Spice of Life

 A few years ago a friend inspired me to choose a "word" for the new year, rather than making a resolution and it is a practice that has stuck with me.  In recent weeks I've been thinking about it and I decided that my word for 2021 will be...Free.  This year I read Jen Hatmaker's book Fierce, Free and Full of Fire and I guess you could say that she somewhat inspired me to pick this word but what has also motivated me is just how this year has gone for me personally.  I have been going through what they call a "deconstruction and reconstruction" of my faith and it has changed my perspective on so many things.  I've also really been learning about who I am and discovering what my real passions are. When I think about how I want "free" to be my focus of next year, I think of being... Free to accept my body and learn how to love her Free to doubt and ask questions about my faith knowing that God will not "break" or fall apart when I do F...

 For the past few days I have been participating in a virtual Pastor's Wives Conference.  It's been interesting.  I have been encouraged, I have cringed, I have ugly cried.  One of the workshops that I signed up for was titled "When Churches Wound".  Now we're all very well aware of how the Church has wounded many over thousands of years (very literally but also emotionally and psychologically).  We have heard the more recent stories of hate directed at the LGBTQ community or others that the Church might view as "wrong".  What might shock you are the countless stories of wounding right there within the Church, directed at the very people leading it.  I have heard pastor's wives give tearful testimony on how they were deeply hurt by a church they served, how they were "pushed" out.  There's actually this thing I've recently learned about (because I'm not the one who went to Seminary) called Article 17.  It's basically like a ...

 I had a dream that I was in labor.  I remember thinking, " wait I'm going to have five kids ?"...okaaaaay.  There were two midwives there with me and as I felt the pain coming harder I started to have doubts come into my mind.  I can't do this, I don't want to do this.  Then I breathed and told myself, you have to do this, you will do this.  The labor slowed down and stalled and suddenly I was in a room full of people that were dancing and bumping into me.  I said, "Hey!  Watch the belly!"  A man started to grab me and force me out of the room as I yelled "get off me!" That's all I remember. I woke up and realized the baby I was trying to birth was myself.  The more I think about it I realize that my dear friend Sami was one of the midwives which makes sense because she is playing a huge part in this feminist journey I'm on.  She recommended that I read Dance of the Dissident Daughter in which the writer tells the story of a dream...

 I recently wrote in an Anniversary card to my husband, "it must be hard being married to someone who doesn't really know who they are" and it's true, fifteen years ago I was 22 and had no freaking clue who I was.  Now I am 37 and finally beginning to figure it out.  A few months ago I read a book by Jen Hatmaker called Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire , I am now close to being done with Untamed by Glennon Doyle and these books are changing my life.  I am learning that for most of my life I have succumbed to the cages society put me in and I'm finally finding my way out. I grew up in a very conservative evangelical sect of Christianity.  A lot of things were "bad".  Halloween was bad, secular music was bad, dating was bad, voting democrat was bad (and so on).  When I was taught the story of Adam and Eve I bought into the lie that we are fallen because Eve screwed up, it was ultimately "her fault".  That lie lead me to believe that maybe there i...

I have been on a journey of discovering who I am and learning how to accept and love myself.  I am married to a pastor and when he was getting ready to graduate Seminary and apply for jobs, it started to get real and my fears began coming to the surface.  In all honesty there were many, but one of them being the idea that as the "pastor's wife" I would be expected to live up to a very specific standard.  I was anxious about the eyes that would be watching, I knew that wherever my husband accepted a "call", I would automatically be under a magnifying glass.  What I really wish is that before he graduated seminary we had gone through "pre-pastoral counseling".  You know how many couples do pre-marital counseling?  Kind of like that.  In retrospect I truly believe that pre-pastoral counseling  would have been just as important and beneficial. Before Norm accepted his position I started to think that maybe I should "tone it down" on Facebook.  I...

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'  The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no commandment greater than these." -Mark 12:30-31 Before I became a Christian my Mom and Dad had been involved in Siddha Yoga for a while.  If you're not familiar with what that is, my limited understanding of it is that they had a "guru" that they would listen to, they went to people's houses for "meditation sessions" and would often visit the Ashram that was in Oakland.  This practice was mainly based on Eastern philosophy, with influences from Hinduism and Buddhism.  After my parents divorced when I was three, it wasn't long until my Mom started to get back to her Christian roots and went back to church.  She had grown up in a very conservative Christian home and in her twenties she rebelled against that in a sense.  When she went back to church...

It all started when we went to see Frozen II.  It touched me much more deeply than I had anticipated and I cried more than I did when I first saw Brave.  The story of Elsa going into the "unknown" in search of who is behind the mysterious voice she keeps hearing and ultimately finding herself rocked me to my core.  That was when I first began to realize I had lost myself.  Then right after Christmas my husband and two older kids went on a two week trip to Thailand.  Literally the day they left (they had not even boarded the plane yet), I was in tears.  I told myself, "it's okay this will get easier, it's only the first day and right after Christmas, of course you miss them".  The next day was not any easier and it ended with me again, in tears and I started to ask myself  "what the hell is wrong with you that you are already falling apart?!" Then it hit me, I forgot who I am without them.  Sure I still had the two little ones at home with me ...