by Bethany Suckrow

When people saw my mother in those years, they remarked how healthy she looked, how strong, how not-sick.

“You would never know she has terminal cancer,” they said. Their astonishment rang like praise for the upbeat patient smiling through her pain.

I understood their cognitive dissonance. Her tenacity felt larger than life to me, superhuman in strength. She was the kind of person who seemed to run laps around other perfectly healthy people; nothing could stop her from fully participating in her family, her faith community, her work. But she did have cancer, in very aggressive form, though its physical toll stayed largely hidden from view for nearly a decade.

I would never want to take my mother’s hard-won legacy of strength away from her. Even in death, I would never dishonor her right to tell her story in her own words. She was telling the truth when she said that she wanted to act like she was living with cancer, rather than dying from it. But I wonder sometimes, if she felt pressure to perform the part of the upbeat patient, to uphold our narratives of the faith-filled survivor. I wonder if part of her desire to stay strong was to avoid disappointing all those people who were praying for her.

And I wonder now, in retrospect, whether my own struggles with faith and survival were borne from that experience of striving to match my mother’s strength. I look back and see a girl trying very hard to hold it all together. I see a girl trying desperately to be on her best behavior for God, hoping He would let her mother live. I see a girl trying to set a good example for others, hoping that her anguish would serve a higher purpose, and therefore lose its sting. I see a girl trying to be polite about her pain, hoping that if she kept really quiet, if she didn’t complain, if she didn’t become bitter, then God might favor her.

But my mother’s death was the loose string that unravelled everything. Grief has a way of pulling at the threads of our tidy narratives, until it all comes apart.

I came apart.

//

Politeness is a slippery, elusive thing. When my mother died, it was nothing that I could hold on to.

Instead, grief was a dirt path in the wilderness that I stumbled down. The rough terrain quickly forced me to give up any notions I had of bearing my burdens beautifully. This was the long road; my platitudes and tidy beliefs were useless here. Each step forward turned into a question about my tangled-up desires to honor my mother and God.

What if I couldn’t bear my grief as valiantly as my mother could?

What if I couldn’t be polite about any of it anymore?

What if my own legacy of grit was not in holding myself together as a picture of strength, but in setting myself free to grieve deeply?

That dirt path of grief was the beginning of hope for me. The further I walk along it, the more people I encounter whose grief journeys intersect with my own—all types of survivors, not just cancer patients and their loved ones. They continue to show me, story by story, just how far God’s love and mercy reaches down these paths we’re walking, well beyond the point where we give up trying to hold our feelings in check. And they remind me that Jesus himself, bearing the cross all the way to Calvary, never tried to hide his bleeding heart.

In place of the polite façade, I find myself learning a new way of walking in faith, characterized by empathy and compassion and grit. A faith that has teeth.

//

Not long ago, I received a message from an old friend. We hadn’t been in touch for many years, since before my mother died, but stayed connected on social media. I could appreciate the spirit of care and concern intended with his words, but I could also read the disapproval in them, amidst questions about my evolving political and religious opinions. I could see, tucked in between recollections of the beautiful, godly girl he once knew, the subtle implication that I had become a disappointment, a disgrace to my mother’s legacy.

I slowly ingested the words, trying to resist the downward spiral toward shame.

In moments like this, it’s hard for me not to revert to my long-held role as the Striving Girl, to perform politeness and uphold the tidy narratives of the people around me. I’m tempted to cover up my own bleeding heart.

But I don’t.

I wear it all right on my sleeve where people can see it.

I know it’s not pretty—the anger and the rage and the bitterness and the cynicism. I know it’s hard to resist the narratives we’re raised with, about who we are and the tribes we belong to. I know it’s hard to be honest. I would never blame any woman that bites back the tears and smiles through the pain, just for the sake of surviving.

I would never try to take away your hard-won legacy of strength.

But if you’re tired of being the Striving Girl, the Best Behavior Girl, the Good Example Girl, if you’re stumbling through a wilderness of grief and you’re exhausted of being polite, you’re allowed to show some grit.

It may not be pretty, but it’s beautiful.

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Bethany Suckrow

I’m a writer and blogger at at bethanysuckrow.com, where I shares both prose and poetry on faith, grace, grief and hope. I am currently working on my first book, a memoir about losing my mother to cancer. My musician-husband, Matt, and I live in transition as we move our life from the Chicago suburbs to Nashville.

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by Anne-Marie Heckt

Lately I’ve been seeing a door in my mind, and it’s closed. I often hear from God through images, and this one surprised me. But it’s been so helpful.

I want to be a woman who loves, who understands and accepts others. I want to be a wide-open person and not narrow or overly judge-y, and because of that sometimes I open the door too wide to others’ opinions or judgments of me. I can lose myself while trying to be receptive of others.

I need to be open to the kind of feedback that can help me change and grow. But some feedback that sounds reasonable or is given by someone in a position of knowledge or power is not useful, or is given in a hurtful way. The outcome of that feedback is to tear me down or close me up. It can take a while for me to hear my instincts, especially if it’s an area where someone else has the expertise. But I’m learning to close the door, even on the experts sitting on my doorstep if they’re acting in a destructive manner.

As I’ve been closing my heart door a little more, the shrapnel of rejection and jealous or unkind comments and opinions have begun to cut less deeply. As time goes on I will have less work to do in the process of forgiving and letting things go. And I’m finding it easier to stand outside the situation and act in a thoughtful manner when my own emotions are less riled.

Jesus removed himself from those who would not receive Him, who stubbornly reduced Him to the version they kept of him in their minds: the young child, the gawky teen, the local boy and carpenter’s son. They didn’t want him to be the mature, powerful speaker who stood up in the synagogue and challenged everything. They wanted to reduce him and fit him back in the box they thought he belonged in. Jesus firmly closed the door on both their input and their presence, naming the game and walking away.

Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” (Mark 6:4)

Jesus never seeks to reduce us.
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It is such a strange thing that we repeatedly let the opinions of those around us matter so much more and penetrate so much more deeply than the opinion of Christ. He prunes to bring growth, and points out our sin for the purpose of healing. He never speaks to shame or triumph or gain power simply for the sake of power, or to reduce us. He speaks for the sake of setting things right and setting people free.

Being open to the opinions of others who may not be at their best, or may not be able to offer helpful advice steals my peace and leaves me angry and hurt and defensive and clenched.

This image of a door has come to me at the time when I want to put away past experiences that may have been terrible, but are worked through. There’s this sense that it’s ok now to close the door on that situation or past moment that was so frightening.

With that comes this wonderful sense of peace. I am well, loved, held, by one who’s there in the yoke with me, pulling beside me, calling me friend. There are fresh opportunities, skills, challenges, and connections ahead. I’ve more space for them and I have more confidence because I’m opening the door to that which builds me up.

I need to continue attuning my inner ear to the life-giving, soul-building words. I need to listen for the words that shore up, build up, bring courage and hope. Whether challenging or gentle, I need the words that bring life.

Just because we understand, doesn’t mean we have to receive or accept unhealthy input. I’m feeling a new freedom to mentally say, “Thanks, but that input is not being given in a way or with a motive to help, but to harm.”

I can firmly and gently close the door.

“Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.” —Proverbs 4:23

Author information

Anne-Marie Heckt

When not scrambling eggs, I manage a community garden which grows veg for a food bank. I’m a full time mom of two almost-grown boys. Saturday mornings you’ll find me at the Farmer’s Market, religiously. Goals include extending my rollerblading distance to marathon length and getting the courage to quit picking at my novel and publish it. A scary re-emergence into paid work may need to happen soon. Eons ago I taught ESL at a community college. Farther back, I taught in China and worked at a church in Mexico City. Childhood included a confusing mix of Spain, military bases and a tiny town in Washington State. What I would really love to have is not a job, but a puppy. I live north of Seattle and somewhere east of organized with a husband, our younger son, and a turtle.

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by Bronwyn Lea

It’s a scene played out hundreds of times in the lives of little ones:

The bossy command: “You aren’t allowed to do that.”
The defiant sass: “SAYS WHO?”

Of course, we grow older, and we learn—by cultural osmosis, it seems—the boundaries for behavior. Directives are seldom challenged, the rules are known. As a parent, this is what I want for my kids: that they won’t need to ask why every time, they will intuitively know that the tone they just employed was too much, the effort on that project too scant, that tidbit they heard too much like gossip to be repeated.

But there’s a dangerous edge to that slow internal cultivation: over time, the authority of “Mom says” or “God says” can somehow yield ground to the far more fuzzy dictatorship of “They say.”

They say you shouldn’t swim directly after you eat.
They say white stockings should not be worn with dark shoes.
They say you should wait at least three days before going on a second date.
They say you shouldn’t wear yoga pants, because you might cause someone to stumble.
They say you shouldn’t attend to every baby’s cry or else you’ll spoil them.
They say you should attend to every cry or else they’ll feel abandoned.

The older I get, the more I’m finding that they can be bullies. They don’t know my situation. And I feel trapped. And rebellious. And guilty.

//

It’s early in the morning and I’m not expecting these words from Hosea to leap off the page:

“They set up kings without my consent;
they choose princes without my approval.” —Hosea 8:4, NIV

My hands cannot keep up with the tumble of thoughts as I journal. Why is it that my default position is so often to say “I submit to Caesar because all authority is given by God.” (Matthew 22:20 and Romans 13:1-2) and then effectively roll over and play dead? What if I’ve wrongfully put myself under some kind of authority—setting up a king, choosing a prince—and am submitting to it against God’s will?

I’m shaking now.

I know that governments are not the same as cultural opinions, but still: my mind is reeling. I think of those early witnesses, bewildered by Jesus’ unexpected signs of Messianic power as he angrily whipped his way through the temple courts. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you the authority to do this?” (Mark 11:28)

In other words: Who says?

A legitimate question, and one I’d forgotten I was allowed to ask.

//

I am now in my thirteenth and ninth year of marital and motherhood myth-busting respectively. In the age of mommy-wars and the relentless opinions and outrages of the internet, “Who says?” is a sanity-saving question. Who says you should start a baby’s solids with rice cereal? Who says how long you should nurse? Who says you should have sex x number of times a week?

Who says, indeed? Behold, my thickening skin.

Just because they invoke Jesus’ name doesn’t mean they have His sanction.
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I am in my thirty-fourth year of walking with Jesus, and regaining my courage to ask, “Who says?” there, too. Untrustworthy leaders have put millstones around people’s necks, saying, “This is the clear teaching of scripture.” People seeking fame and fortune, platform and power, proclaim themselves experts and write articles and books with all the how-to’s and lists and pinnable reminders. But just because they’re shouting loudly doesn’t mean I have to listen. And just because they’re invoking Jesus’ name doesn’t mean they have His sanction. What if, on that final day of reckoning, they are among those saying “Lord, Lord,” and he says in reply: “I never knew you.”

They have a lot of opinions.
They have a wonderful plan for my life.

But who says I have to listen? As it turns out, there is a difference between taking counsel and taking orders. Not all advice is equal in value. Not all confidently given opinions should gain our confidence. Scripture is our guide, and the Spirit is our guard: we need not be swayed by every wind of opinion when we have an anchor, a plumb line, a Head to which our would-be flailing limbs are connected.

Let us not be women who enthrone every assertion out there and make ourselves its servant. Let us be women who listen, and then discern well:

The bossy command: “You aren’t allowed to do that!”
The wise push back: “Says who?”

Because maybe, just maybe, they are wrong this time. And maybe, just maybe, God is asking us to ignore them, and lean in and listen to ourselves, and to him as he runs alongside us into his marvellous light.

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Bronwyn Lea

Bronwyn Lea is a South-African born writer-mama, raising little people in California and raising eyebrows at bronlea.com. Fueled by grace, caffeine and laughter, she writes about the holy and hilarious in life, faith and family. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

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by Claire De Boer

The last two years have been, for me, the kind of years that change a person from the inside out. In 2014 I struggled through six months of clinical depression, and at the end of 2015 my marriage ended.

The two were not entirely extraneous; one event seemed to fold itself into the other. And both have brought with them their own complex webs of grief—one in proportion to circumstance, the other out of all proportion to any life experience.

Through it all, I have been searching for answers and a deeper meaning to my story. As an Enneagram Type Four that’s my thing—I seek betterment and a spiritually progressive life experience through soul-searching questions. But the question that has stayed with me through the last two years has not been my own. It was asked by a wise friend following an appointment with my psychiatrist at the peak of my depression.

“What is your wall?”

We were sitting outside drinking Starbucks tea lattes on a cool fall day, warm tears slipping down pink cheeks as I battled my inner demons. I was struggling to just make it through the day.

I told her how angry with myself I felt at being in this dark space again—one that had periodically haunted me over the years. How I had no idea how to pull myself into the light. I was simply waiting for relief, believing I had no control over when or how it might come.

What is your wall?
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The idea that a wall—the block in life that a person can keep coming up against until they find an answer—could play a role in my depression, stirred something deep inside me.

I had been familiar with walls in a different context—the kind I put up when I felt the need the self-protect, hide, or shut down. Those were the walls I was good at—the ones I had control over. But could my depression be a wall? Could it be the kind of wall that had something to teach me?

Part of me felt confused. Are all traumatic life experiences teachers? Couldn’t my body simply be sick? But something about the question resonated with me. Yes, my depression was largely clinical and beyond my control, but perhaps the way I dealt with it was within my control. Could the wall I needed to break through be about my ability to be transformed by traumatic experiences?

Each time I had experienced depression in the past, I turned away, not wanting to face it or know its purpose in my life. I had only ever been eager to deny, quash, and relieve the pain as quickly as possible. But what if my depression was waiting for me to break through it? What if it would keep calling my name until I listened?

In that hazy fall moment I realized that yes, I would keep returning to this place until I figured out how to cope with it. It seemed God had something to teach me there.

Unfortunately this realization scared the bejeezers out of me. What if I never figured out how to break through the wall? Did I really have to keep going through this mental torment to learn a simple lesson?

On the heels of my depression, before I’d had a chance to figure out any of it, my marriage broke down. This brought with it a whole new set of walls. One that said I can’t do this, another that said this isn’t the way my life was supposed to go, all of them based around fear and hurt.

But the deeper question—the true wall—has been the one that asks what am I searching for deep within myself. Could the wall I’m facing at the root of my depression be the same wall that lead to my marriage breakdown?

I’m still too close to all of it to know what the answers are. But after asking the question, what is my wall? when I faced depression, I know that it also applies to the arid ground of my broken marriage now. My wall has many names written across it—fear, resistance, mistrust, and loneliness.

These are the places where I must now focus my attention and turn to God—in all the stagnant corners of my heart that where I have never wanted to live. For I know these are the places where I come closest to my true self.

__________________

So Lovelys, if I asked you today, what is your wall? What would you tell me?

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Claire De Boer

Hi, I’m Claire and though you may only see my words here once a month I’m part of the wonderful sisterhood of women who edit, upload and brainstorm behind the scenes of SheLoves. I was born and raised in England but pretty much see myself as a fully fledged Canadian. I spend just about all of my spare time blogging, editing and creating stories. I’ve also ventured into the world of teaching and mentor students in using writing as a tool for personal growth. My passion is to help others find the value and beauty in their stories and to find healing or self-awareness via journaling, memoir, or just "soul writing", as I like to call it. To learn more about my journey and the work I'm doing visit The Gift of Writing

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by Bethany Olsen

I’m going back to school this summer. It’s hard to say that out loud, because it means it’s real, that I’m committing myself to it. Committing myself to school means truly admitting that at thirty, my life isn’t what I always imagined. The images of myself with the white picket fence, the man, the 2.5 kids, and the dog are not anywhere near reality. My actual reality is more like cats, condo, and career—the single girl’s trifecta.

Even though this isn’t where I envisioned myself, I love my cats, condo, and career. I’m so thankful for this life I didn’t pick out. Would any of us be where we are if we hand-picked our own deck?

I need to know, to remind myself, that I can still achieve milestones.
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I need to know that I can still achieve milestones; this isn’t where things have peaked, so I’m headed back to school—business school to be precise. I don’t have the foggiest idea where the next decade will take me. But I know this: I have breath in me and I’m willing to take the next step (even if it’s bafflingly filled with economics.)

Hitting the classroom again is a promise to myself that I can still do hard things. I need to keep taking that next step forward even if I don’t know where it will lead. It this is me letting myself dream a little bigger for my life, and choosing to rock the path I’m on with everything in me, despite the questions that accompany me every step of the way.

And oh, do I have questions.

Am I doing the right thing?
Is this a fool’s errand?
What exactly am I trying to accomplish?
Is it worth giving up the things I know I’ll have to set aside the next two years?
Is it worth it even if I get to the end, as I did with my undergraduate degree, and say to myself “what was THAT all about?”

(Note to my 17-year-old self: piano performance was not the most practical degree option.)

I worry I’m choosing ambition over creativity. I wonder whether entering business school is a cop-out when I could be doing something just a tiny bit more noble, trying to save the world for instance.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be on some sort of guaranteed path, something neon-lit, with promises that all will be well if I just head down this specific trail? Wouldn’t it be comforting to have a guarantee of meaning and value, to know that questioning and the tentative steps forward will add up to something more than what I can see today?

Shhh, questions. Shhh.

Shhhh, self-doubt.

Take a breath. Chill.

It is well and it is good. I am well. I am good.

I don’t need to create an outcome. I don’t need a guarantee of success. All I need to do is take that next wobbly step forward. It’s time to leap out in faith that something, Someone, will catch the fall. Here’s to the great unknown.

Author information

Bethany Olsen

I'm a writer located just south of the Canadian border in northwest Washington. Passionate about connection through personal story and finding one's voice, I am continually seeking both of those things. When not writing and editing, I can be found drinking copious amounts of coffee, watching "Project Runway," or traveling the world. I blog at bethanyolsen.wordpress.com

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by Diana Trautwein

My entire adult life consists of a series of detours. Following my mother’s careful instructions, both verbal and non-verbal, I headed into adulthood with two primary goals: graduate from college and find a husband.

I think my mother imagined a life for me that looked a lot like hers: early marriage, children, caring for a home, volunteering at church and in the community. And that’s the direction I was heading when I married my husband at the tender age of twenty, midway through my senior year of university.

But, what the heck?

This guy came from a very different denominational space than I did, having been raised in an historic peace church. He was registered as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. So, instead of moving into a neighborhood near my mother and replicating her life, I found myself on a freighter, headed to Africa after eight months of marriage, fulfilling his two years of alternate military service.

Well, okay then.

I’ll adjust. I’ll just take those same ideas I inhaled from my family and my church and transplant them to this new continent. Easy, right? And I suppose in some ways, I did. I kept our home tidy (most of the time). I got to know my neighbors. I went to Bible study and church. But I also taught secondary school, something that had never been on my radar. Ever. And I had fun doing it, too. Maybe this little detour could be a good thing?

And then I began to feel kind of funny—nauseous and tired and basically not like myself at all. I described my symptoms in a letter home and my mother burst out laughing when she received it. “You’re pregnant!” she wrote back to me.

What the heck?

I was young and incredibly naïve. I saw my “doctor,”(a missionary friend who lived out in the bush, forty miles away) exactly three times during that pregnancy. I gathered what information I could from another friend’s old nursing textbook on pregnancy. I do not recommend this kind of reading to young, impressionable soon-to-be mamas. Not only were there written descriptions of every single thing that could go wrong with pregnancy and delivery, but photos!

Six months later, we returned home and over the course of the next 18 years, my life began to fall into familiar patterns, given my particular family and faith tradition. I had two more babies, close together. I volunteered at their schools, I worked at our church in any way they would let me, I found a community organization I enjoyed.

And then my eldest daughter fell in love with a good friend’s fine son, a man who endured a second round of childhood cancer just weeks after the start of their burgeoning romance. Midway through her freshman year of college, she came to us and said they wanted to be married that next summer. She was barely 19.

What the heck?

We loved this young man but believed her to be too young, with too much living still to do before making such a huge commitment. But their love was strong and true and determined. So we gave her a wedding, and to help make that happen, I opened a small business in our home doing flowers! It was a BIG surprise to all of us, but a fun, good thing for the next seven years.

Somewhere in there, our second daughter graduated from high school and began college life. Two years later, when our son was a senior in high school, I began taking classes at our local seminary, encouraged by our pastors and a large group of friends/students in a Bible study I led at our church. Seminary was most definitely not on my mother’s radar, or mine.

What the heck?

The rest, as they say, is history. I experienced a clear call to ministry while in seminary, and graduated with an MDiv in four years. I took extra classes to be ordained in our denomination and then did parish work for the next 17 years, much of it difficult and complicated. ALL of it good.

All through those years, there were multiple, “what the heck?” moments, both personally and professionally. There were huge changes in staff, a major building campaign, the deaths of my father and father-in-law, one of my brothers, and that lovely young man who married our daughter. There was cancer surgery for my husband, and serious blood-clotting disorders for both of us.

There were also some detours that carried a very different kind of emotional freight—the marriages of our other two children, the births of our eight grandchildren, the re-marriage of our eldest daughter to a good and loving man, the celebration of fifty years with my husband. Professionally, I enjoyed working with gifted colleagues, watching loved parishioners flourish, walking closely with dear ones through both trauma and celebration, and then beginning two new ministries AFTER I retired from parish work.

The detours ARE the story.
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At this point in the journey, I’m thinking the detours pretty much tell the story of my entire life. Weaving in, around and through every single one of them is this truth: not one was wasted. Not one. Each and every detour brought with it sweet evidence of God’s grace, even the painful ones. Each and every one taught me about God, about myself, about work, about life, about faith.

Maybe, just maybe, going straight ahead is not all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe it’s the sudden and unexpected twists that help us tell a richer, more interesting story. Maybe it’s the detours that make the life.

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Diana Trautwein

Married to her college sweetheart for over 40 years, Diana is always wondering about things. She answers to Mom from their three adult kids and spouses and to Nana from their 8 grandkids, ranging in age from 3 to 22. For 17 years, after a mid-life call to ministry, she answered to Pastor Diana in two churches where she served as Associate Pastor. Since retiring at the end of 2010, she spends her time working as a spiritual director and writes on her blog, Just Wondering. For as long as she can remember, Jesus has been central to her story and the church an extension of her family. Not that either church or family is exactly perfect . . . but then, that’s what makes life interesting, right?

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by Lisha Epperson

I fell in love with natural hair in second grade. Traci wore her cotton candy clouds of hair woven into two soft braids. They criss-crossed at the nape of her neck.  From my seat at a wooden desk scribbled with the names of children who’d come before me, I watched and dreamed about her hair. Traci’s hair was a marvel, a fully loaded sensory experience of texture and smell. The sweet mixture of coconut oil and sweat intrigued me. More than anything, I wanted to talk to her about her hair. Her free, unbothered, beautiful hair. Traci tapped into the glory of her #blackgirlmagic way before it was cool … and we hadn’t even hit the double digits.

But this was the real world and I had other concerns. Our classroom wasn’t air-conditioned. While myself and all the other girls worried over the immanent reversion of our press ‘n curls, Traci simply looked beautiful. Something told me we were all trying a little too hard.

Who do you think you are
Who do you wanna be
You’re the only one that really knows
Maybe you’ll be surprised
After your search is through
When you find you’ve just been chasing you
                                                              – The Spinners

“Let me fix your hair” was a coded alarm, indicating the need to make right, the wrong of our hair. The central message being “your hair—Black hair—is a problem. It needs to be fixed.” Thus began the subduing of a girl’s soul with the heat of a searing hot comb. One section, at a time. “Not good enough” hair was doomed to a lifetime of living in an altered state.

A part of me I couldn’t name, was drawn to, maybe even challenged by Traci’s hair. But at seven, I’d already absorbed the language and messages surrounding good/straight and bad/nappy hair. I already lamented my position on the continuum. My hair in its natural state wasn’t good enough. It didn’t curl or cascade below my shoulders in a sea of golden locks. It didn’t look like the hair of the women and girls I got to know on television.

That part of me connected to the memory of my creation. A child of God, I knew the ancient beauty of my original self. That part of me longed to, through resistance, love my natural hair. The girl who stared back at me in the mirror at night began to ask questions. She begged me to stay curious, to give my hair a chance. She knew how powerfully hair shaped the identity of black women. She wanted me to be free.

***********

I’m not tall enough. I bend forward to push my head under the faucet of running water in the kitchen of our railroad apartment, but I’m not tall enough. The side of the sink presses hard against my belly. My eyes are closed. The water I resisted the two weeks between washings is suddenly supposed to be my friend. My height isn’t my only problem. I’m not sure if I want to get wet.

When it’s over, my mother softens my squeaky clean hair with Dax, a thick, green petroleum-based pomade. Pulling a wide-toothed comb through each tangled weft (this is the part that hurts) she begins braiding. When dry, she unravels each braid and applies more pomade before running a heated metal comb through the length of each section. She is straightening my hair.

Root to tip. Root to tip. I hear the sizzle of not quite dry sections and feel sorry for strands that get trapped in the comb. My hair responds to the heat and each pass of the comb rids me of my problematic kinks and coils. Longer and silky smooth, my hair is different—manageable they say. I’ll get compliments and everyone will say how pretty I am.

But I remember the unmistakable smell of burnt hair and knew the pain of inflamed skin if I flinched. My shiny new hair would cover the burns. Would it erase the fear and insecurity, the message delivered each time I submitted my self and soul to this process of beautification? Was it worth it? I was only seven.

*********

We repeat this ritual every other Sunday.  It’s a whole lot of work for such a fickle style. Pressed hair is conditional and can’t be trusted. Pressed hair can’t get wet. This means no swimming, no surprise of rain, no water. No spontaneity. I quickly learn to cover my hair with a scarf and shower cap when bathing. I learn not to take chances. Could it be that Black girls learn to speak the language of fear and limit ourselves in the area of risk-taking through messages about our hair?

My tween and teen years were ritualized by this bimonthly routine. I learned to style my hair without too much pomade to keep it from going limp and used pink foam rollers for bangs and curls. I was happy enough, but Traci’s hair followed me.

On wash day I met myself in the mirror and marveled at the texture of my hair when wet. I longed for freedom, a life beyond the hot comb. I wanted to know my hair in its natural state, but the pull of processed hair wouldn’t let me go. A lye-based relaxer promised straight hair that wouldn’t revert when wet. A relaxer promised manageability and the look American culture told us was beautiful. Relaxed hair blew in the wind. My lust for it would be satisfied.

But the relaxer and I never really got along. I suffered through a ring of fire that bubbled and burned my scalp. I stuck it out for a few years but in the end salvaged the resulting damage by cutting it off.  When it was clear my attempt at a Lisa Bonet inspired pixie cut flopped, all I heard was my father’s voice: a woman’s hair is her crown. I wondered if I’d lopped off more than my hair. Had I also lost the bulk of my senior savings at an upscale salon chasing a beauty that never made sense in my heart?

It was time to go natural. I grew out the relaxer and never looked back. The choice was spiritual and political. I wanted to define beauty for myself. I wanted to be a representation of self-love for the little people in my life. My hair was a rebellion.

I didn’t have YouTube videos for guidance or a plethora of natural products to help style my hair. What I had was the courage to explore questions of identity, race and culture by experimenting in real time with my own hair.

I’ve spent the last 25 years learning my hair, learning to speak its language, listening to the stories it tells. From box braids, to a carefully crafted and gelled ballerina bun, to twist outs before they were called twist outs, and locks I loved to life for over 12 years. I’ve watched a woman grow fearless. I’ve relished the home of my beloved Afro halo. I learned to love my hair and in the learning, loved myself.

My father was right. My hair is my crown. It is my adornment and pleasure but it doesn’t have to be anything other than what it is. And all it has to be is healthy.  To be clear, I don’t blame my mother or her generation for the stories they told their girls or the practices they introduced. Years of oppression and indoctrination are not undone overnight and I believe the adage that says “when you know better, you do better.” My mother didn’t know.  Many in my generation asked the hard questions. We struggled. But our daughters? Our daughters live the redemption of a beauty reclaimed.

I have an appreciation for the magic of Black hair. ALL of it. Natural, pressed, relaxed, weaved or braided. I’m grateful to live in a time when my girls are constantly affirmed for their puffs and twists. Hair, in their world, is about celebrating options, not about believing the lie that says their hair needs policing with labels of good and bad.

My hair, believe it or not, loves water and cutting it short made me feel like a super hero. Reaching up, around and out, each strand connects me with the frequency of heaven. With hair, the journey is your own. It is the evolution of a personal awakening. It is the deepest reclaiming of soul.  

In my hair journey… I name myself, and call the woman looking back at me beautiful.

Betcha by golly wow
You’re the one that I’ve been waiting for forever
And ever will my love for you keep growing strong
Oh keep growing strong
                           – Phyllis Hyman

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Lisha Epperson

Hi! I’m Lisha Epperson, a hopeless romantic, lover of Jesus and most things antique. I love being a wife and mother of 5. I’m hooked on books (got the library fines to prove it) and all things ballet. I work out a life of faith with fear and trembling in New York City and blog about it all at lishaepperson.com.

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by Megan Gahan

It was a simple photo: a lap filled with art supplies. Fat little tubes of glossy paints, stiff brushes, and a stark white palette, just waiting to be muddied up with imagination.

The picture lit up my phone with its cacophony of colour, and I had to restrain myself from turning cartwheels down the driveway.

The lap belonged to my younger sister. She was always the creative soul of the family. In high school, she wrote moody, bizarrely dark poetry. She took up the guitar, and I would listen to her string chords together for hours on the other side of the wall. She would sketch sometimes, heavy card stock always close by. She was a bit of a dreamer back then. Her brain expressed itself best through the lilt of a melody or the careful stroke of a pencil.

I, on the other hand, was no dreamer. My feet were tensely planted on the hard, rough earth. Anxiety ridden far beyond my years, I threw myself into academics, causing many a panic attack and tearful breakdown in my dogged pursuit of perfection. Creating anything for pleasure was completely foreign to me. And pointless. I played the notes on the page, I wrote exactly what the assignment called for. I excelled in writing, but never ventured far from the syllabus.

Oddly enough, the tables turned as we aged. Feeling trapped tending to my two littles, I began to write again. Only this time, it wasn’t for a grade. It was for myself. I wanted to know the little girl who made up stories and stayed up far too late with Matilda tucked under the covers. It felt so natural to create, to empty the twists and turns of my mind onto a waiting blank page.

About the time I started writing, my sister’s desk became piled with thick textbooks detailing the chemistry of drug reactions. That head-in-the-clouds, artsy teenager was covered with a stethoscope and a crisp lab coat. I was wildly proud of her. But I confess, I missed the angst-y teenager a bit.

And then, with one simple text, she was back. Less angst-y now. But still with so much to say. So much beauty to offer. So much light to gift this dark world with.

Today, another text from her. This one of a white canvas, with cotton candy coloured swoops all over it. “Practicing my petals …” reads the caption. I grin at the phone and furiously text back a slew of elated emojis.

I am a writer. I know words are what my inner artist wants to weave. And yet I would never call myself a writer. I just can’t shake the feeling that I need to earn my way there. I need to follow the syllabus. I need to get whatever the equivalent of an “A” would be. But I don’t hold my sister (or anyone else, come to think of it) to that standard at all. She just needs a lap full of art supplies and I’m like, “Of course you need to paint. You’re an artist. You’ve always been one. Go make the world beautiful!”

Maybe your inner artist loves to take photographs. Or sing opera. Or write dark and moody poetry. Or do calligraphy. Or bake elaborate cakes. Or overshare things about herself on the Internet. It doesn’t matter. But if you—like me— are beating yourself up for not having earned the title of artist, or creative, or photographer, or writer, or what-have-you, let this be your permission to stop the madness. Let this be our permission to stop the madness. If it’s holding you back, quieting your voice, dulling your colour, for the love, stop. We need your colour and your music. You were, quite literally, born to create.

So, go get some brushes or fondant or sheet music or a thick sketchpad. Today. This is important. Take a picture and send it to someone who will stand with you. Then put your art out there, into your tiny corner of existence. It will be scary as all to get out. Do it anyway. It will give life and hope and beauty to this world. And God knows we need all the life and hope and beauty we can get right now. There simply cannot be too much. There cannot be too much light.

You are an artist.

Go make the world beautiful.

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Megan Gahan

If you call me Meg I'll feel like we've been friends for a while, so do go with that. By day I run after two little dudes, but when the house is - finally - quiet I like to write, often a giant mug of Earl Grey Vanilla beside me. More often with a giant bowl of ice cream. I've worked in the fitness industry for over ten years, so talking body image and push-up technique gets me excited. I ponder those things, along with faith, parenting, and my desire to be a superhero over at megangahan.com.

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by sheloves

By Sarah Henderson | Twitter: @sarahlowhen

I’ve often heard yoga teachers say that savasana is the hardest yoga pose for many people to practice. This pose typically comes at the end of a yoga class, and is one where students are guided to let all physical effort cease. A student lies on his or her back, body soft, limbs in a relaxed state, palms up, eyes shut, jaw soft. When students can access this pose, there is deep relaxation, an experience of which the psalmist writes—to be still and know that God is God.

As delicious as savasana can be, it isn’t entered easily. In fact, one of the primary reasons that other, more physically challenging poses were developed, was to tire out the body so that the mind could rest in meditation, so goes yoga legend.

I see this resistance to rest in my students. Some wiggle their toes; others tap their fingers to the beat of the music. Occasionally one sneaks a peek at her phone to see how long until class is over, while others decline my suggestion to close their eyes and instead stare at the ceiling. My personal challenge in savasana is to let my mind be still and not make lists—groceries to buy, chores to do, lists of offenses for the things I have done and things I have left undone. Truth is, it’s hard to accept the invitation to rest.

A few years ago, I read the book Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller, during the busy season of raising three small children. My life was made up of diaper changes, play dates and endless laundry. Every day was much like the one before. The book’s title called out to me. I desperately needed rest, renewal, delight.

As early as page 6, I was confronted with an uncomfortable thesis: that when we neglect the practice of Sabbath, we risk damage to our own souls and potentially hurt the ones we love.

It was here I began to ponder. Of all the Ten Commandments, why do I feel that “honor the Sabbath and keep it holy” is optional? I am good with God on murder, theft, adultery, lying, coveting. Now that I am a parent myself, I am more on board with the honoring of father and mother. I don’t make idols, and when the words “Oh my God” come from my lips, I almost always intend them as a prayer, a genuine calling out to the Divine.

But Sabbath … Sabbath was different.

I could have blamed the church I grew up in that taught that our rest was now found in Christ and followers of Jesus need not observe a literal day of rest. But the truth is, I found myself in these words of Muller’s: “Our culture invariably supposes that doing something—anything—is better than doing nothing. Because of our desire to succeed, to meet those ever-growing expectations, we do not rest. Because we do not rest, we lose our way.”

Because we do not rest, we lose our way.
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I wanted to succeed at all the things my culture told me I should be succeeding at—making healthy, home-cooked meals, for my well-behaved, regularly-bathed children, in our perfectly-kept, Pinterest-worthy home, looking good on the outside and right with God on the inside (lots of early morning quiet times, you know). But that takes a lot of work, y’all. There was no time for resting, no time to pause, certainly no way to keep the Sabbath.

I was exhausted and frayed like an old cloth. My children were not getting the best version of their mother, and my husband was getting even less. Work felt like a weight around my neck, not a life-giving calling. Muller was right: I was losing my way.

I was left with two questions: Why did I overlook the commandment about the Sabbath? What might change for me if I chose to obey God?

I began to say “no” to work one day a week. Sundown to sundown, Saturday to Sunday, I did no dishes, no laundry, no cooking unless it brought me joy, no work emails, no moving projects forward.

What I found was that observing Sabbath was much like savasana—supposedly good for you, but so hard to do. I felt such a pull to DO SOMETHING. I felt restless. Didn’t God know how hard it was to keep up with all my chores in seven days, let alone six? I was emotionally wiggly, waiting for the moment I could get back to work, the same way I felt on my yoga mat, eager for the teacher to say “namaste” at the end of class, my cue for “You may now go to Trader Joe’s and do your shopping.”

This realization has shaped both Sabbath AND savasana for me. I know the benefits of resting with just my breath at the end of a yoga practice, how it adds to and completes the work I’ve done in the more strenuous poses throughout class. I started to look at my Sabbath as a savasana for my week.

I have also deepened my trust that if God has said the Sabbath is good for us, the Sabbath must be good for us. I’ve taken that to the yoga mat, regarding savasana as a mini-Sabbath … time for me to rest with God and time to practice in small doses the keeping of this commandment. Sometimes I follow this meditation to guide me in savasana:

Be still and know that I AM God.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.

There is time enough for the most important things. I am uncovering the rest, renewal, and delight that Jesus promises as I accept his invitation to set aside my own agenda and enter into the sacred pause.

_______________________

About Sarah:

Like many women, I wear a lot of hats. I’m a wife and a mama to three young people who both fill my heart with joy and help me see my flaws. I’m a yoga teacher who is enthusiastic about making the yoga mat accessible to everyone–kids, people with disabilities, older adults, people who think they aren’t flexible enough to do yoga, and the follower of Jesus that doesn’t yet know how yoga can be a powerful form of prayer. I’m a writer who explores hope and grief and gratitude in the everyday over at www.tellingagoodstory.com. When I have a moment to take off my many hats, I indulge my obsession with British television (where the hats are simply fabulous) or enjoy a cup of coffee (which I believe is proof of God’s love) on my porch under the Carolina blue sky in Charlotte, NC.

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by Claire Colvin

I started 2017 in silence. I caught a monster cold and lost my voice completely for the first two weeks of the year. I am a talkative person, and I felt the loss keenly. I started to get bits of my voice back the third week of January, but even now, weeks later, I don’t sound like myself and I’m just starting to get my singing voice back.

I know there are benefits to silence but I struggled against it, especially at a time where politically I had so much to say. It’s strange watching American politics from north of the 49^th parallel. I am Canadian, so it’s technically not my fight; but as a citizen of the world it is my fight. When someone—anyone—claims that certain groups of people don’t matter, or don’t belong, it is my fight.

I am someone who follows the rules and I expect others to follow the rules, so you can imagine my frustration watching the news these past weeks. Throughout the election and in the days that followed the inauguration, I could not keep my silence. I had to speak up. I felt a responsibility to bear witness, to stay informed and not just throw up my hands in despair. Not giving in to despair has been a harder than I expected.

The other day someone I care about told me, “You can’t stay this angry. You’re going to have to find a way.” And at first I recoiled against her words. How could I let go of this anger? I need to be angry, that’s the point. But she had a point too. The anger was burning me up. It curdled my stomach and stole my sleep. It consumed me.

It’s not my anger that will change things; it’s my action.
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I thought my anger was necessary, that it was the thing that would change the way things are. But I’m learning that’s not true. It’s not my anger that will change things; it’s my action. I needed some fire at the beginning to count myself among the discontented, but this is likely to be a long battle, not a quick skirmish. I cannot survive on fire alone.

Anger can be the spark, but it can’t be the fuel. 

If my resistance is going to last, it has to be rooted in love. It has to start with loving the people I’m closest to, some of whom don’t share my politics. Because I love them, I don’t post political memes on Facebook. I try not to pick a fight about every little thing so there’s space to have conversations about the big, important things. The call to love means finding practical things I can do. And it means practicing some self-care and making sure I have a safe place where I can discuss every little thing so I don’t implode.

A friend of mine had to stop watching the news because it was triggering a mental health issue and that’s okay. It’s important to know our own boundaries. Loving well in adverse times means finding a balance between fighting injustice and becoming so overwhelmed that we’re immobilized. Sometimes the idea of rising up feels like a burden we can never set down, but it’s not supposed to be like that. We’re stronger when we rise up and learn and rest and rise up again.

When the travel ban went into effect and people who had risked everything were trapped in the airport, I got to the point where I had to stop. I turned off the news, put down my phone and picked up a piece of embroidery. I put on The West Wing to listen to and I decided to sew until I felt settled again. I stitched for seven hours.

During that time, I did not bear witness to what was happening. I didn’t post on Facebook. I didn’t read the source documents from the White House. I didn’t add to my mental list of All The Things. I let my heart rest. And the next day I got up, and began to read the stories again.

It’s okay to breathe. It’s a privilege to be able to turn away for a while, and I know that. But this is likely to be a long fight and we can’t do it if we cripple ourselves right out of the gate. So breathe. Pet a dog. Drink really good coffee and rage with friends. Do whatever it takes to catch your breath and then we’ll rise up again, together.

Author information

Claire Colvin

Claire is learning to call herself a feminist. She has been writing and editing professionally for more than a decade. In 2013, her National Novel Writing Month entry was a science fiction story about a broken world where everyone was required to be as similar as possible. Claire wishes she could fold the world like a map so the people she loves weren’t so far away. She lives on a small mountain near Vancouver and writes at clairecolvin.ca.

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by Diana Trautwein

Bold is a great big word. It’s only four small letters, but oh, my! It brings such freight. I don’t use it often, to tell you the truth. About 90% of the time, my use of the term is limited to clicking Command-B on my computer keyboard! I seem to be more willing to occasionally make a written word stand out than to actually be bold in my day-to-day life.

I wonder sometimes if I have ever been a bold person, someone who steps out and speaks up and makes a change. I know I am not bold physically—I KNOW this. I don’t like high places. I am terminally uncoordinated. Sports balls of any size or shape coming my direction are a source of terror.

I have a friend—one of my dearest friends—who is brazenly bold. She learned to kite-surf in her 50’s and is now an expert. Last year, she and a friend hiked from the Alps of Switzerland to the shores of the Mediterranean in France. This week, she left for Nepal to climb to the base camp of Mt. Everest. Yes, really. The base camp of Mt. Everest.

Uh, no thank you. Much as I love and admire her, that kind of bold feels cray-cray to me.

But as I think about other bold women I have known I soon realized that there are lots of different ways to step up, to step out, to take a chance, to risk failure, to make a difference. You don’t have to be willing to jump out of an airplane to be bold.

Some of the boldest women I know are the ones I’ve met here at SheLoves— Idelette, Tina, Kelley, Kathy, Helen, Bev, Erin, Cindy, Claire, Heather, Sarah, Michaela, Bethany—too many to list.So many stories of courage and the stick-to-it-ive-ness to realize dreams—often despite fear, hardship, and loss.

There are lots of ways to be bold. And every single one of those ways begins with a single step. One decision. One moment of courage. One instant of recognition that this—this idea, this project, this act of grace, this stand-up-and-be-counted moment—is doable. These women—and so many others—believed in possibilities and then they walked those possibilities into reality.

Every bold step begins with a baby step. Dramatic change does not happen overnight. Sometimes, it takes a lifetime or even more than a lifetime. Really bold change only happens when lots of different people take lots of different kinds of baby steps, all of them heading in the same direction.

Real change happens when lots of people take lots of steps in the same direction.
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In my lifetime, I’ve watched this kind of bold change happen with women in ministry. It is not yet true everywhere in Christendom, but our numbers are growing every day. This change has happened across denominations and around the world. It is a change that is still in process. Some of us are just beginning to realize what it means when women and men lead the church together. Some of us have been doing it for a couple of generations.

When I was growing up in the church, when I was newly married, even when I was a stay-at-home mom in my 30’s, I never saw a woman pastor. Never saw one. Thirty-five years later, my granddaughters cannot imagine women not being pastors.

That is a bold change that happened in one lifetime. In my lifetime.

I have been bold. I went to school in my 40’s to become a pastor and again in my 60’s to train as a spiritual director. I pulled all-nighters way past the age when I should have. I discovered I could preach and even taught others how to do it when I was twice as old as my fellow students.

But it didn’t feel bold at the time. Why? Because I’d started the whole process with baby steps. I began by going to conferences, reading books, having discussions, meeting women already in ministry, working as a volunteer in leadership in my local church. None of that felt bold. I was taking a step here, a step there. Eventually, those steps led to a whole new life and a new way of defining and understanding myself.

If you look at where I was and where I am now, it might look kind of bold to you. But it never felt bold to me. It simply felt right. Where do you need to take a step today? What feels right to you?

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Diana Trautwein

Married to her college sweetheart for over 40 years, Diana is always wondering about things. She answers to Mom from their three adult kids and spouses and to Nana from their 8 grandkids, ranging in age from 3 to 22. For 17 years, after a mid-life call to ministry, she answered to Pastor Diana in two churches where she served as Associate Pastor. Since retiring at the end of 2010, she spends her time working as a spiritual director and writes on her blog, Just Wondering. For as long as she can remember, Jesus has been central to her story and the church an extension of her family. Not that either church or family is exactly perfect . . . but then, that’s what makes life interesting, right?

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by Nichole Forbes

In February, I had the opportunity to attend Rise Up, Sister! in Chiliwack, BC. We spent four days sharing our stories and discussing issues of justice and equality and collectively raising the voice of women in the world. It was an empowering and yet comforting time and I am deeply changed by the time spent in the company of such women.

I went there knowing no one but Idelette, so I was slightly terrified to walk into the room that weekend, but the 99 strangers I met soon became my sisters, my tribe. We bonded over common histories and diverse experiences. We celebrated each other’s successes and mourned with each other in our losses. We compared tales of motherhood and womanhood around dinner tables and prayer circles. And we took pictures. Tons and tons of pictures!

In the weeks since returning home, my social media feeds have been flooded with encouraging messages and countless pictures from my 99 new besties. We are continuing to learn and grow together even though we are all well into our regular life routines. Every day, someone posts a picture or leaves an encouraging comment on someone else’s wall and we all jump in to “like” the ongoing sisterhood we see. I play along, too, “liking” the bona fide lovefest that fills my feed—and so does my daughter.

The first few times I noticed that my daughter had “liked” a picture or comment left by one of my new friends, I thought it was very sweet. I loved feeling the love from my teen girl! After a few days of my girl liking and occasionally reposting the pictures and quotes, I realized my daughter was watching.

She was witnessing all of it.

She watched strong, intelligent, godly women celebrate, encourage, support and elevate each other. She saw how we spoke to each other and about each other. She followed along as we accepted the uplifting words and noticed what we said about ourselves, and what we said about women in general. She was watching and she was taking it all in. As I watched her watch us, I began to wonder what else she is seeing, what else she is taking in.

My daughter heard her pastor say that Jesus was a man’s man. And then she heard a boy in her school threaten her with a degrading sexual act. She listened as her teacher told her she should be flattered by the attention the boys were paying her, even though she felt unsafe and vulnerable every time they touched her or cat-called her.

My daughter has seen powerful men in the media belittle women’s place in the world simply because they are not men. And then she sees theologians debate about where a woman’s place really is, as if it should be anywhere other than where God has called her. She sees men in the church confine female Bible teachers to the church basement where the children and women are waiting, hungry to learn, while the main pulpit stands empty.

And she takes it all in.

But then my daughter also sees loving and courageous women on social media celebrate each other’s strengths and successes. She listens to podcasts and hears amazing female pastors and speakers teach about a Jesus who values and esteems women. She reads books by women who write about a God who created women in His own image—whole and perfect just as they are.

She sees women rise up in business, in the arts, in the church, in every corner of the world. She sees them rise as leaders and advocates. She sees them intelligently and diligently championing for freedom and safety and equality. She sees their strength. And then she reads notes from women in her world who remind her that she is intelligent, gifted and magnificent. And she takes it all in.

My daughter watches as a shift in her understanding begins to occur. She sees that Jesus defies macho stereotypes. She sees that she gets to decide who touches her body and who affects her mind. She sees that a man’s opinion of her capabilities does not trump what she knows to be true about herself. She sees that God, not a tradition of patriarchy, gets to decide where women are meant to be and that decision was made at the beginning of time. Argument over.

I rise, because my daughter is watching.
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My daughter watches and she feels brave and strong and capable. She feels seen and heard. She feels valued. She feels the love of the godly men and women in her world who call out and name the gifts and strengths they see in her. She feels audacious and unbreakable as she sees herself reflected in their words.

And she takes it all in.
Oh yes, she takes it all in.

I rise not to elevate myself but to elevate my daughter and all daughters who are watching and wondering if the dream in their heart is possible. I rise because I watched my mother rise to elevate me. I rise, because God is calling forth His daughters to take their place alongside His sons, because there are dreams to dream and visions to see and prophecies to speak into reality and this can only be done in connection to and in support of each other.

I rise, because my daughter is watching.

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Nichole Forbes

Nichole is just a regular gal loved by an extraordinary God. She believes in community, justice and freedom. She tries to live brave everyday and to say the kind words that need to be heard. She raises her three Not-So-Wee-Ones in the middle of the Canadian prairies with her favorite person ever, her husband, Brad. On an average day you can find her running errands in her really rad mini-van while sipping coffee and rocking out to The BeeGees. She blogs and is the author of Finding Me in Him: One Woman’s Journey to Discovering Her Identity in Christ.

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by Heather Caliri

A necklace really shouldn’t cause anyone this much anxiety. I bought it from a friend selling those fabulous accessories made by women moving out of poverty. Cute jewelry + women’s empowerment. Win-win.

I haven’t gotten myself a new necklace in years, I thought. It’s for a good cause.

I scrolled through the catalog and found a bold one: dangling gold bangles laying in sort of a chevron pattern. It was fun! It was different!

I clicked Buy Now.

Days later, the package arrived, and I opened it eagerly—

And my heart sank.

The necklace was about three times as big as I’d imagined. It was super cute, don’t get me wrong. But my style tends towards understated. Like really understated. Like I rarely wear jewelry at all.

Someone else could pull this beauty off, I said. But me?

I sighed. I hate returning online purchases. Also: I remembered that I’d felt the same way about the last two necklaces I’d splurged on. Apparently, I liked the idea of bold jewelry, but the actuality?

I apparently did not have jewelry chutzpah.

Maybe I’ll wear it to church, I thought. That idea depressed me. I’d shelled out real cash for this thing, and I’d wear it a few times a year? Why bother to spend the money in the first place.

I slid open my dresser drawer and found a place for the necklace. Then I closed it, a little angry at myself.

A necklace really shouldn’t cause me this much anxiety.

I have an ambivalent relationship with fashion. I like my sense of style, but I often feel like the energy that goes into wardrobes, styling, and primping is energy I’d rather put someplace else, especially since I’d had kids.

In the ten years since my oldest was born, I stopped wearing perfume, blow-drying my hair, buying clothes I had to iron, reading fashion magazines, or wearing heels. And two years ago, when I burned down my life and remade it again, I stopped wearing makeup.

The makeup thing especially was intense. It took a while to get used to looking at my unadorned face in the mirror. It forced me to make peace with my wrinkles, undereye circles, colorless lashes, and the fact that I’m about to turn forty.

Being okay with just being me felt like a spiritual discipline. It freed me.

But lately, all that minimalism started feeling like a restriction. As if I could no longer give myself permission to look pretty, to care about clothes, to spend effort on my appearance. I didn’t begrudge other women the fun of buying a pretty sundress, but if I did, I felt guilty.

Why so many rules and restrictions? Had I really gotten rid of fashion’s power over me, or simply inverted it?

A few years ago, while reading Brené Brown’s book on shame, one of my big shame triggers popped up and bopped me in the nose. Most women try to make their efforts look effortless. Trying too hard is a no-no.

I’m the queen of trying too hard. I’m also the queen of pretending I don’t, of down-playing my organizational skills or aspirations or internal drive as just that silly little thing I do on the side. The truth is, I’m super intense and I like myself that way.

Why would a super-intense woman not wear intense jewelry if she felt like it?

The necklace sat in my drawer, chatting with my insecurity. My shopping history told me I wanted to wear big, bold necklaces. The woman I wished to become would put them on casually.

Why did she scare me? Why did I think she wasn’t me?

Slowly, it dawned on me: if I put on a necklace, people might see me.

I was afraid of being seen.

Wearing clothes started seeming dangerous to me in fourth grade. A girl named Libby moved to my school from Texas. She wore Ked sneakers, was cute, and became instantly popular. Suddenly, Esprit and Reebok were out, and Guess and Keds were in. My mom, understandably, did not re-buy my back-to-school wardrobe.

My closest friend started playing with Libby instead of me. One afternoon she called and told me, sadly but firmly, that I could not be included.

I’m choosing to live as the woman I want to be. -@heathercaliri
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Months later, I finally got Keds and a Guess bag, but by then, they were old news, and it still didn’t get me invited to my old best friend’s birthday party. When all the girls were comparing their party favors, I wished I could simply disappear.

If I couldn’t be included, at least I could be invisible.

After that, it felt safer to dress plainly than to seem like a wanna-be. Safer to never wear the flowered hat I’d gotten for my birthday, safer to never wear anything too bold or fun or different.

Safer to keep necklaces I liked in a drawer than to actually wear them.

I think a lot of us struggle with giving ourselves permission to be seen in our own clothes. Megan Gahan posted beautifully on this just a few years ago. I’d like to be empowered to dress how I want to dress—whether that’s abandoning makeup or putting on mascara, donning a dress or wearing sweats, sticking to flats or rocking stilettos.

After a few weeks of that necklace sitting in my drawer, I realized I quite literally was keeping beauty locked away instead of enjoying it.

If I’ve learned anything about life, it’s that we need to embrace more beauty, not less. The person I want to be—well, she’s not out of reach. I just need to give myself permission to act like her.

The other Saturday, I put the necklace on with a long-sleeve t-shirt as I went to run errands. I picked up cabbage and reached for granulated garlic with the pinging of its bangles in my ears. It’s a bit like a golden breastplate. I decided I could be Athena at Whole Foods.

I’m choosing to put on beauty when I feel like it. I’m choosing to let my fashion, my intensity, and my taste be seen.

I’m choosing to live as the woman I want to be.

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Heather Caliri

Heather Caliri is a writer from San Diego who loves British murder mysteries, advice columns, and hot breakfasts. She uses tiny, joyful yeses to free herself from anxiety. Tired of anxiety controlling your life? Try her mini-course, “Five Tiny Ideas for Managing Anxiety," for free here.

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by sheloves

By Sue Donaldson | Twitter: @welcomeheart

As I prepared to attend my daughter’s Mother-Daughter Sorority weekend, I received this warning text:

“Mom, just so you know, it will be an eclectic group of moms–The High-heeled Wine- drinking Mom. The Atheist Hippie Mom. The Homey Mom. The Divorced Psychologist Grieving Mom …”

“No worries,” I replied. “I like eclectic. I can be the Christian Donut Mom.”

A few evenings later, I walked into her living room and began the rounds one-by-one: “Hi, I’m Sue, so nice to meet you. Which daughter is yours?” We began chatting, circling topics, diving in slowly. “How do you do? What do you do? Where are you from?”

It was a mating ritual of sorts. We were eclectic strangers bound by this commonality: mothers of girls and their girlfriends. We laughed. We chatted. We bragged on each other’s daughters.

Then God led and I opened my donut-shaped mouth:

“Is everyone here? Let’s do a program!”

Everyone looked at Elizabeth and laughed. She must have warned them. I found out later they recognized Elizabeth in me; she could be bossy, though an introvert. She led the new pledge class. She knew how to call a room to attention.

Before I could back out, I continued, “How about if all the girls share one thing they appreciate about their moms, and let’s have the moms describe how their daughters have blossomed these last three years as college students?”

Before anyone could refuse, I called on the obvious extrovert-daughter: “Jennie, you start.”

She stood up and said, “I want to say TWO things about my mom!”

Yes! Two things, maybe three! Definitely allowed. We starve for a good affirmation from our semi-adult children. Two, maybe three can fill us up for a good little while.

Here’s what happened next—daughters shared and wept. Mothers spoke proud and loving words and wept. They stood and walked across the room and embraced each other. Someone tossed the Kleenex box and it continued its crisscross journey for the next hour.

The floodgates had been opened, and the emotions and truth poured freely. It was as if everyone was waiting for permission to speak life and love into those we loved most.

Later, I wondered why I used the word blossom. Couldn’t it have been a better word? A more grown up, erudite word? One that could impress a psychologist? Heavens!

However, every mom began her tribute with, “I’ve seen Erin blossom …”
“I’ve loved watching Jennie blossom.”
“I’m so proud of Anna’s blossoming …”

The girls beamed. They loved watching their friends’ moms give tributes to their besties. They drank the life-giving words from their mothers. The moms drank readily the appreciation of their daughters, insight that comes from three years of maturing away from home. A home mainly defined by Mom.

Why did we need the permission to say things hovering so near the surface?
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Why did we need the permission to say things hovering so near the surface? Why do we wait for it to unlock and flow like the flooded rivers of Oregon, swollen with hidden depths of love and pain and worry and joy?

We get this privilege of unlocking these dammed fronts, initiating conversations that go deeper than the usual stream. All for the Glory of God. All for the sake of life and love. God’s Good News begins and ends with the life and love of Jesus. He is the Word, after all. A Word fleshed out with love and sacrifice for the most eclectic of us all. And I’m grateful.

What question can you use to bring life and depth to a conversation? I often start with a surface one to test the waters. If it flies right, I follow it with something deeper. Even when not everyone at my table is a believer, I see how a gently-guided discussion blesses with the grace and peace and the Word of Life.

“May the Lord lead your hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God and the patient endurance that comes from Christ.” —II Thessalonians 3:5

_________________

About Sue:

Sue Donaldson and her husband, Mark, live in San Luis Obispo, California. They have raised three semi-adult daughters who keep them at the bank and on their knees. Sue blogs at http://welcomeheart.com and has been speaking for women’s retreats and conferences for the past 20 years with long pauses for babies, diapers and soccer pasta parties. Stay tuned for her new hospitality planner “Every Table Tells a Story,” which includes conversation-starters to make every gathering worth remembering. Due September 1.

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by Anonymous

I carefully string the beads on a wisp of fishing wire. They’re clear blue, about ten of them. Then I thread the letters: T-R-U-E L-O-V-E W-A-I-T-S. More blue beads. I tie it round my wrist, feeling accomplished. This will fix everything.

/ / / /

I came of age in the late nineties. Being a young Christian meant wearing a rainbow of WWJD rubber armbands, rocking out to Jars of Clay and reading I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Purity culture was at its height. Between youth group and sex ed at my conservative high school, I was convinced that premarital sex was the absolute worst offence I could commit. Sex was talked about in tense, hushed tones and never in too much detail, lest we get enough information to actually do it.

I got the message loud and clear: sex is a sin. Sex is the sin. Until, of course, the wedding band appears on your left hand. Then the ban is spiritually lifted. I wasn’t exactly sure why sex was bad, but I was a rule-following, Jesus-loving teenager. I didn’t need reason. I just needed the rules. So I signed the pledge to stay pure until my wedding day without a second thought. I knew I would never ever be a horrible enough Christian to break God’s heart like that.

Then, I turned seventeen. And I met a boy. I was shocked when the physical part of our relationship became a struggle. We never had sex, but that was just a technicality. We were still taking things much further than I knew God wanted. I spent our entire four-year relationship racked with guilt. I was sure I was the worst Christian, that God was devastated with me. I tried all the “solutions” the church doled out: I prayed, I received prayer, I broke up with said boyfriend, I asked for accountability. We got back together. We got engaged and I made a cheap bracelet hoping the reminder would be convicting. Nothing worked.

Our wedding date was finally on the calendar, and we were both relieved that what had once been a cardinal sin would transform into a meaningful, beautiful act with the flourish of a pen on the marriage licence. I was ready to unload four years of shame on the altar and go forth in freedom. Our problems would be over.

We entered marriage woefully uneducated and unprepared for something we thought would be easy. Our first attempt at sex ended in tears. It was so excruciating painful I couldn’t even do it. I thought it was supposed to sting a bit, but this was beyond anything I could cope with. I sobbed in the hotel room while my newly minted husband sat beside me, assuring me it would get better.

Things did not get better. The switch that was supposed to flick from “sex is bad” to “sex is magical” stayed stuck on the former. Each attempt was the same. I thought God was punishing me for not staying completely pure before marriage. I was sick with grief that I was letting down my husband and he would want to leave. I started to worry I wouldn’t be able to have children. Maybe I didn’t deserve children.

I tried to talk about it, but it took weeks to work up the courage. The one time I broached the subject with a close friend I was met with a blank stare, and I retreated immediately. I timidly brought it up with my doctor, and he suggested an incredibly invasive surgery. Another doctor intensely drilled me about whether or not I had ever been raped, and then concluded there was no reason for my problem. I became more and more anxious. I continued to fail at sex.

Months turned into years. Not blissful, newlywed years, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching years.

My saving grace came from a rather unlikely place—an article in a health magazine. It was called, “When Sex Hurts”, and the author detailed her experience with a condition that made intimacy incredibly painful. For the first time ever, I realized I wasn’t alone.

Armed with vocabulary and a shred of confidence, I began to make progress. I found a new doctor. She didn’t look at me blankly or schedule surgery. She gave me a plan. I practically wept with relief. A plan. I could do that. I could follow instructions.

Things did not change overnight. Progress was slow and sex wasn’t good at first. It was awkward and still painful at times, significantly more painful when my anxiety level was high. Everything rested on my ability to relax, and the pressure I put on myself to succeed was debilitating. My husband was as patient and kind as a human is capable of being. I got better, and sex eventually became enjoyable and wonderful and, yes, even magical.

/ / / /

I’ve been married for thirteen years now, and that naive little newlywed is long gone. I thankfully don’t struggle physically anymore. I’ve birthed two gorgeous children so, by all accounts, I’m fine from a mechanical perspective. But that psychological switch still feels stuck sometimes. All the negative messages about sex have not quite been erased. And those early years in our marriage have left me shouldering a mantle of guilt I fear will never lift. I wonder if it will always be the third wheel in our bedroom.

The way we speak about sex in the church and in good Christian families needs to change.
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I don’t lay all the blame for what happened at the door of my church or my school or my parents. But I do believe the way in which we speak about sex in the church and in our homes needs to be completely upended. My experience is, unfortunately, not uncommon. So while this may seem like an overly personal story to put into the universe, I know it needs to be told. This will be someone’s lifeline, just like that random article was mine. If you are struggling, please, get help. Read books. Talk to safe people. Learn about your body.

And remember, you are never, ever alone. Don’t let the months turn into years.

Resources

Sheet Music by Dr. Kevin Leman
Life after I Kissed Dating Goodbye – stories from men and women who grew up in purity culture

If sex is painful we strongly encourage you to talk to your doctor. Here are some articles that help provide a vocabulary for that conversation:

Sexual Health: Female pain during sex – from the Cleveland Clinic
Painful Sexual Intercourse (Dyspareunia) – from Women’s Health Magazine
When Sex is Painful – from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

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by Beth Watkins | Twitter: @iambethwatkins

I was still young when I learned of the fire.
I grew up in its proximity, among others who were alight,
and I was in love with everything about it,
asked to take it from my mother’s table
As early as I can remember. I asked for the fire;
This light, this warmth, surrounded me;
I asked, and I received, and I burned.

*

As I grew older, I learned to tend it.
I would sit outside, talking to my Maker,
Reading words of others, ancient and alight
And I fumbled with my own, trying to grasp and articulate the ungraspable, un-articulable,
what had to be experienced.
I sang of the refiner’s fire –
How the flames can burn our selfish desires, melt away our masks, forge our character;
Can melt our hardness,
Burn and blister, and give wounds that fester,
and cleanse and refine.
And I asked, and I received, and I was burned;
Cleansed, and refined, and wounded.

*

I grew stronger in the fire, and weaker too,
Stronger and weaker than I had believed possible;
The fire began to swallow me whole, Jonah and Whale,
Eaten up by hunger,
By aching for righteousness, with no room for peace –
Was this what the fire wanted? Is this what the light was for?
To burn us up until there was nothing left
But a hunger for all to be fire?

*

When that fire burns, I forget that this light of mine – it is small;
A flickering, dying light, kept alight by sure, surrounding hands,
But small nonetheless;
I am not the light of the world,
Though I do get to take part;
I get to carry my own,
Though it needs to be tended, and so, I force myself
To remember to stop. Habitually stop. Before the light is smothered.
I must burn, but not burn up.
Roar, but not rage.
Smoulder, but not go out.
Flicker, but not be quenched.

*

When that fire is disturbed –
On the first cold September night out in our backyard,
And my husband and I will use up the last of the wood from the summer,
And watch the flames jump and play, and I play too,
And, impatient, turning over the slower burning logs,
And, in clumsiness, let it drop –
It sends up sparks –
Into the air, and over the tomato plants,
And not, we hope, into our neighbors’ yard –
What flames, in each of us, did not start with a single spark?
We must tend to these sparks, to the fire in others.
And bless the disturbances that send new sparks in the world.

*

Our fires are restless, with wills their own,
Ungraspable, un-articulable
A well-tended fire requires attention and patience,
But a fire tended carefully can last through the longest winter nights,
And so I rest in its warmth,
The comforting glow, that draws us away from our comforts and yet still to the warmth.
I tend it with the pruned branches, broken off my own limbs;
A painful break – hopes deferred, fruit that did not come, losses counted – but not only my own;
With the ancient texts of the saints of old,
With my hands in the earth, and in the hand of my neighbor,
Open to ask, receive, and again, burn.
We find the fire in strangers, in the broken,
And our enemies, when we dare to look,
Among those the world tramples on,
And among those we trample.
Yet, defiantly, indifferent to our directing and control,
The fire is burning, has burned, and will burn. So too can I,
As I rejoice in the light, and mourn the dying,
Burn – Sometimes a roar, sometimes a smoulder
– Yet somehow, by grace, I manage to stay lit.

[Twitter “I was still young when I learned of the fire.”]

____________________

Beth Watkins spent the last 6 years working in North and Sub-Saharan Africa with street children, refugees, and other vulnerable populations. She is currently settling back in the US with her immigrant husband and writes about living toward the kingdom of God and flailing awkwardly into neighbor-love at http://www.iambethwatkins.com, where her free e-book “For the Moments I Feel Faint: Reflections on Fear & Showing Up” is also available.

The post The Fire appeared first on SheLoves Magazine.

by Nichole Forbes

Sometimes I lose myself in fall and not in a wistful, dreamy way. In a soul-draining, 40-years-in-the-wilderness, passionless sort of lost way.

Then there’s the time between fall and winter—the In-Between Time. The time between the busyness of routine and the stillness that snow and cold and the holiness of Christmas brings. The time when I have time to lift my head and look beyond myself. That is what this time is.

It’s the exhale before taking a big breath.
It’s the remembering who I am and why I am.
It’s the returning to myself.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a team meeting. I was weary and feeling disconnected from my purpose on this team and, somewhat, in my life. We had had some very rocky days and it felt like we’d been putting out fires for months. It was exhausting and frustrating. After spending 45 minutes reviewing what had been going on and how it was being handled, one of the people on the team asked, “What are the Pharaohs we need to stand up to?” With that one simple sentence something clicked deep within me.

What are the Pharaohs we need to stand up to?

When Moses confronted Pharaoh, he was not in a position of obvious strength. Moses had spent decades hiding in shame and wallowing in his past. He was a man without a country or blood family. He was in exile. He had forgotten himself. He remembered Pharaoh’s position and authority and power but He had forgotten that he, once upon a time, had been Pharaoh’s equal. He had been Pharaoh’s brother. He had been Pharaoh’s right hand man.

Moses forgot, but God didn’t.

In the moment that God called out to Moses to return to Egypt, Moses panicked. He had tunnel vision. He saw sheep and wilderness and, well, sheep. He knew himself to be a farmer, a simple man of the land. He had forgotten his strength. He had forgotten the sound of his own voice when raised in authority. He had forgotten the power of his body when raised up in righteous leadership.

Moses forgot his own strength, but God remembered.
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Moses forgot, but God didn’t.

When God called to Moses, Moses asked, “Who am I?” God didn’t answer Moses’ question—at least, not directly. God just told Moses that he wasn’t in this on his own. God reminded Moses who God is. God is ehyeh asher ehyeh. “I am who I am.” Or, as I learned recently, “I will be who I will be.”

I will be who I will be. And I am with you.

In that exhale God promised to be everything Moses needed. Just sit with that for a minute. Everything Moses needed or would ever need—God had it covered. It didn’t matter who Moses was, who he had been or who he’d become. It didn’t matter what Pharaoh stood between him and the people God had called him to liberate, because God was right there, being Everything all the time.

Armed with little more than this truth, Moses marched into Pharaoh’s house, opened his mouth and suddenly remembered who he was. He was the guy who was with God. He was the guy who had Everything.

Moses remembered. And so did I.

As I sat in that meeting and remembered God’s promise to Moses, I claimed it for my own. I remembered to look up, to see beyond the wilderness and busyness. I looked to the horizon and felt my Everything—in me, around me and in front of me. I remembered that my personal Pharaohs have nothing on my personal Everything.

I remembered that there is more to me than problem solving and putting out fires.
I remembered my strength, my creativity, my clever mind and my witty humor.
I remembered my compassionate heart and my gift of communication.
I remembered the sound of my own voice raised in authority and encouragement.
I remembered the strength of my pen, gliding over paper, as words of life flowed out.
I remembered the stillness of my spirit as I waited with confident anticipation for the voice of my Everything to comfort, guide and empower me.
I remembered the feeling of the first flutter of inspiration.
I remembered the knowledge that God sees me, knows me and loves me.

I remembered. And I returned to myself.

No pharaoh I could ever face could be greater than the things called forth by my Everything. No pharaoh could ever be stronger than the covenant my Everything made to be my God and to take me as his daughter. No pharaoh could ever be more present than my Everything with me and I with Him.

That is Everything. What do you remember about yourself?

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Nichole Forbes

Nichole is just a regular gal loved by an extraordinary God. She believes in community, justice and freedom. She tries to live brave everyday and to say the kind words that need to be heard. She raises her three Not-So-Wee-Ones in the middle of the Canadian prairies with her favorite person ever, her husband, Brad. On an average day you can find her running errands in her really rad mini-van while sipping coffee and rocking out to The BeeGees. She blogs and is the author of Finding Me in Him: One Woman’s Journey to Discovering Her Identity in Christ.

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by Leah Abraham

I let my friends cut my bangs last year.

It wasn’t a cry for help or an emotional breakdown.

Rather, I was complaining to my friends during a girls night out about how much I’ve always wanted bangs and how every stylist I’ve met shook their head and said, “Oh honey, that’s not for you.”

Perhaps my friends were exasperated by the number of times I repeated my story that night that they said, “Well, why don’t we just do it?” Or they were amused by my willing, “Yes, let’s do it!”

Either way, I found myself seated in the middle of a tiny apartment, as my two friends hovered over me, measuring various chunks of my hair. I said I wanted Zooey Deschanel bangs, so they Googled various pictures of her and made “Hmms” and “Ahhs.”

One friend got out a bag of hair cutting shears and selected her weapon of choice. She held out a large strand of hair and looked at me cautiously, “Are you sure about this?”

“Snip away,” I said, shutting my eyes and clenching the end of the chair I was sitting on.

Snip away she did.

Snip Snip Snip.

Occasionally, she’d giggle and mutter, “I can’t believe we’re doing this. I can’t believe you’re letting me do this to you.”

I can’t either.

Several minutes later, she handed me a mirror and looked intently for a reaction.

“You guys, I think I like it,” I said. “I really, really like it!”

After we swept up the floor, the conversation drifted to the recent SNL episode or boys or something … To be honest, I don’t quite remember. I was too busy staring at my bangs.

My bangs were, well, sort of controversial. Some loved it and gave me the thumbs up of approval. Others simply responded, “Wow. That’s different. You let your friend do that to you?” It took my mother a month or two to come around to it.

Now, two years later, my mind keeps wandering to the story of my bangs.

I probably should be thinking about advent, baby Jesus, Christmas carols, gifts and something more holiday-related, but my mind is full of bangs.

But it’s more than bangs. It’s about saying yes.

When I let my friend cut my bangs, I was saying yes myself, yes to a dream I’ve had for years.

Olive Chan spoke a blessing over me this year. She told me to stop waiting for permission. The more I meditate on this blessing, the more I’m awakened to how many times I’m waiting for someone else to say yes for me.

If you’re feeling in the same boat as I am, if you’re waiting for someone else to give you the green flag and scared to say yes to yourself, know that you’re in good company.

I see you. I see your fear. I see your heart. You are not alone.

May we say yes to ourselves.

May we ask our hearts to reveal our deepest desires and may we say yes to each one of them.

May we not let shame and worry dictate our paths, but follow the ways of feeding our souls.

May we make impulsive decisions every now and then, and let adventure lead the the way.

May we say yes to small acts of self kindness and joy. May we say yes to reminding ourselves we are worth all the love the world has to offer.

May we say yes to ourselves.

Author information

Leah Abraham

Leah is a storyteller + writer + journalist + creative + empathizing romantic + pessimistic realist + ISFP + Enneagram type 2 + much more. She lives in the Seattle area where she works as an education reporter and features writer. Bonus facts: She loves the great indoors, hates to floss, and is obsessed with Korean food and her dorky, immigrant family.

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by Megan Gahan

I sit across from a woman I have just met. Several of us have gathered in a coffee shop on the other side of the country, all attendees of a large writing conference. A few have known each other for years. But others are connecting for the first time. It’s a little odd meeting people you only recognize from author photos. There’s a warm familiarity, but it’s not quite comfortable yet. We order hot drinks and settle into squishy couches and plush armchairs. We are exhausted and jet-lagged, but also expectant for what’s to come.

We show up early, before the conference begins. It feels right to start the weekend this way. Women gathering, hearts soft, hands open. One by one, we are each called upon to share. We are timid at first. Somewhat anxious. We don’t know where to begin, how to sum up life and work and calling into something succinct and easy. In all fairness, it’s impossible to do. We abandon succinctness in favour of truth early on.

As we go round the circle, I listen quietly. I hear stories about loss, birth and rediscovering roots. I forget about my tea as a woman shares how the last few years have been marked by horrifying heartbreak coupled with God-breathed redemption. I am so humbled to be entrusted with these stories—stories that have yet to be put to page or screen. Thirty minutes ago, I was just a name on the other side of an email address to some of them. And yet, these women still choose vulnerability over pat answers tied up with tidy bows.

We bear witness to each others’ stories in those precious hours. We honour them and we see them. But, more importantly, we see each other. In an empty coffee shop on a regular Thursday morning, we hold space. It is holy. And it is human. What a gift to be invited to come alongside each other, to share the load, if only for a morning.

In that serendipitous gathering, we become each others’ storyholders. And I adore being a storyholder.

You see, storyholders are essential to storytellers. Some tell stories with words. Others with art or music or dance. I would argue that we are all storytellers in some capacity. And often, we only muster the courage to write or speak or paint or perform after we have entrusted our stories to another soul. Storyholders are the ones who carry all the words we haven’t written. They know the experiences we can’t bring ourselves to type or speak louder than a whisper. They hear the ones that feel too close, too painful or too darn ordinary to dig into. They hold our stories with us and, sometimes, for us. They may sit in our living room or on the other side of the world. They cry and give us time and space to process.

Storyholders are the ones who carry all the words we haven’t written.
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The most invaluable trait of a good storyholder is this: they remind us—over and over—that we have stories worth telling.

Sometimes these stories remain dormant for months or years. But inevitably, the day comes when we are ready. We put trembling fingers to keyboard, shaking voice to microphone, trepidatious brush to canvas and we tell our story. But we are only ready because of our storyholders, the ones who cradled our fragile histories until the time came for them to be birthed. We release our stories because of those who patiently shouldered secrets whispered in the night or over the phone or across the uneven table at Starbucks. Who stood in the gap until the time was right.

Being a storyholder is hard, quiet work. It often goes completely unnoticed. But without the steadiness and encouragement of storyholders, there would be no storytellers.

So, to my own wise and patient storyholders: thank you dear friends. Not one sentence would have seen the light of day without you. I pray I steward your stories as beautifully as you do mine. And to those standing in the gap, gently prodding a friend who you know has something true and necessary to offer this world, thank you as well. I can’t wait to see what’s on the other side of your faithfulness.

Let us never forget the holy, brutiful work of truly seeing each other.
Of choosing vulnerability over tidy bows.
Of carrying each others’ stories.

Author information

Megan Gahan

After over a decade in the fitness industry, Megan now spends her days chasing two pint-sized tornadoes disguised as little boys. By night, she is a writer and editor for SheLoves. A proper Canadian, Megan can often be found in the woods or at Tim Hortons. She writes at megangahan.com.

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by Diana Trautwein

When I was a little girl, faithfully attending Sunday school each week, we had a little saying that went like this: “Jesus, Others and You—that’s how you spell JOY.” I inhaled that sentiment like it was the sweetest of perfumes. YES! We should always be last on the list, giving ourselves away to Jesus and to other people. That’s how you live like Jesus, right? That’s how you are a good girl, a truly good girl.

As I got older, that simple phrase became a little more complicated, and the scent of it a little more cloying. This time, it went something like this: “He must increase, I must decrease,” lifting the words directly out of the mouth of John the Baptist near the end of chapter 3 in John’s gospel. From there, it morphed into, “More of Jesus, less of me.” The older I got, the more terrified I became when I heard those words.

I didn’t recognize it as terror initially. In fact, I didn’t know how deeply this message had affected me until I began to be interested in spiritual direction. I first learned about direction by reading a series of novels, of all things. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, British author Susan Howatch wrote a great bunch of stories about priests in the Anglican church and I devoured those books when I was in my 40’s. They were earthy, to be sure, but they were also rich and filled with beautiful tidbits of theology and ecclesiology. Throughout the entire series, some of my favorite characters were spiritual directors.

So I began to look for a director, and the first woman I interviewed handed me the beautiful Prayer of Abandonment by Charles de Foucauld. It’s a beautiful prayer, filled with love, joyful submission, and trust. But I could not pray that prayer.

I tried, but I’d get to the word “abandon,” and start gulping great gasps of air. I prayed about it, I talked it over with the woman who had given it to me, and her immediate response to me was this: “Diana, you need therapy. Not direction.” (Did I mention I was in seminary at the time and beginning to hear God’s call to professional ministry? What??? Pastors might need therapy? Well, that’s a great big YES.)

I spent the next twenty years trying to unpack what happened inside me as I read that prayer and, in the process, I have taken a long look at that old Sunday school saying and the use (or mis-use) of that verse from John 3. And I’ve done a TON of personal work on all kinds of important things … all because I gagged on the word, “abandon.”

We all have a fear of abandonment. Along with the fear of falling, it’s one of the most primal fears human persons carry. But what I was feeling was not quite that, was it? This is what I finally realized: I was terrified of disappearing. I had somehow inhaled some really lousy theology along with that early Sunday school ditty. I had taken the words of John the Baptist completely out of context and come to believe that the way to the heart of the gospel was for me to somehow be sublimated to the point of extinction, for Jesus alone to inhabit this flesh.

There are all kinds of interesting reasons why this particular woman came up with these particular fears and most of them, I understand a whole lot better now than I did then. But what I want to talk about here is the sometimes dangerous way we throw words around when we teach and when we preach. Because this is the beautiful truth of the gospel, the powerful, life-changing, miraculous truth:

As we learn more about the heart of Jesus, as we open ourselves to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, this is what happens: More of Jesus, MORE of me.

Yes, you read that right. Think about it for a minute: why would God go to all the trouble of creating the wildly different and wholly beautiful human race if the goal was for each one of us to disappear, to lose our distinctiveness, to be pushed into the waters of oblivion that some have chosen to call “Jesus?” Is that wave supposed to cover us completely?

In some ways, YES, YES, YES. We are covered by the grace of God made tangible in his sacrificial death and resurrection. We are; yes, we are.

BUT also, NO. We are not lost when we are covered by the grace of God. We are not ever lost. No. WE ARE FOUND.

The true me, the real me, the best me, the apple-of-God’s-eye me, the very particular, very unique, highly individual me is given space. Room to breathe and grow and flourish. The heart of the mystery, the wonder is this: the more we allow Jesus to fill us with love, to inhabit us, the more ‘me’ we discover. The me that God had in mind when he created the world, the me that reflects the image of God, the me that Jesus sees when he moves in for good.

God has no desire to devour me.
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Today I know that God has no desire to devour me, to make me some kind of freakish “walking dead” person. No. Jesus came to this earth to show us what a truly human life looks like. And he wants us to discover what our truly human life looks like. It’s true, we will look a lot like Jesus. But we will also look like ourselves. 

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Diana Trautwein

Married to her college sweetheart for over 40 years, Diana is always wondering about things. She answers to Mom from their three adult kids and spouses and to Nana from their 8 grandkids, ranging in age from 3 to 22. For 17 years, after a mid-life call to ministry, she answered to Pastor Diana in two churches where she served as Associate Pastor. Since retiring at the end of 2010, she spends her time working as a spiritual director and writes on her blog, Just Wondering. For as long as she can remember, Jesus has been central to her story and the church an extension of her family. Not that either church or family is exactly perfect . . . but then, that’s what makes life interesting, right?

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