Archive | fearless

In which I am brave in an ordinary way

January 26, 2013

“Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today’s world, that’s pretty extraordinary.” – Brené Brown

Let me be brave in an ordinary way first.

Let me mother out of my best hopes instead of my worst fears.Let me love ferociously into the mundane corners of our life. Let me find God in my laundry pile.

Let me take off my masks, admit my imperfections, tell my stories. Give me grace to be the one who jumps first.

Read the rest of this post over at SheLoves Magazine. After a six month break from contributing elsewhere, it’s wonderful to be “back home” with my SheLoves community again.

Continue Reading · fearless, SheLoves · 2

In which we numb the light

January 20, 2013

I took my littlest girl for a walk in the fading of the day. I only have grace for one day, and the day was nearly done. We’ve been overworked and tired lately, still recovering from that flu going around. Now we’re doing laundry, catching up, finding ordinary time again. Sometimes I lean against my husband in the kitchen and we just stay there, leaning, for a while.

A walk in the gathering light is always a cure for what ails me. I can’t even tell you what’s ailing me, but I feel it, and so I head for the trees. You see, I can still smell the tent city I walked through in Haiti a few months ago, I feel the clinging of the arms of orphans. And I have hundreds of emails of the hard stories of women wounded by the church as part of my research for my book, and then someone was mean to me.

Years ago, when I fell in love with Jesus and his ways, I lost my armour. Sometimes I feel the big important things, and other times it’s silly, petty, selfish things but I feel sadness and pain again, in ways that I didn’t when I had my barricades of apologetics, bravado, and explanations.

I recently finished the first draft of my beloved book, Jesus Feminist, and I’m feeling a bit more raw and exposed. I know this is why I feel out of sorts, like I just cracked open everything I ever believed and knew to be true, poured it out lavish, but it’s in this weird in-between place of waiting now. Sometimes I am so proud of it, so convinced of its brilliance, and other times I hope it never sees the light of day.

The question that gets under my skin the most, in the emails/comments/whispers/bewildered friends-meant-as-kindness yet again is this one: just who do you think you are anyway? Almost every night, when it rolls in again, I lay awake thinking, I have no idea, this is a terrible calling, I’m so far out of my comfort zone, I am not brave enough for this, and I have no right to speak out in my own voice, and I hope I don’t embarrass you, Jesus, I love you, please let me stay with you, I love you, stay with me. Pick anyone but me. Anyone else!

For me, joy and calling and goodness and purpose arrived hand-in-hand with social justice and suffering and vulnerability. I wish I could watch the news without crying. I’d like to ignore mothers in Newtown and Palestine, I’d like to forget about systemic injustice, hungry babies, sex trafficking, loneliness. It’s uncomfortable to care. Every small bit I do feels inadequate. Sometimes I’d like to numb the cold dark creeping.

I layered the baby all up, tucking all of her golden brown curls into a saucy little blue beret.We went up the hill and down the hill, down into the valley beside the Mennonite cemetery. Once we were safely away from the roads, I unbuckled her and set her free to wander. She promptly clawed into the dirt, scrabbling out small stones to present as jewelled offerings. She piled up dead leaves in the stroller’s undercarriage.

She hollered with delight, nose running, mittens discarded, the light magnetized around her, mud under her fingernails. She was so incredibly happy. I crouched on my haunches, just to see her round face a bit better, and I filled my fleece pockets with her rocks and dirt and frozen shrivelled rose hips. Her cheeks were glowing rubies, and she was hard at play.

When the sun fell below the horizon, the light blazed out behind the pine trees. This is it, I thought as I stood up, back straight, because this is my favourite sight: the inky blackness of pine trees, black lace relief burned out against the western sky as the last guardian of this date on the calendar cedes. It never lasts long, but it comes every day. Evelynn was still playing delight, and I stood, in the bright cold silence, and the fading light fell on me, tired and glorious and spent. I felt wildly, inexplicably happy, I could see my breath.

How is it that in this raw season, when I feel like my whole heart is thumping exposed, I have never been happier?

It’s true. I’ve never been so spent yet so joyful. I’ve never been more convinced of my calling and yet scared to walk it out. I’ve never been more attuned to the suffering and yet quick to everyday joy. I’ve never been so easily wounded and yet I love being armour less. I feel defenceless yet disinclined to pick up the sword. I can’t explain it but I stood in the middle of the field that night with my arms open wide, the echoes of “Who do you think you are?” running away like mice while my littlest one filled her fingers with earth. I’m her mama, I thought, I’m me, always, I’m yours, Jesus, and I turned and surveyed it all like the gift it is, open to all that came my way for a little while.

When it was time to go, I put Evelynn back into her stroller. She proceded to scream the entire way back up the hill. Once she had tasted freedom, she could not go back to her tame little stroller. She fought the restraints, and I wondered if she would be so indignant, if she hadn’t been so happy being free. I wouldn’t take her out – this isn’t my first parenting rodeo – but once she calmed down, I put some of her rocks onto her little stroller tray to play with while we walked back down to our neighbourhood.

I have been reading Brené Brown’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection, lately. I’ve nearly run out of ink because I’m an underliner, a dog-ear-er, a “yes!” scribbler. That very night, I read this passage:

“In another very unexpected discovery, my research also taught me that there’s no such thing as selective emotional numbing. There is a full spectrum of human emotions and when we numb the dark, we numb the light. While I was “taking the edge off” of the pain and vulnerability, I was also unintentionally dulling my experiences of good feelings, like joy. … Joy is as thorny and sharp as any of the dark emotions. To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees – these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain…. We can’t make a list of the “bad” emotions and say, “I’m going to numb these” and then make a list of the positive emotions and say, “I’m going to fully engage in these!”

Well, now, then. That makes sense. I have supper dishes to clean up, prayers to pray, tears to cry, holy daily work to do, joy comes in the morning hand in hand with whatever may come. Glory to God.

Continue Reading · faith, fearless, Jesus Feminist, Light · 49

In which I am fearless – sort of

December 30, 2012

One year ago, I chose Fearless as my One Word for the upcoming year.

My year to say yes to all that He asks of me. To love fearlessly. To lavish grace without expectation. To speak the truth even if my voice shakes. To step out of the boat, in the middle of the storm, onto rough waters, and know that I will stand, eyes fixed on the author and perfect of my faith. To mother these beautiful tinies out of my best hopes instead of my worst fears. To confront evil, to speak out for my sisters that are silenced, to work and rabble-rouse, to piss a few people off and sing freedom to the rest, to give from everything that I have. This is my year for walls-crumbling-down, for wholehearted living, for art and yes and mess and doing it scared. If we’re all crowded on the wall, waiting for something to change, I’ll be the first one to jump, you can watch me go.

If I could have foreseen just how completely, utterly, and entirely God was planning on calling my bluff on that one, I might have picked another word. (Something like “Rich” or “Famous” perhaps….)

As the year unfolded, I began to realise that my little nudge to choose Fearless was more of a gigantic shove off a cliff by the Holy Spirit, a sort of dinner bell clanging “COME AND GET IT!” for almost every fear and insecurity I’ve petted, hidden, and indulged in my life.

Most of my fears are rooted in my insecurities. Some of them were silly and inconsequential, hardly worth noting. Others were rooted in my theology and identity, holding me back.

Even though I cannot run, even if chased, I decided to actually run a 5K for Mercy Ministries of Canada. And I did it. (I promptly barfed and collapsed afterwards, as if it were a marathon, but whatever. I did it.

I signed with a literary agent.

I learned that sometimes the most fearless thing we can do is keep showing up in our own lives.

I decided that, even if the world doesn’t need another book, I need to write one. And I decided to do it anyway.

I did my first video blog to introduce my book Jesus Feminist to you. For many of you, it was the first time you had ever heard my voice. It took me 38 takes to come across as “breezy” and I don’t like my voice very much, but I did it.

I’m slowly learning not to care what others think about me – and so I danced in the grocery store.

I wrote a book proposal and survived my fair share of rejections, a few very pointed ones!

I signed a two-book deal with a Simon & Schuster’s Howard Books.

I wrote a book.

I had a personal encounter with third world poverty (which intimidated me terribly) when I decided to go to Haiti with Help One Now.

I left my little family for the first time – once to go away for a weekend with friends, and then for a week to Haiti.

I took the risks of community and trusting again, in my writing community (here’s where I was the first one to jump!) and in my “real” walking-around life right here, particularly with intentional church.

I got a new tattoo

I decided to be fearless about aging.

I learned it’s a radical act to stay right where you are sometimes.

I closed down emergingmummy.com and rebranded under my very own name, coming out of the avatar world.

I decided to stop making excuses for not engaging personally with poverty relief and orphan care. And together we raised the money to build a school in Haiti.

I tried not to let fear (of the unknown or “worst scenario”) govern the decisions we make about raising our tinies.

I wrote prophetically a couple of times. (for example)

I came a bit too close to God in Haiti

I confronted one of my greatest insecurities: speaking in public/on video about things I really, really care about.

I figured out that I can’t create if I’m always worried about what the critics will say about me and my theology.

I tried to write about divisive topics boldly with strong language and love. (For example)

I finally shared the slobbering video we shot in Haiti about the school.

I did a live-stream broadcast online with Help One Now.

I accepted my first two yes-for-real speaking engagements …. (more on those later, promise).

I even curated a little Fearless board on Pinterest to keep me encouraged.

And there were a thousand daily and a few sacred private moments of choosing fearlessness.

I used to think that conquering my Fears will be a lot more sexy than it really is.

I thought I would be rewarded for my efforts by a good experience.I thought that if I said yes to writing a book, that the words will flow easily. I thought that if I got up my courage to try intentional community again, that I would be met with kindred spirits and casseroles and a welcoming committee. I thought that if I said yes to Haiti, that I would not be as wrecked and hurting and powerless, as I feel right now. I thought that if I say yes to speaking on camera or on a stage for a good reason, that I would not lose my crap and cry the entire way through.

But it doesn’t always work that way.

Sometimes the first step is just as awful as you imagined.

But you do it anyway.

And you keep doing it, over and over, until the root of that fear is dug out of the rocky hard soil, and you are free of it at last, and I believe God is making something beautiful out of it all.

I don’t think I’m fearless now. Not by a long shot. I am braver. I am practicing fearlessness, over and over, with the hope it takes deep hold in my life. I want to carry this word with me, for the rest of my life, every day. This has profoundly changed me.

Perfect love casts out fear.