Author Archive
Posted by Nicole on January 10, 2014
I just discovered the blog Happy Wives Club. I love Fawn’s positivity and pride in her marriage. So, this post is part of the Happy Wives Club Blog Tour which I am delighted to be a part of along with hundreds of inspiring bloggers. To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE!
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Never be ashamed or shy about what you love.
We all know it’s cool to be cynical, to hate things, to be down on things.
We all know there are people suffering all across the world.
We all have people we care about who are struggling and longing.
And sometimes we have the things they need.
You have a husband who loves you, a lot.
You have kids who light up your life like disco balls.
You have a job that inspires you most days.
You have pretty good health.
You have Something Great.
And you’re embarrassed.
Why are we shy about the good things in life?
Maybe, it’s time we celebrate the great.
Writing this ^^^^ is just painful, honestly. Admitting you are happy is like admitting you are probably a narcissistic, selfish, ignorant child. How could you possibly be happy? And if you are happy, how dare you flaunt it?
What does a {happy} person do, because the “pursuit of happiness” is an unalienable right, but the acquisition of happiness is a punishable crime?
Listen: You may feel absurd and childlike admitting you have a great marriage, family, job, etc… SO be it. Never be ashamed of the good in your life; this does not make life better for those who are hurting. This is an insult. Appreciate what you have because, the most valuable things, you cannot give away to anyone else. They are yours. Love it all for as long as you have it. A good friend will find a way to put up with ENJOY your happiness.
As much as you wish you could help in some way, you cannot give your kids to your best friend who struggles to get pregnant. This wouldn’t fill the hole in her heart. (Even if you secretly fantasize about it – just for a day – so you can take a nap and go to the bathroom by yourself.)
As much as you wish you could help in some way, you cannot give your husband to a lonely friend. (Please don’t do that.) And, try not to talk badly about your husband to make a friend feel better, either. It’s tempting, but it hurts everyone in the long run.
As much as you wish you could help, you cannot feed or employ everyone in the world. At least not today.
It is a balancing act, for sure. We do not want to hurt people more by rubbing any happiness we’ve received in their faces. On the other hand, we do not want to ignore and bury the good in our lives. Some day it will be gone. Things will change. Do not spend the entire time you have something amazing, pretending it’s just aaiiight.
If you are lucky today. Roll with it.
Surprises and changes will come, and then it will be your turn to learn again how to let others be happy even when you can’t see the sun. The world feels pretty dark. If those who have received something great and lovely keep pretending they haven’t, how will we know the light has come? How will we keep hoping we will each have the light someday?
Everyone is pursuing happiness in some form: a partner, a job, kids, a best friend, finally a clean house, a body that works, a relationship with God that makes sense, a loving family and on and on and on — the desires and hopes and needs of the human race are immense.
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If you are in a hard time right now, I’ve been there. Promoting celebration does not mean I don’t cry hard tears for the empty, broken pieces of me – and of you. The ache in ours heart for things TO BE DIFFERENT physically hurts and each day hopes barely survive. Thank you for coming here. Feel free to yell at this post. Feel free to feel all the feelings, but please don’t give up on the light and on hope. Even the smallest bit of goodness can be celebrated.
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Some ways to Celebrate the Great:
Be Generous: sharing our food, our homes, our money, and our time with people. This should be as natural as breathing. We get and we give. We get and we give. We invite and we share. We hug and we include. Make room for friendship.
Be Sacrificial: giving more than we thought possible and finding that we still always have enough. Sacrifice is not natural. It is takes wisdom to know when sacrifice will help. Make room for justice.
Be Grateful: holding with open hands and wild wonder all that we currently have. This is where we celebrate like puppies about to go for a walk. Look at your life?! Get excited. You have good stuff. Burying the good stuff serves absolutely no one. Share everything you can. Some things you can’t share or give away, so you better just love them and be grateful. BUT Be gracious. It’s not a competition. Gloating ruins gratitude. Make room for beauty.
Original Art by the endlessly creative Libby at LibbyDoodle
(Libby celebrates the great in life – she celebrates so much that the earth can’t hold her joy. Check out her prints and original art HERE and her blog HERE)
Celebrate the great in your life! Dance with your kids holding flashlights before bed and laugh til you cry at the goodness in your life. Make out with your husband when he walks in the door. Kick butt at work and change the world. Eat a healthy meal. Go for a run and feel your strong lungs expand. Make sure as many other people as possible see generosity and sacrifice and gratitude in YOU.
Live life to the fullest reaches it can go today. This is gratitude. Do not shrink back to make room for someone else’s sorrow. Do not be so busy weeping with those who weep that you forget how good your own life is now.
We can be so wrapped up in empathy that it becomes a straightjacket. Other people’s feelings surround us completely and we no longer know how to spread back to our own shape. Like foot bindings for our minds, we are formed by their lives more than our natural growth.
“Let’s stop saying “sorry about my awesome … self, success, husband, healthy kids, good job…”
Instead, let’s say “THANK YOU. This is a good season. I’m finding ways to celebrate it all.” To use the words of my brilliant doodling, space-exploring friend Libby, “Celebrate today for its simple joys and tiny miracles.”
Never be ashamed of what you love. The more we celebrate, the more we will find to celebrate. And when you are happy and I am not, I will learn to put up with ENJOY your happiness. We will be a team. We will share the light and warmth as best we can.
We will celebrate the great!
It’s ok to be happy.
Fawn Weaver, the founder of the Happy Wives Club wrote a book about the best marriage secrets the world has to offer. They say the book is like “Eat, Pray, Love meets The 5 Love Languages.” I say the book is inspiring. You can grab a copy HERE.
Follow www.1000strands.com on Bloglovin. I actually do love Bloglovin for keeping up with the good blogs I find.
Posted in Honest Home, How Can I Help | Tagged: celebrate, happiness, Happy Wives Club, LibbyDoodle, marriage, sadness | 5 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on January 6, 2014
“What you call ‘love’ was invented by guys like me.
To sell Nylons.”
– Don Draper
I’ve been thinking about brainwashing and beauty.
I’ve realized two major things:
1. I am brainwashed in regards to how I actually look.
2. I can be free if I am willing to follow 3 simple steps and give up one major safety net.
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In the late 1950s, psychologist Robert Jay Lifton studied former prisoners of Korean War and Chinese War camps. He determined that they’d undergone a multistep process that began with attacks on the prisoner’s sense of self and ended with what appeared to be a change in beliefs. Lifton ultimately defined a set of steps involved in the brainwashing cases he studied.
We can divide this process of brainwashing into three main stages:
1. breaking down the self
2. introducing the possibility of salvation
3. rebuilding the self
Brainwashing takes place in isolation – meaning all “normal” social reference points are unavailable. Mind-clouding techniques like sleep deprivation and malnutrition were typically part of the process as well. <<<<<<< THIS is the part that blew my mind. Stay with me.
In regards to our own beauty and worth – From before we knew what was happening:
1. Our sense of self was broken down. You were told you were too skinny, too fat, too short, too tall, too dark, too pale, too ________ (fill in the blank).
Then, over time:
2. You discovered someone or something with the promise to help save you from your ugly. (Magazine articles, Pinterest boards, a manipulative friend, Marketing for skincare, etc.)
Finally:
3. You acknowledged your ugliness/faults as the bad parts of you and purchased/chased the ongoing help you need so you could be good enough and pretty enough and have people like you.
We have been brainwashed.
All of us.
And because so many of us have been brainwashed, there is no “normal” social reference point. None of us can see the truth. We are isolated as one group. We all know we are sleep deprived AND we are just cracking the surface of how malnourished we are as a country.
We are all isolated.
We are all sleep deprived.
We are all malnourished.
We are all brainwashed.
We have never been free to form our own, positive self-images without comparison – not just to a few other people in our small town (as could be manageable), but to 1,000s of people every single day who ALL look different from us and who we are taught ARE BETTER and more beautiful and desirable than us (so we better get help!).
Pause and note: This is not just a character issue where we learn not to compare ourselves to others and now walk with heads held high. This is an issue of ongoing brainwashing and psychological fog created by isolation, sleep-deprivation, and malnutrition as an excellent mind-fog base for all of the pictures and advertisements we see all day, every day. We are prisoners. We have been since we were children.
“What you call ‘love’ was invented by guys like me. To sell Nylons.”
– Don Draper
has become
What we call “beautiful and sexy” was invented by guys with cameras and money.
To sell everything.
We’ve been brainwashed into believing that anything Good and Beautiful and Positive about us… is a lie. Our worth is tied to our beauty and sexiness – take those away and we feel like the walking dead.
The message is: You are no good — you may be salvageable, but just barely.
THIS IS YOUR BRAINWASHING TALKING.
The only way we will continue to choose to remain in this machine of industry is to believe we MUST to survive. So, the brainwashing continues and we buy in out of fear and confusion.
Here’s how it goes:
First, we were broken down; by others brainwashed before us and people hoping to use us for their gain. We learn or adopt poor sleep and eating habits.
We are shown picture after picture of the people who look different than us. We are told over and over again that THEY look the right way. This is beautiful and this is obviously different from the way you look. (It doesn’t matter how you look, the brainwashing occurs the same way – you can be skinny or tall or dark-skinned or light… the messages just make sure you know you are NOT right. Piece by piece, our identity is isolated and corrupted. We are broken down into tiny parts and each part is proven to be wrong in some way or another.
Then, comes the chance to be acceptable. We are told there might be a couple parts of us that are worth “highlighting” in order to distract others from the hideous and ugly parts of us. If we “play up” some parts then they won’t notice the rest that is so so so NOT ok. “Fix what can be fixed.” In this situation, it might be your eyes, your smile, your butt. You learn that there might be elements of your body that are acceptable if you work hard enough and pay enough attention and money.
Finally, you rebuild your Self. It takes absolute constant work, according to the powers-in-charge. Constant money. Constant education. Constant attention. Moment by moment, store by store, workout by workout, by skin care review and by magazine article… for the rest of your life.
This is how you will make it acceptable for you to walk the earth.
Otherwise, you will be banished to the land of the invisible uglies. You will be an invisible ugly. People will cringe at the site of you – at worst – or ignore your existence – at best.
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This is ridiculous. This is absurd. At times we can see that, but then the triggers come and we are right back into our brainwashed “truth”. What do we do? How do we find freedom when the messages keep coming from not just advertisements themselves but our brainwashed family and friends??
The problem here is that with ALL of us brainwashed, you really WILL be cringed at or ignored by most of people if you do not devote your life to “looking your best”. Many many many movies and TV shows involve at least some kind of joke based on how “wrong” or “cringe-worthy” someone else looks. I have heard preachers make jokes at other bodies’ appearances just as often as 5th graders on the playground.
How often I have decided to put on a little makeup so people don’t have to see me “like this.” As if I cause physical pain to them with the way I look.
See, the problem is that I do.
When I don’t look great, when I have dark circles and my pants squeeze my middle, it causes you pain. You have been taught to HATE certain attributes in people. I have too.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can choose to believe something different than a Victoria’s Secret add or google search on “beautiful people”. Those people are beautiful too, but so are you.
Here’s the rub: Our definition of beautiful is tied into not only our self-image but our image of other people as well. We have to be willing to define our own selves as beautiful while giving up all the cheap jokes about other people’s bodies too. No more easy humor at someone else’s expense.
And this is where we will lose, I fear. It’s just too insidiously fun to mock people based on the size of their thighs or their outfit at Walmart. It’s such a great way to feel better about yourself, finding something in someone else that is ugly. We are addicts to the dopamine hit. “It’s just a joke and I need a laugh.” “My life sucks and I need to find laughter somewhere, so let me make fun of that guy’s stupid face or hairy back” … “let me whisper to my friend about that girl’s cellulite showing through her stretch pants.”
But we pay for this hit of laughter with a self-loathing we cannot name or release. We pay for the bullying with a warped picture of ourselves that we will never erase.
So, we accept the brainwashing. We keep buying and perfecting and settling for only pieces of ourselves being acceptable. Then we only need to believe pieces of others are acceptable too and we can make fun of the rest. If I was to believe that I am “all beautiful” then I have to believe that others are all beautiful too.
This train of thought is sooooo dangerous and so frustrating because
People will make bad BAD wardrobe choices. People will NOT take good care of their bodies. And you WILL want to MOCK them. I cannot google People at Walmart without laughing at the absurdity of people’s choices. I cannot.
So, where is the line between the brainwashing that taught me I am wrong and need fixing AND making just really bad choices with our bodies or clothes???
I do not claim to know a black and white answer to that question. But what I am sure of is that I need to rebuild my love for myself and my love for others, no matter what they look like. Then, we can focus on the proper care and feeding of a human.
Even this beautiful person… shopping for a phone in her bathing suit.
I think it’s the only way to break my brainwashing. No more mocking others as a safety net under my own self-image tightrope walk.
I have to rebuild on the fact of HUMAN BEAUTY. Beauty that like gravity is undebatable and true for all people everywhere. If I love them, they become beautiful. It is in hatred and mocking that I find people ugly. Real love sees beauty.
I may still laugh with confusion at the choices people make. I may still wonder, WHY GOD WHY???
But I will no longer accept the story that I need to be fixed by some outside force. My beauty is undebatable – sewn into my cells when they first started multiplying. And yours is too, my friend. Yours is too. Even if you wear your bathing suit to Walmart…. I may laugh, but I will still find you beautiful.
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The three rules we can focus on in order to defend ourselves from brainwashing:
1. Come out of isolation. Find others who are free. Read God’s truth about YOU. Here and Here and Here.
2. Sleep. You are allowed to rest and be still.
3. Eat well. Pretend you are your own parent. Take good care of you. “Take Care of You.”
Posted in Beauty SOS47 | 5 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on January 3, 2014
FIGHT
There comes a moment when you realize YOU’RE the one who has been blind. You’re the one living out of old stories about how men and women should act. {OMG I’m the patriarchy.}
Women, we have sat on the sidelines and watched men fight, struggle, sweat, and bleed. We cheer. We supply water and first aid. We nurture and we caress tired backs with our soft hands.
But it’s time to get in the game ourselves. It’s time to step into the arena and fight.
We will help each other side-by-side.
I don’t know your sport or your call but I know what it looks like when we avoid the invitation to play: We offer to hold the jackets. We sit alone on the sideline and watch others try and fail and fall and laugh and get back up. We walk back home together and our pants have no grass stains.
The men and the children play and the women watch.
Not all the women do this, but I was doing this. I knew I was choosing rest over adventure. I was playing it safe. I was the safe zone for others. “Mom’s not playing! Mom’s safe!” I cherish being the safe zone, at times. I’ve loved wearing my cozy sweater and drinking coffee. But my life is floating by me. I have opted out too many times. I can feel my muscles growing weak and my desire to be saved growing strong. I don’t know about you, but I want to feel strong. I want to speak up. I want to run as fast as I can. I want to volunteer for the adventure.
Like all the best things, this epiphany started as a seed in me {here} and then with lots of fertilizing words and experiences, it has grown from a beautiful thought into a call to action.
Three parts Story Sessions, One part Lean In, Two parts Brene Brown, a good swig of Scandal, and a dash of Frozen
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Climb out of the tower yourself, grab a sword, and fight, Sister.
Find the inspiration you need and Fight, Sister. Women were not made to wrap themselves in ruffles and watch the action. Humans are made to fight. We are heroes. We are gladiators. Get in the game. Fight.
“You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.” ― Brené Brown
If you are a {writer {blogger {lonely {free for five minutes on Fridays… I recommend Lisa Jo Baker’s Five Minute Friday link up. It’s a really great way to meet other people online who are kind and intelligent. Come and see that we are not all snarky and mean when we type.
Posted in Honest Home, How Can I Help | Tagged: arena, Brene Brown, fight, Five Minute Friday, Lean In, play | 3 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on December 27, 2013
Shhhh. No one tell resistance that I am at my keyboard.
Ever since people I admire started noticing my writing… Ever since people started cheering me on… Ever since I set a goal, RESISTANCE has gotten strong. Really strong.
I’m learning to be a writer so this is where my resistance meets me – here on this blog. Where does your resistance meet you? Where do you feel that invisible force push you aside, distract you, and basically keep you from doing that nagging but beautiful dream that lingers in the dusty corners of your brain?
It can feel a lot like fear, but disguised under whatever will most tempt you.
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And RESISTANCE is endless.
When I swam on the team in high school, I would fantasize about having one of those ENDLESS POOLS – the pool with a constant current so you could basically swim in place for an hour. That sounded awesome!
That’s how it is with writing this month. But it’s not awesome. Not. Awesome.
Swimming in place feels pointless when you want to be landing on the shore of a new land.
The instant I set my mind on writing an ebook this month – my equivalent of swimming across the English Channel – the avalanche of family-needs and work-needs descended on my little life like a scene out of ALIVE. Forced to eat my words, I survived but it has not been pretty.
So, please, no one tell FEAR that I am here. These words may not be pretty, but these are inches I will crawl to gain some ground.
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I’ve been writing and I have still made NO progress where it counts. I have not one inch to show for myself. I look up and see my friends, my mentors, zooming ahead. Once in a while they stand on a rock or grab onto a buoy and call out to me, “Come on! You can do it!”
“I’m coming! Please don’t give up on me.”
I put my head back down and write.
A few days later I look up and see I’ve moved no further.
What the &#^$?
How does anyone do this?
How do people plan 9th birthdays, class parties, Christmas eve services, and cold remedies… and still pursue their dreams?
… Actually, not just pursue their dreams but TAKE GROUND in the land of their dreams?
I realize now that my frustration comes from this stage I am in where pursuing dreams no longer cuts it. I want progress.
I am ready to take ground.
But first, I have to acknowledge that riding down stream feels really good, especially when you’ve been trying to swim against the current of resistance for a while (also what feels good is filling blog posts with random references so you feel clever while struggling).
Here’s how it works: You know there is something important you are supposed to be doing. It lingers in the back of your mind – like a blessing you know will someday be yours and like a monster you have no idea how to fight. This “something” is always with you, but it is heavy and awkward and not easily done. So, you do something else – something you do actually need to do too… something meaningful but easier. As long as it’s not THE SOMETHING, you will feel incredible release and fulfillment.
Planning your daughter’s birthday party.
Watching a movie with your husband.
Cleaning out your closet.
Designing a craft for the 3rd Grade Holiday party.
This is the goodness. This is family. This is life. – You’ll tell yourself. – And it all IS.
Of course it is. But it is also not THE SOMETHING and so it is a delicious rebellion.
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Imagine working and straining to swim against a current; your muscles exhausted. Someone comes by with a big, bouncy raft to sit on and paddle downstream. It’s beautiful and takes just the right amount of effort to fill your day. You sleep soundly with visions of nature and goodness soothing your tired bones.
Moving with the current feels especially good when you’re tired.
Don’t be fooled.
The better it feels to avoid THE SOMETHING, the more likely it is that you should be doing it. Right now. Go do it.
That’s what I am doing… my SOMETHING.
Maybe all this swimming in place is a season of strength-training. I have been swimming and practicing and working these muscles, just not getting anywhere. Maybe December was just my Endless Pool month. Hopefully, now, I am ready to get out of the training pool and into the ocean.
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Was 2013 the year of your Endless Pool? Do you have a goal you are ready to take ground on?
Do not give up. Resistance is endless but it is also mindless. Your hope and creativity and bravery can overcome even the strongest resistance. Together, let’s make 2014 the year we do our SOMETHING.
Do not give up.
Posted in Wonderful Wrestlings | Tagged: art, dreams, Endless Pools, fear, goal, Gunslinger, hopes, New Year, resistance, War of Art, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Nicole on December 23, 2013
Advent. We wait. We wait for God to come down here and be with us. Just hurry up and be with us.
Yesterday, I felt it, that dull discomfort of waiting for things to be RIGHT – To feel God with me and to feel Him making all things comes together for Good. I wanted it, bad.
This incredible waiting that is called LIFE drives some of us mad. We get short burst of fun, joy, beauty, and meaning and then we wait again. This incredible waiting, like watching intermittent shooting stars when what we really need is dawn.
We wait for heaven and the Light of the World to come. Heaven will not just be for our souls. Heaven involves our bodies too. This is the gift of making love.
God, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven – not just in our hearts but in our bodies too.
In honor of Advent and Love and Making It coming together this week, today we have the gift of reading a personal essay from a woman who has never been kissed and is beginning to let herself feel the desire and hope of what will come someday. May all our waiting and longing be this vulnerable and brave.
-Nicole
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I dreamed a few months ago that I had my first kiss.
Yes, I’m 25 and I’ve never been kissed – or even been on an official date. I was a little too “mature” (and obnoxious) in high school to stoop to “chasing boys,” and I was a little too driven in college to take time out for life. Which is strange, really. I’ve always wanted the support of a relationship and the chance to build a life with another person and love them unconditionally. I want the deep friendship of shared experience and ideas and the knowing of each other that comes from that. I want to explore the world of sensuality and romance in a healthy way, which I haven’t always. Other things have just gotten in the way.
It doesn’t take a significant other to experience growth, of course. Sometimes that can even inhibit it. I’ve grown more in these last two years at home dealing with chronic fatigue than I think I have my whole life. I’m learning to make space for myself, and that I have a right to take up room in the world. I’m learning to let go of other peoples’ burdens and pick up my own oxygen mask first in a crisis. I’m learning to lean in, to stand my ground, to experience life ready to fall and fail and make mistakes and then get right back up again.
I think it’s appropriate that my dream took place at some kind of fancy dinner. I’ve discovered a deep love for food and cooking since I’ve been home. I even remember what I was eating in the dream – it was some kind of deconstructed gourmet s’more with a white chocolate mousse and graham cracker crumbles served in a martini glass. Which actually sounds delicious.
It’s also appropriate that in my dream, I spilled some on my shirt. I’m kind of a messy person, a fact I’ve hated my whole life. I bump into things and fall up the stairs. I spill things all the time and have never managed to keep my room clean. I have big curly hair that goes frizzy in the rain. As much as I’ve always wanted to be sleek and svelte, I’m learning that I’m really a flannel pajamas and fuzzy socks kind of girl. And that I’m beautiful, curly hair and all.
So, laughingly, I tried to wipe the spill off my shirt, standing by the table. My date laughed too, kindly. He put water on a napkin and helped me clean up the mess.
We were standing close then, of course, and when I noticed I felt the urge to back away. Not because I was afraid of him, but because I had heard what happens when people stand too close. Because it’s the reflex I’d developed overseas to protect myself and maintain purity and propriety. Because I wouldn’t want to send mixed signals or be rejected or make someone else uncomfortable go too far or do any of the dozen other things I’ve been warned about. There are no guarantees when you let people get too close.
But this time, I stood my ground instead. I chose to take up my own space and let someone else move out of the way, for a change, if this wasn’t what they wanted.
I looked up at him – he was definitely taller than me – and closed my eyes.
He leaned down and we kissed. My heart beat fast.
Then he put his arm around me and walked with me to a quiet corner, a bench where we could sit together and just be.
There was no rejection, only welcome. Only peace. Only the comfort of knowing I was home.
I don’t expect my real first kiss to be quite this revelatory, necessarily. But now, I think I’m finally ready to find out.
Ellie Ava: I’m a storyteller, an explorer, and an avid fan of all things science… especially when it’s fiction. After many years of exploring new cultures and perspectives in Europe, I’m back in the USA taking time to discover the things bubbling up in my own heart and mind. I blog about life at ellieava.tumblr.com.
Posted in Free Flying Faith, Love and Making It | Tagged: advent, Christmas, God, Heaven, jesus, kiss, love and making it, waiting | 5 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on December 18, 2013
One week til Christmas. One week til we celebrate God being with us.
For some people, their lives are so full of family and friends, hot chocolate and Christmas Lights, that the darkness is just a shadow in the corner or a fading streetlight down the road. For others, this is a time where the darkness threatens to swallow them whole.
Light flaunts its warm power in the life of one and barely flicks the skin of another covered instead in cold, dark loneliness.
Advent is the waiting. The waiting 100s of years for God to come and make things right. Waiting generations for triumph and light and love to flood the world. Waiting for God to be with us – really with us. We need God with us. God, who says He is Light and Love, and yet seems to leave us lonely and scared in dark places.
God, are you avoiding me?
Where are you when I need you? Psalm 10:1-2
Advent is the waiting. We have no choice. Reminded of our powerlessness against the speed of time, we wait. We cannot save ourselves or our friends from the pain of waiting on God to BE WITH US.
With Christmas comes the promise of a future where we are whole and full. Christmas is the promise that while the pain is still here, God is doing a new thing. He came down to sit in the dark with us.
And this is what He also asked us to do for each other too. While we wait, we wait together. I will wait with you.
The light breaks through dark’s hard shell at the exact points we meet each other. At the loving touch of a friend, a spark ignites.
The spark that says we are going to make it.
Every day this week, I will be posting a story or an essay on advent and waiting and God with us.
Today’s first story is written by Melissa Hawks. A friend I met through adventure and spontaneity. She knows how to tell a story and she knows how to find God in the dark.
This is a story of sitting in the dark and waiting together – seeing the sparks of God’s great love in our small acts of faith.
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Hookers, Heathens, and Me by Melissa Hawks
I left early that dark morning, stopping to get gas on my way. It was freezing and rainy as I stood next to the gas pump, tears threatening to spill over and mix with the drizzle. Standing on tiptoe to keep my too long yoga pants from soaking in the puddles, I was so lost in my own painful thoughts I almost didn’t hear her.
I was jerked from my inner turmoil when an “Excuse me,” escaped her chattering teeth. She was beautiful and had a black eye. A leopard print chiffon shirt bared her stomach, a tiny skirt, and platform heels to rival the ones I tend to wear covered the rest of her. Her blonde fro curled wildly in all directions and her eye make-up was smeared from tears she had cried. At the moment, mine was a mirror image.
“Can I pay you $10 to give me a ride to my car in the parking garage over there? I just got beat up really bad by the last guy I was with. I don’t mind riding in the backseat.” The pain in her eyes.
“Get in the car, girl, and don’t worry about paying me. A girl’s got to help a girl out.” I didn’t really put any thought into it. She was shivering and in pain. “Of course, I’ll drive you. And no, you’re not sitting in the backseat. Get up here in front.” I tossed my bags in the backseat and made room for her.
She climbed up into my Jeep and began to cry. “This man. He just started slamming my head into the TV. Why am I still here? Why am I still doing this? I need to go home. Back to San Jose.”
I was empty. Beyond empty. I was at the bottom of the pit called empty, broken open. All I could offer was this “Our choices, baby, we make them all by ourselves and we have to remember we are in control of our destiny. We have to choose better.”
Sitting in my car with a prostitute/hooker/call girl who had just been beaten up by a john, I’ve never felt more broken. There were no words to her about God. There was just an understanding about her brokenness because I was experiencing it myself.
I think that’s what love does in the face of broken. It doesn’t look away. It holds the face of pain in its hands and says “you’re not too much for me.”
She must have seen that deep pain in me too, because right before climbing out of the car she leaned over. In a cloud of perfume she hugged me and kissed my cheek. “We’re gonna make it, girl. We’re gonna be okay,” she whispered in my ear.
Some days we can only make one good choice in the midst of a dozen awful ones. Some days we can’t rescue someone else. Some days we can not even rescue ourselves. Instead redemption comes from the most unlikely of sources.
No promises that we’ll be unscathed or that we’ll come out whole on the other side. No false illusion covering the a fact that it’s a brutal and ugly process. Not even a pledge of some small beauty that awaits at the end. Only one simple truth.
“We’re gonna make it.”
God speaks to me through hookers and heathens. Maybe because I am one.
****
Melissa Hawks is a curator of brand and story at Hawks & Rock. She is discovering what it means to write her own story and how God lives in the detours.For her personal brand of awkward, space geekyness, and inspiration follow her @melissahawks account Branding wisdom can be found at her company’s twitter @hawksandrock and the Hawks & Rock website and blog can be found at hawksandrock.com.
Posted in Free Flying Faith, How Can I Help | Tagged: advent, Christmas, community, darkness, faith, God, jesus, light, Love | 7 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on December 12, 2013
What is this life?!
My guest today in the Love and Making It: Holiday Edition series is my one-and-only sister, Robin Chancer. She might be taller than me (I mean, who isn’t?!) but she will always be my little sister.
You can trust Robin to look at life with both practical and deeply emotional insights. Her post reminds me of one of my favorite Tyler Knott Gregson’s Typerwriter Series poems (as if I could have a favorite in that series!!)
I want my kisses to be without question marks. I want our passion to make all the questions into exclamations. Really, what I want is to feel those questions straighten up and stand at attention. I want to feel the assurance literally FILL the space between us as we meet each other new each time.
Keep reading. This post from Robin is a big, beautiful dare to be real and present in your body so that the intimacy between you and your spouse can become an exclamation.
This is how you make more love. This is intimacy.
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I work as psychotherapist, and recently I was meeting with a couple having a common struggle. He caught her sexting with someone else. She felt awful and wanted to fix the marriage. We were trudging through a classic conversation: he wants more sex, she wants less pressure. Well, shoot, I thought. This conversation is definitely not sexy.
David Schnarch in his book Passionate Marriage makes the point that classic marital therapy: active listening, I statements, and so forth is just not that sexy. That’s not what maintains passion, he would say. What maintains passion is a strong sense of self—standing on your own two feet so that you can be authentically intimate with your partner.
It’s the connection, not the technique, that matters.
But intimacy is hard. We all think we want more intimacy. Most couples say that in our first session together. But we forget that being intimate with our partners is scary. It means being radically honest, letting our partner in, seeing and being seen. It means saying things to our partner, and even to ourselves, that we might not want to hear. That’s dangerous. Because the longer we’re with our partners, the more important they are to us. If we allow ourselves to take the leap and be vulnerable, and our partner hurts or rejects us, we have a lot to lose.
So most of us start playing it safe. We keep some cards close. We start working to please our partner, maintain the status quo, be nice, avoid risks. Sex becomes predictable. Or, we retreat into our heads during sex. We focus on our sensations, or our fantasies, or what we know our partner likes. For this woman, I could tell she saw it as one more obligation on her long list of chores.
So I decided to try something. Instead of talking about connecting, I thought, let’s actually connect. Right now.
“This might sound crazy,” I asked her, “but could you take a second to tune in to how you feel right now?”
She thought for a second. “Tired,” she answered.
“Where do you feel that in your body?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” I could tell she was not used to tuning in to her body.
“How do you know that you’re tired?”
“I don’t know. I’m just tired. All over.” Getting into her body was really tough for her.
I gave her some silence so she could try harder. “My chest and shoulders,” she finally answered. “They feel heavy. Like everything is weighing on my shoulders.”
“Good!” I cheered her on. “Could you say that to your husband? If we want to connect , we have to be willing to let our partner see us for who we are right now. Tell him what’s going on inside you right now.”
For the first time in our session, she looked at his face. She told him how tired she was, and he just listened.
“Could you take his hand for a second?” I asked. “Tell me what you feel in his hand.”
They giggled like teenagers.
“Um, I don’t know.” She thought. Tuning into his body was tough for her, too. “It’s hot. And firm. And strong.”
“Good! What do you see in his face?”
She thought for a second. He had a wonderful look of love on his face.
“He really loves me,” she finally responded, like she was just realizing it. They both got tears in their eyes.
“How can you tell?”
“The gleam in his eyes. And the smirk on his face.”
“Good!!” I saw them relax. They kept looking at each other without my prompting now. We paused, enjoying the moment.
“You do it now!” She shouted, squirming to be on-the-spot for so long. We all laughed again at how awkward it felt to really connect.
He verbalized how tired she looked. He talked about how frustrated he felt and how good it felt to hold her soft, sweaty hand, how much he wanted that physical connection with her.
“This is intimacy,” I said. “Right here. Right now. Connecting on who you are this moment. What you really think and feel. If we can be transparent like that, sex will be different every time. You might have a different mood every day. You might be angry one day, serene the next. What matters is coming out of the cloud of our heads and really seeing each other.”
Schnarch suggests trying to keep our eyes open during sex. Most people shudder when I mention that. Why is that so hard? With our eyes closed, we can pretend sex is what we want it to be. We can go somewhere else. Maybe we’re afraid of what we’ll see on our partners’ faces. We might see that they aren’t truly present either, or truly having fun, or maybe that they ARE. With our eyes open, we’ll have to really be there. We’ll have to face our nakedness, to see our partner seeing us.
In this session, I saw her start to do that emotionally. She had let another man start to see pieces of her that she kept from her husband: she shared fantasies with him, told him her deepest feelings, complained and vented to him, confessed her ambivalence about her marriage. Now that she was starting to open those doors to her husband, I could feel the heat building between them. We had no idea what would happen next. It was uncomfortable. Even painful. And scary. And squirmy. And exciting. And hot.
****
Robin Chancer is a clinical social worker in North Carolina. She revels in being a sister, daughter, wife, and new mother of a sweet, spunky nine-month-old. She loves singing, pupusas, hugs, and laughter. She clings fiercely to this awesome, crazy thing called life. She blogs at www.roboinguate.blogspot.com.
Posted in Love and Making It | Tagged: Connection, guest post, Intimacy, making love, marriage, Sex. Love, Therapy, Tyler Knott, Typerwriter Series | 4 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on December 5, 2013
It’s an embarrassment of riches, around here, Friends! It’s time for another guest to join us in the Love and Making It series – the Holiday edition.
Everyone’s story is different and yet from your comments and the posts themselves, I see universal struggles and universal hopes for our sexuality. We are in this together – It’s awkward in the best possible way. I have words to offer, words that are forming in my heart for you all – and for me – about what to do next. What do we do after we have grappled with the hard stuff, invited God into our sex-lives, reclaimed our wildness, accepted that we are loved, and tried to be brave – even with our boobs?
For now, we confess. We confess our struggles and our hopes. We flash a little more brave with a twinkle in our eyes.
My next guest, Candice Jones, a woman of shocking beauty who is pursuing freedom and courage with everything she’s got, has quite a spark to her. Enjoy her words on Love and Making it.
Let her confessions inspire you to admit your own.
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I’m Candice Mae. I am happily married, and I rarely enjoy sex.
These are my confessions:
I wore a purity ring through my teen years to ward off unwanted suitors, meaning ALL suitors.
I am still trying to find the little girl in me who decided to hide and never be seen.
I judged and condemned other girls for their promiscuity, while secretly envying their ability to let someone in so close.
I was taught to fear– specifically to fear the regret I would feel as an adult because of the decisions I made as a young person.
I believed being vulnerable equaled the loss of my control and power, so I decided not to be vulnerable. (damn you, twisted truth)
I didn’t kiss a man until I was 22 years old, and it is one the most awkward experiences I have survived. (Right up there with my bathing suit popping off at the top of a waterslide, which resulted in me flashing several young children. Unlike Abby’s previous post, people have seen my boobs.)
I unintentionally absorbed the belief that life is not messy. I can remember painting murals on the inner walls of one of the churches I attended as a child. We painted precise pictures of white people with clear skin and smiles in different settings and stories described throughout the Bible. Even the crucifixion scene had minimal drops of red. Being raised in what is considered a conservative church, and by a strong, single mother, my early days were somewhat void of what I now know are real, messy, and good life experiences. Simple things were unknown to me, like crying in front of someone in complete vulnerability. What was modeled to me instead was going silent and running away from heartache and anger rather than opening up and letting people sit in it with me. As you can imagine, these learned practices did not set me up well for a relationship. I still have a lot of pain stored in my soul. I am unlearning, and some days it feels like I must unlearn everything.
I tend to giggle like a junior high kid when it comes to penis jokes, because I never understood them growing up. I was terrified of them. Penises, that is. It was a word never explained to me. I think I even blocked out what I learned in my Human Anatomy class because it made me so uncomfortable. I blushed a fiery red in those days. The only reference I do remember was during a video, while explaining semen, a pirate flashed on the screen and said, “ARRGG!” … oh right, I get it. Like sea-men. Ha. The semen thing stuck with me, and totally grossed me out. I was convinced that I would never be able to do that, ANY of that. Hollywood did not help either. The way sex was (and is) portrayed is completely ridiculous to me. Really? People make THAT much noise?! I didn’t get it, and in my walled-up heart, I rejected it. However, I am also a realist who has always loved children. I knew I couldn’t keep my eyes shut and hands to myself forever, though I never anticipated how much work the undoing (and undressing) would actually be. It took a lot more than my man’s good looks to get me into bed. After an enormous amount of prayer & soul-searching, married friends sharing their hearts & newfound knowledge, and an intense Christian therapist, I am in a much better place. But as I confessed in the beginning, sex is a rare thing for me to relish in.
My husband and I are opposites. From food, to hobbies, to energy levels, we usually seem to interrupt the other’s rhythm more than encourage our differences. It is the same with our physicality and sexuality – he is all in, all over, building up, while I am slowing down, breathing, and letting go. I tend to emphasize the X in sex, wanting to cross it out, move on, or get it over with quickly. As I dive deeper into myself and into my story, I know for a fact that my X-ing tendencies are directly impacted by two words: beauty and belonging.
Why do I strive for beauty in this space? Shouldn’t I be convinced by now that he loves what he sees, feels, knows? Why am I still working to make every inch of my skin soft and smooth and clear, keeping my make-up on instead of washing it off, going for the lacey cover-ups instead of letting him see me completely natural and bare?
As I process these questions, Light pours into my heart. Bare – I equate this word with “empty.” I compare nakedness to having nothing, not like admirable humility but more like disgusting poverty. I feel awkward. I am raw. Even in my youth, I am a bit saggy and dimpled in places. I fear the effects of age, because I still believe that beauty is formed on the outside and fades away over time.
Belonging. I can count when I have felt this, truly and deeply, on my two hands. Insecurity is my consistent friend, found in the dark days after my dad left. Thankfully, a village of brilliant, loving people raised me, and my need for and delight in authentic community has also been constant throughout my years. In these spaces of friends’ hearts, in living rooms and around tables, I belong. In my shared bedroom, nestled beside the man I am learning to trust with everything I am and have, I belong. Pursuing this truth in these places and among these people is my saving grace.
I have this belief about life:
Wherever we are in our stories is exactly is where we are meant to be.
& I am here —
where beauty is freely growing as well as striving,
where love is longing and awakening, failing and fighting,
where sex is becoming a mystical and God-breathed miracle between two beings who choose to show up, to enter in, to stay, and to heal.
I am unlearning my shame. The shame that tells me I am empty. The shame that perverts my nakedness, causing me to see poverty instead of purity and divine creativity. Shame focuses on the broken, rather than the being made whole. Shame hides my breasts under the blanket. Shame keeps me in the lie that I am what I feel. To all of this, I am saying no more. I am waking up, rubbing the false and easy out of my eyes, and opening my heart to truth. Messy truth. Trusting that I am loved more than I know, that I belong here, and that I am beautiful beyond words and beyond my youth.
I am growing away from Shame and growing into Shalom.
And reminding myself that relishing is a good thing.
****
Candice resides in Minneapolis with her fellow adventurer & husband, Kip. Living it up as newlyweds, they are avid dog-sitters and baby-holders, since neither of these gifts is in the plan yet. She’s a Southern Belle turned City Dweller who currently hopes to make it through another long winter. She enjoys traveling at every opportunity and continually exploring all of the unique places and faces of the Twin Cities. A proud thrift addict, she hopes to soon find a creative career that supports both her passions for the world and her coffee appreciation. You can find her words (for now) at http://candiceloves.blogspot.com.
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Candice, Abby, Esther, Jennifer, Sarah – they are all Story Sessions Sisters. If you need a group of friends who are wildly creative, brave, funny, loving, and accepting. Come check out Story Sessions. We are pursuing writing, story telling, artistry and God without forgetting that sometimes it’s good to make a full on career out of what you love. Come check it out. And let Elora know I sent you, if you decide to join us!
Posted in Love and Making It | Tagged: confessions, guest post, marriage, sex, sexuality | 7 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on December 2, 2013
The Love & Making It guest essays are rocking my world. These women have written from their guts, helping us all ask hard questions and enjoy our sexuality with more honesty. Have you read them all yet? Go here!
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Today’s guest, Tara Owens, is an expert in spiritual direction, sexuality and God. She lives in the professional and spiritual halls I want to roam. Her words are smart and insightful. THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE SEX MATTER IN THE BIGGEST WAYS. Beware, you will read them and not realize how deeply they hook into your psyche. But, do not fear, Tara leads by going first.
If you want your sex life to be more Godly, let Tara’s words guide you there today.
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The Crowd In The Bedroom
By Tara Owens
Here’s what I’d been telling myself: I’ve already done this work.
I’d gotten up early, picked up a few friends, and driven two hours north for a day-long workshop on sexuality and desire led by Dr. Dan Allender, a Christian therapist and author. It’s a topic I care deeply about, one I teach and speak about, one I write about often.
And slowly, quietly, I’d gotten more than a little self-righteous about it.
Oh, not publicly. Not in talking with and sitting with those whose stories I tend. Not as I taught, not as I read or wrote.
No, it was worse. I’d been slowly getting more and more self-righteous in my marriage, in my own bedroom.
If you’ve never heard Dan Allender speak or read any of his books, let me compare his workshops to being in the presence of John the Baptist, without the hair shirt. He is intense and brilliant, bent on redemption but unwilling to flinch away from sin, kind and fiery all at the same time, unapologetic in pointing not to himself but to Christ. I’ll be sitting with many things from that workshop for a very long time, statements and questions like:
“Dogmatism is the comfortable intellectual framework of self-righteousness.”
“You have to grapple with how stunningly beautiful you are.”
“What do you do to escape the passions of desire God has put in you?”
“God’s design is for us to be worlds more playful with desire.”
“The result of male and female engaging is art. What is the art that has come of your relationship?”
“Most people’s definition of faithfulness is just boredom.”
And that was just the morning session.
It was affirming for me, I’ll admit, to sit and listen to someone who teaches, thinks, counsels in this area. I’ve worked hard to reclaim my own sexual story from the ways the world and the church have both sought to define and name me, claiming my past either as a place of false empowerment or false shame.
Coming to Christ as an adult, I lived out the narratives of my culture that sex was powerful, a means of control or connection. My sexual encounters were attempts at both, and the stories that I’d learned and taught myself about the worth of my body (an object to be used for power and pleasure) drove my actions. Once converted, though, the church’s narratives seemed no less about connection and control than the world’s—my sexual history was something to repent of (hide from) and speak of only with shame.
Thankfully, those narratives satisfied for only a short period of time before I began to question and reject them. Instead, God lead me both gently and intentionally through a process of revealing my own search for Him in my sexual story—those nights with boyfriends (I was a serial monogamist, if nothing else) couldn’t be reduced to “sin”, named as encounters to be ashamed of, they were shot through with a redemptive reaching toward communion, toward intimacy, toward God. As I sought Christ more deeply, I saw in my own story the ways I’d been seeking Him in my sexuality, naming and blessing my desires (both physical and emotional) as good and holy, even if I was reaching into places that could never meet those desires.
My husband and I talked a lot about our sexuality before we married. We spoke candidly about what had worked and what hadn’t in both cultural and church narratives in our lives. We chose for desire over control, for union as a path to holiness, and—as is the way of the Kingdom—it actually worked.
But here’s what happens if you camp only on what’s worked before in a living relationship, without following those quiet (and, let’s face it, easy to ignore) urgings to keep reaching for more redemption. What happened to me was a slow shift from redemption to rules, from vulnerability to certainty, from gratitude to entitlement, from union to selfish isolation. I could be talking about what happens in the sanctuary or what happens during sex, and maybe I’m talking about both.
“Self-righteousness is more decadent than the worst sexual sin.”
When Allender said it, I went cold, remembering my self-satisfied thoughts earlier that morning. I’ve already done this work.
Maybe I had.
But I wasn’t doing it any more, and I’d been robbing both my husband and my Jesus because of my own entitlement.
Hear me rightly—I haven’t been cold in the bedroom, nor have I been performing just to make our sexual relationship work. What I haven’t been doing is digging into my own desire for more in my sexual relationship with my husband. I haven’t been asking the questions that lead to hope and healing. I’ve been content with what is, instead of asking what else can been restored and redeemed.
And there’s a lot of what else.
Why? Because there’s still a crowd in our bedroom.
Without leading you down the circuitous road that got me there (that would take another 1,000 words or more), one of the things I realized after spending the day thinking about my own sexual story is that I haven’t really left my mother and father. Neither of us have. Genesis 2:24 gets quoted in some form or fashion during most wedding ceremonies: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” It’s the leave and cleave passage. We nod, we smile, we bless this new union.
But leaving isn’t that easy—and most of us, myself included, haven’t really done it. Not relationally, not emotionally, sometimes even not financially—but most perniciously and most destructively, not sexually.
And I’m excited. Not because I’m suddenly aware of these influences my parents still have on my sexuality and sexual intimacy with my husband, but because seeing them means that both he and I can begin to reach for more. We can ask each other questions about how our parents’ lived sexuality (not their words, we’ve talked endlessly about that) affect our hearts and our bodies even now. What kinds of physical touch (or the lack thereof) sent messages about intimacy and how it was to be expressed? How did our mother’s sexuality (or hatred of it) form us? How was each of our innocence shaped by the way our fathers related physically to our mothers and to other women?
These are the questions of my story, of our story, that tumbled out as I saw the ugliness of my own certainty, my own belief that I knew what the story of my sexuality was got exposed. Stripped of my self-righteousness, I could have pointed and blamed, and boy, was I tempted. But I’d much rather come to my marriage naked, broken, hopeful and reaching than covered, certain, entitled and isolated. I’d much rather reach and wrestle together than grow silent and still.
When I returned home, my husband and I talked over a bottle of wine, and I cried a little. We held hands in the middle of the messiness and risk of it all.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was process, and together we’re naming what went wrong, naming it without shame or hiding, and turning toward the redemptive, playful, glorious hope that in sex and in the Kingdom there will always, always be more for us. More healing, more joy, more play, more desire, more life.
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Tara Owens, CSD, is a spiritual director, author and speaker. She accompanies people in their journey with God through Anam Cara Ministries. She’s the Senior Editor of Conversations Journal, a spiritual formation journal founded by Larry Crabb, David Benner and Gary Moon. She’s written a book on spirituality and the body that will be published by InterVarsity Press in late 2014 or early 2015, and she lives in Colorado with her incredible husband, and their rescue dog Hullabaloo. She’s a step-mom and a grandma, a Dr. Who fan, and she would love it if you dropped her an email, tweeted or Facebooked her.
Posted in Free Flying Faith, Love and Making It | Tagged: Anam Cara, Dan Allender, discipleship, Love, marriage, sacrament, sex, spiritual director, Tara Owens | 8 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on November 29, 2013
Love and Making It is a series about wholeness and love, even more than it is about sex. Since sex is really about wholeness and love, anyway.
This post contains pictures of partial nudity. This is a simple warning. Now you may proceed as long as you are over 18-years-old.
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After adultery.
After years of secrets.
After hard choices.
There is still hope and healing.
When you need a reminder that miracles are possible through love and perseverance, return here and see.
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The Story:
After ten years of marriage, a husband and wife each committed adultery. It took them six more years to tell each other everything and come clean. Instead of running… instead of fighting each other to the death… they decided to fight FOR each other. Now, they are still married and choosing every day to focus on how to heal rather than the wounds of the past. This is not everyone’s story, but this is theirs.
In this guest post conceived by my dear friend, Jennifer Upton (in partnership with her husband, Tony, and a talented photographer named Kathryn Nee), we see another side of intimacy. We see what it looks like to let yourself be loved despite history, despite failures, despite self-doubt.
This is what it looks like to fight FOR your covenant love. This is what it looks like to allow words of affirmation and adoration to seep into your skin… the skin you didn’t think could be forgiven or beautiful or chosen ever again.
Words, truths, finally becoming part of YOU – seeping down deep into your heart. Forgiveness. Beauty. Love.
Below are pictures of Jennifer as her husband writes words on her skin. This entire process was not easy for Jennifer, but it has been holy and sacred and used by God to knit her and Tony even closer together. Tony telling her the truth of how he sees her now; she vowing to believe his words and let them become a part of her own truth.
The pictures have no filters or touch ups. They are simply black and white. The naked truth.
In the light of day, one man and one woman chose to express trust and love to each other in a manner that they hope will help you do the same.
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And so, she lay bare and he began writing.
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One word after another.
After another.
Truth of her talent.
Truth of her gifts.
Of her goodness.
Of her.
Words to confirm renewed promises.
And God’s design.
Truth she vows to believe.
As they soak into her skin and heart.
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Jennifer Upton is a storyteller, an excavator of the sacred, exploring the world with an open and listening heart, diving deep into the jungled areas of life to uncover the stories hidden there. She writes as an act of faith, sharing the gritty truth and beauty of life on the pages of her blog, Spiritualglasses.me and her photo blog Asharedlens.smugmug.com
Posted in Beauty SOS47, Love and Making It | Tagged: adultery, art, heartbreak, hope, Love, marriage, photography | 26 Comments »