I grabbed Sabrina Ward Harrison's The True and the Questions this morning for permission to delve into a time of reflection.  This week makes room for that as people take the rest of their vacation time and relax - or in our case, work on our homestead.

(Yes. More planter boxes are going in... stay tuned.)

As I paused from the morning routine, I ran across this prompt: "In the silence I understand..." So I went with it while embracing my own silence.  In the silence I understand that mystery is incomprehensible. I know that there is more I don't know than I do. I realize I shouldn't workout directly after eating. I understand that this year is coming to an end... and then I found my writing stride.

continue reading

Sarah Ban Breathnach writes, “There is a woman still at large – charmed and dangerous. She waves her clever hand over a room and it looks like a page from House Beautiful. She waves her creative hand over the fruits of the earth and a feast appears nightly. Her thumb is green, her herb vinegar is curing, her potpourri recipe is sought, her PTA cupcakes are from scratch, her Halloween costumes are legendary, she still wears size 8. Her celebrity lawyer husband adores her, her five summa cum children think she’s laude. She finished her holiday shopping, wrapping, and sending in November. Now she’s turning her attention to making her own New Year’s Eve confetti out of naturally colored eggshells. I know this because I’ve just received her annual Christmas letter. Be forewarned. It’s speeding its way to your house.”

continue reading

“I can see it, it’s just that my feet feel like lead.”

“Are you tired?”

I am on the phone with my spiritual director.  We are working with a vision where I’m trying to get up a hill – to a house – a house where I feel so safe and like there is no other place I belong but there.  However, I can’t get there.

Am I tired?

I look at all I need to accomplish in the next six months and I feel a tad bit overwhelmed, but I am not tired… yet.

I see my younger self up the hill beckoning me to come to her.  She is full of energy and charisma.  Her hands are waving wildly as she doesn’t understand what is taking me so long to get up the dang hill.

continue reading

My sister-in-law called me last night. She just returned from a trip and I started teaching, so we had a bit to catch up on.

"How's work going?" I inquire, because she talked about a promotion right before she left.

"Good, but they might end up moving me to full time. I know you're supposed to 'climb the ladder'...."

I cut her off, "Yeah, whose ladder though?"

"I know right? I lose freedom of my schedule and I'm just not sure I want that, but I do love it."

I hear the wrestling match in her voice.  The part time job which allows her flexible hours and the benefit of three day weekends every weekend might move to more time at the office.  Opportunity is about to knock - or is it?

continue reading

I love receiving letters about the book, comments on the blog, and interacting with audiences at different events.  Since the book has come out a funny thing has happened.  I’ve been able to rest into the message as a vocational stamp on my life as well as laugh and cry with other perfectionists trying to find recovery from the madness.  However, there is another introspective anomaly that happens when I connect with others too.

When the book comes up and people have not heard about it, I explain the topic - in brief - if they ask.  They seem interested and nod as if pondering something much deeper.  I blanket the answer as this is “My journey - my story” of how I made peace with the feeling of not being good enough; that I was driven by everyone's expectations of acting and being and doing my life in a certain way.  In no way, shape or form am I trying to project my journey onto theirs (or sell the book, but that's always a perk).

continue reading

This week last year I had just returned from my family's home in the Pacific Northwest. My grandfather has passed away weeks earlier and this was the first holiday without him.  My relatives and I were adjusting to the new era, one ushered in by death's reminder that the kids are now adults and the adults on their way to grandparenthood.  This is not to be morbid or say they need walkers, but you could sense these thoughts on the faces around the living room as we pondered life without grandpa.

Two weeks later there was a murder a block from my house and I wrote an incredibly somber piece reflecting more than the emotions stirred by the effects of gun shots. I had spent 2009 recovering from a weakened immune system due to thyroid radiation treatment and it showed in my little brother whispering at Christmas asking if I was okay as I slept through most of the three days at his house.

continue reading

Thanksgiving is upon us.  At the same time this thrills me, I am also struck by its ever rapid approach this year. I have been pondering the pace and meaning of time and Thanksgiving quite a bit as I skim cookbooks and Food Network.com as well as navigate through Trader Joes like it's boot camp.

Last week I wrote about the reality of "what is" in terms of books and this week I find myself wrestling with a similar conundrum around food and neighboring.

For the past year, I've found myself speaking in different arenas about what self-care is.  It's hard to define a lifestyle change in a one-time visit, as exciting and great as these events have been.  So I've broken my latest definition of self-care down even further (probably for myself even more than audiences).  Self-care is a "checking-in" to your life, not a "checking-out."  It is a concept flanked by the Word of the Lord saying, "Be still and know I am God" and the gospel of Luke asking -- no, telling -- that we daily need to take up our crosses.  As John Wesley writes, the option of no one not having a cross to bear is gone.

continue reading

I devour books.  I gorge myself on them until my brain is so full of plot lines, "what-ifs," and I-have-to-know-how-this-ends, that I have little space for other creative endeavors.  It is not uncommon to find me at midnight with a headlamp strapped to my forehead nestled under the covers so I can stay warm, but not disturb my sleeping husband with our more powerful nightstand light.  

Since finishing my own book, I have read cover to cover books for fun, for work, and to complete my certificate in spiritual direction.  Let's just say I have had my fair share of this pie and am more than satisfied.  



I surrounded myself with the likes of Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila and Madame Guyon.  I happily put down their 500 year old words at times and reached for novels like Water for Elephants and The Help or the latest Kristin Hannah tear jerker that my fellow reading lover mother would mail to me.  I also had non-fiction books to read, like Shauna Niequist's new book, Bittersweet, so I ordered that one and the feeding frenzy continued from the summer well into the fall. I was encircled by an amazing league of women.  Ancient and new, seasoned and novice, prophets and storytellers, fiction and real life -- And in a sublime way, it kind of made me check out of my own.

continue reading

The book is off and running. Interviews have been posted. And finally I have had some time to write. Writing can quickly seem like a last priority as I have spent the last month gearing up for a new year at the university I work at and with hosting a release party at my home this past weekend.  But it is a discipline I love, so it was not a matter of if I came back, but when...

At the party I wrote something to share with the crowd that came, but it was namely a gift for the women who have touched my life in the last five years. I decided to share it here so that everyone could partake in a little piece of Saturday night.

continue reading

Check out my website to download your own copy of Chapter one from my book A Beautiful Mess: A Perfectionist's Journey Through Self-Care. 

Click here to visit abeautifulmess.org