs in a new way. I finally got what Nicole’s been talking about when she says sex can be therapy and healing.”
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“I have waited for these words for ten years. Asked the question “what in the world is sex? Why would God make it? What does it have to do with his heart??” It always seemed a separate thing from him, from relationship with him. Shocking, yes. But I’m ready to engage it. Thank you.”
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“Nicole, I hope you plan on offering this regularly! My husband and I do premarital mentoring at our church and I just suggested your course as a resource for our ladies.”
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“This is epic….transformational!”
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“And then after we made love last night and were laying there a realization hit me. I told him that I feel as if I am waking up from a long sleep. That my whole body has been asleep, numb, and that I feel connected to myself again. Being awake is wonderful!”
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“My husband said Nicole is a genius!”
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“Nicole that is a huge breakthrough. Huge. Your influence led to REAL, practical, hands on healing.”
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“I was raw. I told him what I was missing and needed. We decided to give ourselves permission to laugh in bed as we navigate our physical challenges. We are just now getting out of bed and one of his last comments was “thank you for being brave and telling me what you were feeling. I think this is a new day for us.”
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“Your love and making it series is setting me free. My husband has never felt so loved and frankly I have never been more satisfied. I think this is your gift. I want you to talk about bodies and sex all day every day because your truth is seriously beautiful and deeply needed.”
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If you think the church only gave you instructions on how to NOT have sex, but never the tools to help you LOVE sex, take this course with me.
If you need a reboot in your sex life, take this course.
If you love your husband more than life, but still don’t always look forward to having sex, take this course.
If you need a safe community of women to talk with about sex and body challenges, take this course.
If you want to find new, fun ways to make sex hot, take this course.
If you want to turn to your husband in a few weeks and say, “Honey, I have a headache. Can we please have sex?” Take this course.
HOW WE WILL DO THIS THING beginning April 10th:
28 Days of PASSIONALS (A Worksheet/Love Letters to inspire and challenge and ignite you… Think of it like a waterfall of new, beautiful ways to see yourself and sex.)
4 Live Video Workshops where we discuss the Passionals and other issues that have come up in your class. (Recorded in case you miss any.)
A Secret Facebook group where we will cheer each other on, laugh, share our stories and basically talk daily about all the amazing things you are doing throughout the month.
**After you sign up, you will also have the chance to sign up for a one-on-one coaching call with Nicole**
THE COST:
For the 28 days of Passionals, workshops and daily support the class price is $65.
As with all my courses, there are a few scholarships available. Please send an email to 1000strands@gmail.com if you want to apply for a scholarship.
WHAT TO DO NOW:
SIGN UP TODAY. Use the button below to go to Paypal and please fill out the form below with the email you use on FB so I can add you to the cozy secret group. Any questions? Email me at 1000strands@gmail.com
Sex is like a souffle. A souffle is complicated and unique. It is difficult to get it to finish well. It takes preparation and forethought. You cannot be distracted or have your mind on something else while you are cooking a souffle. Use just the right ingredients at just the right temperatures. Beat and whip, but not too much. Fold and test until everything is perfect. Practice. Know your oven and test the temperature. Keep trying. It’s worth it – for the enjoyment, taste, and accomplishment.
Your body is not a package of fake meat and cheese (even if it feels like it some days) that you throw in a microwave oven, and it’s done in 3 minutes. You are a souffle that takes time and practice and love to prepare. You don’t make a souffle because you are hungry right now. You make a souffle for the love of cooking something special.
If you are treating sex like a hot pocket meal, you are not doing it right.
People treat sex like “I wanna do it and you should wanna do it with me too”… “I have this need and I am gonna use you to fill it”… “Hungry. Need hot pocket.”
Instead of treating sex like the deepest, sweetest, most liberating and fun conversation EVER. If we spent time preparing ourselves and each other FOR each other, we would have a much better meal. We wonder why we don’t want to have sex… but it is because we think it is a 3 minute heat up and BAM we are aroused and then orgasm and then done. That’s just not how it was made to be – believe it or not.
We put more care into preparing a presentation at work or an outfit for an interview than we do for sex.
We put more care into thinking through why someone did or did not call us back than we do for sex.
We put more care and consideration into the paint color on the wall than we do for sex.
We put more care and heart into a conversation with a friend than we do for sex.
And then we wonder why we don’t want to have sex.
Why are some things worth the work and other things not?? Usually because we don’t understand what we will get out of the other things. We know what we can get out of a good job interview or a great color on our walls or a conversation with a friend. But, honestly, what will you get out of sex except a little friction and connection and a few guilt-free days after…??
So so so so so much more. There is a wealth of love, depth, and pleasure that our bodies are made for and we have ignored out of fear and confusion. There is a conversation full of nuance and care, adventure and learning, that we can have with our bodies – if we are willing to go at the right pace and with good preparation.
You are a souffle. You are meant to be enjoyed and savored, folded, kneeded, and delighted over.
If you are thinking you are a hot pocket (or being treated like one) of course you don’t want to have sex. If you put the ingredients for a souffle in the microwave, that would not turn out delicious. You would still be hungry.
Take the time to learn how to prepare yourself and your spouse. Take the time to learn your own favorite ingredients and JUST how to fold, kneed, and heat. Actually finishing the meal is just punctuation at the end of a sentence you’ve been writing all along.
Rebel against the must-get-it-done push in our lives and go slow. Ask questions. You CAN learn to enjoy your own body – married or not. Your body is not just utilitarian – it is beautiful, graceful, delightful, strong, receptive.
((Full disclosure, I don’t love women-as-food metaphors… so forgive me if it offends your value as a woman. I just believe we forget the kind of preparation we are willing to put into other things because we don’t understand the goodness of sex. You are way more than a souffle, Sister. ))
Today is Anais Nin’s 111th Birthday. Let’s celebrate with some of her revolutionary words about living
a hot, free, brave, beautiful life!
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“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.”
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“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”
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“How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?”
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“There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of the imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don’t work.”
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“You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you’re not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn’t a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.”
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“I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.”
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“When one is pretending, the entire body revolts.”
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“I’m awaiting a lover. I have to be rent and pulled apart and live according to the demons and the imagination in me. I’m restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.”
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“It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.”
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“Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage.”
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“Don’t let one cloud obliterate the whole sky.”
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“Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.”
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“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
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“I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits.”
Love and Making It – the eCoursecurrently at full speed – is changing my life more than I thought possible because it is changing the lives of the women who took a giant step of bravery and signed up. We are asking hard questions and connecting with our spouses. We are cheering for each other, praying for each other, and laughing HARD with each other. Most of all, though, people are finding hope.
“My husband has never felt so loved and frankly I have never been more satisfied.”
“The very thing that has caused so much pain and fear could be the method by which those wounds are healed. whoa.”
(And that is just a couple comments. I am floored by the amazing things happening in this course.)
Thank you to everyone who has expressed interest in taking the next course AND to the single women who have told me I MUST include them next time… AS YOU WISH.
LOVE AND MAKING IT – a course on feeling brave and beautiful {in bed} will start another round in the spring. (Read about it here and here)
BABES IN GODLAND – a course on feeling brave and beautiful {in your body}. We will focus on feeling alive, well-made, beautiful, and sensual regardless of relationship status.
There are so many messages we have learned about what “sexy” is and how we are supposed to act as women and as people pursuing the mysteries of God. These classes are a call to freedom and healing for our WHOLE selves.
*****
“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” – Pablo Neruda
I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My beloved is knocking: “Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.” Song of Solomon 5:2
photo from (http://lookw.ru/eda/106-koaly-i-krasnye-pandy-46-oboev.html)
Do you know what this animal is called?
The scientific name: Ailurus fulgens
In most zoos these animals are labelled as “Red Panda” or “Cat-Bear”.
Red Panda… this name conjures up certain images in our heads. Images of cuddles and fur, cuteness and sweetness, like the best pet you will never have. You’d definitely offer to hug a Red Panda. I’d build a tree in my bedroom just to have Red Pandas sleep on it all day.
Names matter. What we label something gives it meaning and subtext. It changes how we treat it. Language is subconsciously very powerful.
This animal has another name: Firefox
Photo from http://lookw.ru/eda/106-koaly-i-krasnye-pandy-46-oboev.html
Now that’s an animal worth closer attention. A Firefox is handsome, beautiful, mysterious. You respect a Firefox. You do not own a firefox; she allows you into her presence.
Firefox
Brave, Mysterious, Beautiful, Wild
*****
Are you a Red Panda or a Firefox?
You get to choose. The world does not get to decide for you who you are. This crazy zoo may call you a Red Panda, but you know in your soul you are a Firefox – and a Firefox does not give a damn what anyone else thinks.
Note: Jeff Corwin taught me that scientists have tried to categorize these animals into a larger group, but they defy categorization. They are not raccoons, cats, or bears. They are their own category. You can be your own category. You do not have to fit into the box others have assigned to you. People will try to fit you into something they know how to handle. Don’t worry about them. Just keep being your own foxy self.
