Making space to Flourish

I gathered a group of seven friends at my table for lunch. We are all women leaders who serve at churches and ministries across the city. These women challenge me, pray over me, and inspire me. I arranged a small bouquet of barely-opening daffodils at each of their plates. I encouraged them to take these home and put them in water as a reminder to “Bloom where you are planted.”

A few days later, I started getting text messages from my friends – pictures of their bright yellow flowers blooming. One friend had put hers in a mason jar. Another added hers to a vase tied with raffia. Another had used her daffodils to dress up her table’s centerpiece and added greenery.

The final photo I received was of a bud vase stuffed full with daffodils. The flowers were limp, shriveled at the ends, floundering. My friend sent the following text with her photo:

“Life lesson: Don’t stifle your growth by putting yourself or your dreams in a too-small vase.”

The visual was profound for me – for all of us. I was sitting in a season where I heard God whispering that I needed to step back. I needed to create margin for myself. I needed to devote more time to my three daughters. I just got married in January and found myself in a new marriage and a new family context after the death of my first husband. I also saw that God was beginning to use my story of tragedy and triumph to encourage others.

My husband had gently and wisely told me: “If you don’t say no to some commitments now, you will not have space in the future to step into the big things I believe God is calling you to.”

I hemmed. I hawed. I squirmed at his words.

I knew he was right. His voice resonated with what God was already telling me. If I really wanted to flourish in my calling, I needed to prune back some of the commitments I had - even the things I most loved.

I took my own bundle of daffodils and put them in the biggest, widest glass vase I could find – a wedding gift from a Mentor Friend at MOPS. That vase full of water and space and vibrant, yellow flowers was a daily reminder to me about what I need to truly flourish: space to hear God, space to grow, space to add new and different flowers when the time arises.

This year I’ve been truly challenged by our MOPS theme: A Fierce Flourishing. From the start, I was struck by the paradox a “fierce flourishing” proposes we embrace. The word “fierce” is a trending word that has come to mean “exceptional quality, amazing, beautiful, sassy, strong and bold” in our American culture. The word “flourish” is a verb that means “to thrive; to be in one’s prime; to be at the height of fame, excellence, influence; to grow luxuriantly like a plant.” These definitions speak to me about not just surviving, but actually embracing, enjoying, thriving in this calling God has for each us. That’s unique for each mama, each woman.

This year I have learned that I need to make boundaries for myself. I am a high-capacity, “yes” person. I love to multi-task. I love to be involved in a lot of different areas, and I feel loyal to a lot of groups of people. I have learned that I sometimes I need to be a “no” person for the sake of my family. I don’t need to fill every square on the calendar. I need emotional space to breathe and write and take care of my soul. 

In his book Strong and Weak, Andy Crouch writes about flourishing:

“The paradox of flourishing is that true flourishing requires two things that at first do not seem to go together at all. But in fact, if you do not have both, you do not have flourishing, and you do not create it for others. Here’s the paradox: flourishing comes from being both strong and weak.”

God has shown me as the Coordinator of MOPS that I must embrace both my strengths and weaknesses. And the more I am willing to live this paradox out loud, the more other women feel freedom to step into their respective callings.

“Flourishing requires us to embrace both authority and vulnerability, both capacity and frailty – even at last in this broken world, both life and death,” writes Crouch.

In my time at MOPS, I have had the chance to embrace all of these things. I have participated in MOPS and led for almost 10 years now. That feels like a big chunk of my life. There’s a certain sadness in walking away from something that feels so integral to my development, but I also see that my obedience to say “no” to another year of leading gives another woman the opportunity to say “yes” and step up into her calling. And this is what pruning is all about.

I’m so excited to watch this group grow and flourish in the months and years to come. I am clinging to the encouraging and apropos words of our theme verse in Isaiah 55:12:

“You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.”

Dorina Gilmore-Young is a mama to three active girls and recently married to her long-time friend, Shawn Young. She has written three books for children, a volume of poetry and blogs at www.DorinaGilmore.com. She is the author of a new 10-week bible study experience called Glory Chasers.

How Living in Community Helps All of Us Flourish

Every Wednesday is “Go Mama Workout Day” at my house. It’s my favorite day of the week. It’s the day I don’t shower. I hang out in my workout clothes and wear a messy braid all day. I invite women and their kids from my community to join me.

I started this almost seven years ago now. My husband, who was a personal trainer, was invited to speak at our MOPS group. He talked to the mamas about nutrition and fitness and led them in a workout. After his talk, I found myself in several conversations with mamas who were longing for accountability. They wanted to work out but lacked the confidence to walk into a gym or just needed a safe space to make fitness fun.

The Go Mama Workout was born.

Through the years, we have averaged 7-10 mamas every week with as many 20 kids running wild in the yard or sitting in Bumbo chairs watching their mamas sweat it out. What started as a handful of moms from my MOPS group working out has grown into a rich community of friends.

Now we start out each week in my living room for a time of sharing and prayer. This part is almost more important to me than the workout itself. We laugh. We cry. We share prayer requests. We change blowout diapers. We eat. We speak fitness and life goals out loud. We are inevitably interrupted a dozen times by kids needing snacks or fighting or wanting to breastfeed. It’s beautiful; it’s messy.

I love that I get to see the younger girls romping around the backyard wearing those sun dresses and sparkly shoes that my girls used to wear. I love when my friend Esther shows up with goodies from her garden or Janelle brings extras from her pantry.

Our Swap & Shop event for our moms group was also born out of my love for living in community. I wanted to create an event where we could share resources within our MOPS group. We purge our closets for the purpose of paring down and decluttering our own lives, but also to bless another mom with something new.

On Swap & Shop night, we all bring our used clothes, shoes, jewelry and kids' clothes and swap. It's so much fun to see moms going home with new treasures - and without having to spend a bunch of moolah!

I have been that mom who didn’t have money for new clothes. I have been that mom with only rice and beans in the pantry. I have been that mom with sick kids and no health insurance. I have been that mom grieving the death of my beloved husband. And all those times this MOPS community has come through for me.

We share resources; we share knowledge; and we share inspiration. My MOPS friends have inspired me to try Zumba, to stick with breastfeeding, to take care of myself. One mom put her culinary skills to use to bake my wedding cake a few months ago. Another mama friend spoke about embracing our children’s personality types and gave me skills to parent my littles better. A mentor-friend a few years ago inspired me to keep on keeping on with her story of being a working mom while still loving on her three kids.

I believe God designed each one of us for community. He himself embodies community. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - three in one - our model of community working seamlessly. He has designed us to live in relationship, to work out our insecurities and use our gifts in the context of authentic community. Living in community is messy and hard, but it is also rich with opportunity to taste His glory.

I realized that living in community this way has grown me, challenged me, encouraged me and pushed me. These women have watered and cultivated the soil of my life and caused me to flourish through the years.

My challenge to you today is to be intentional about cultivating your own community. Gather some women. Open your home. Invite someone to the park or strike up a conversation with someone who has kids your age. Brainstorm ways you can share your resources and encourage someone else in your circle.

I am a better mama, wife, woman, friend, mentor, speaker, creative writer, business woman because of the women in my life. In a world where comparison and cattiness so often drives a wedge between female relationships, I am grateful for this diverse community of women that walk the journey of life with me. We are flourishing together.

Dorina Gilmore-Young is mama to 3 girls and thrilled to be a wife to her new hubby, Shawn. She is a published author, blogger and the Coordinator of the Bridge MOPS group in Fresno.

How to Navigate Transitions with your Mama Heart

This time of year my mailbox fills with invitations for graduations, birthday parties, weddings. My Facebook newsfeed crowds with prom photos, teacher appreciation events, and my personal favorite, Mother’s Day gatherings!

May marks the end of the school year for many.  May speaks of a closing season. May hints at summer days to come. May is a month of transition.

In high school, May was the month our yearbooks arrived. I was always on the yearbook staff, and we had the privilege of paging through the books first. We got an early glimpse at the layouts, the photos, the funny and memorable frozen in time from the past year.

I remember spending hours cutting out pictures and copying down quotes for friends. We used it as an excuse to tell people how much we admired them or to jot down favorite memories with them from the year. We would sign with cute sayings like “K.I.T.” – Keep in Touch – or “2 Cute 2 B forgotten.”

This time of year is always bittersweet for me. It’s a month full of celebrations, but also goodbyes. When I was younger it was about saying goodbye to my school friends. I would often be returning home to be with neighborhood friends or during college years I would be starting a new job or internship.

As a mama, it’s different. I have to help navigate these transitions for my kids. They, too, have to say goodbyes to friends and teachers at school. Our whole family has to adjust to more time together and being in each other’s space more. Siblings are forced to remember what it’s like to play together. 

Transitions can be tough.

Every summer our family heads to Haiti, where our family feels called to serve and bless and be blessed. We must say goodbye to our California friends and family every year. It’s hard. We shed some tears. Our hearts long for those we love the most. Yet, we have the unique opportunity to return to a place we have built relationships.  My girls look forward to their summer days – carefree and unbound by schedules – to jump rope and dig in the dirt with their Haitian friends from the orphanage next to our home.

My challenge to you is to embrace transition. Expect it. Carve out time for yourself and your little ones to adjust. Don’t be surprised if they have some days of irritability or acting out. Plan some down time to reminisce about the past season, the highlights of the school year or that dance class they took.

My girls love photos; I take lots of them. This is another way I help them navigate transitions. We go through photos together on the computer or we make special photo books to help us remember the people and the places that have become meaningful to us. When we travel we take a few of these photo books with us. 

I also give my girls blank books. They can use these like a journal to document their new adventures. If they can’t express themselves in words kids can draw pictures. I challenge them to draw or paint one picture a day. I found this helps them when they are missing friends or having a hard time embracing a new place or season.

In our home, transition is the new normal. How about yours?

  

Dorina Lazo Gilmore is the Coordinator of the Bridge MOPS group in Fresno, California. She and her family serve in Haiti each summer with the non-profit Christian Friendship Ministries & The Haitian Bead project.

Organizing our Beautiful Mess

I am a creative spirit. I hate throwing things away because I know somehow, some way it could be recycled, recreated, reimagined in the future.

When I was a kid, my mom would send me to clean my room and I would emerge three days later having uncovered a mountain of books I needed to read and boxes full of all the great crafting stuff I forgot I had. Simply put: I was a pack rat. My college roommates were not too thrilled about this character trait. They let me have my own room while they shared.

Now that I am a wife and mommy, who spends a lot of time packing and unpacking for moves and travels, I have started to reform my ways.

A few years ago we moved into a smaller home with a bigger yard. There was a great master bedroom, another bedroom for my three girls, and a smaller room we needed to turn into a joint office for our non-profit and the jewelry business. We also needed to turn the garage into a functional warehouse space to house the jewelry and supplies. Did I mention one bathroom? Needless to say, everything felt tight, tight, tight.

Every time I sat down to work I would start to feel like the world was closing in on me. We decided to enlist a little help from our friend Brenda McElroy who had started a business called Organized by Choice. We needed some fresh perspective on how to organize our space to make it functional for our family and work.

Enter Brenda. She is a miracle worker.

She helped us talk through our goals. She gave loads of “gentle” suggestions on what to get rid of and what to keep.  She proved creative and encouraging. She helped my (pack rat) oldest daughter sift through boxes of art projects and supplies. She drew sketches on how we could organize our dual office space. She even went shopping for just the right organizers for our closets and desks.

Perhaps one of the most powerful things Brenda taught me is that everything needs to have a “home.” That word echoes in my head every time things start to feel overwhelming or cluttered. I pick up a bill, a birthday card, an old flip flop, a coupon or a gift card. I ask myself, does this have a home? If it doesn’t, I need to create a home for it or pitch it. This simple philosophy has empowered me to get rid of a lot of unnecessary stuff.

**For more great tips from Brenda, check out her blog at OrganizedByChoice.com.

Dorina Lazo Gilmore is the Coordinator of the Bridge MOPS. She aspires to be organized. She lives with her hubby, Ericlee, and three daughters, Meilani, 7, Giada, 5, and Zayla, 2. They split their time between Fresno, California and Pignon, Haiti.

Growing a Heart to Serve

 

God has given me a heart of mercy for others. The widow. The orphan. The mom in need. These all tug on my heart strings. 

I recently heard author Rebekah Lyons say this, “Your calling is when your talents and your burdens collide.”

This was a reminder to me of why I originally jumped in to be the director of The Haitian Bead Project. Since I was a little girl I have loved all things creative. I always had some craft or art project littering my bedroom floor and brightening my walls. When I went away to college, my mom reminds me that I insisted on finding a college town that had a good bead store. 

Today I realize that I grew up in a privileged environment where my parents nurtured my creativity. As Americans we have lots of creative resources at our fingertips.

When I go to Haiti, my heart breaks consistently over the little resources the kids have to express themselves creatively. The mamas in the northern mountains cannot just run down to Michael’s or JoAnn’s or Hobby Lobby for some yarn or glue or paints. 

Yet the Haitians still find a way using recycled resources to make beautiful things. That’s why I am so passionate about encouraging them in their creative gifts.

And just as I want to see the women in Haiti grow their gifts, I long for my own children to grow their gifts and hearts to serve. My husband and I have decided the best way to grow a heart to serve in our kids is to bring them along. If we are modeling service, if we are grappling with how to offer a hand up to the poor, if we are sharing our faith story with others, our kids should be a part of that adventure.

I know what you’re thinking. How can you serve others with your kids there tugging on your shirt, vying for your attention? There’s no doubt: serving with kids in the mix can be messy. They don’t always behave. Sometimes they get into the supplies. They are raw and honest and sometimes get hot and tired and cranky. The trade off is that my own children frequently model for me a heart of truly serving.

This past summer I found my 4-year-old outside our back door in Haiti with a box of band-aids. She was surrounded by a group of orphans. Every one of them was sporting a Dora band-aid and a huge grin. My daughter had offered them a great gift. She saw each one of them as important, human, her friends. She was on a mission to bind up their wounds. That challenged me in a profound way.

She was growing a heart to serve.

**Interested in more on this topic? Join us this Thursday, Feb. 13 at 6:30 p.m. at the Bridge MOPS group at The Bridge Church. Visitors are free. Dinner provided. All moms welcome.

 

Dorina Lazo Gilmore is the Coordinator of the Bridge MOPS group. She is the director of The Haitian Bead Project, which works to give women in the northern mountains of Haiti jobs so they can provide for their families. She lives in Pignon, Haiti with her family every summer and travels there a few times a year. www.HaitianBeads.org

Carving out Margin in the Mess

The start of a new year always prompts me to reflect. I find myself tracing the blessings of the past year and looking hopefully to the coming year. Perhaps one of the most powerful lessons I learned in 2013 (and keep relearning) is the importance of margin.

We have been a part of a life group, including 5 families (and a whole gaggle of kids), for several years. This year one member recommended a book by Dr. Richard Swenson called Margin. The premise of the book is to help restore emotional, physical, financial and time reserves to our overloaded lives.

We are all sleep-deprived, schedule-overloaded parents of preschoolers. We knew we needed to read this book. Just the title alone drew us in, convicted and inspired us. We were all hungry for the prescription for our marginless lives.

“Margin grants freedom and permits rest,” writes Dr. Richard Swenson. “Margin is the space between our load and our limits.”

As a busy, working mama of three girls I knew my load was heavy and my limits were few. My husband and I started making a list of the commitments and activities that took most of our time. In examining myself, I realized I would intentionally try to fill up the little squares on the calendar. I would write to-do lists just so I could cross things off and feel useful, but that wasn’t what I really needed. I needed rest. I needed margin.

“Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating,” writes Swenson.

In 2013, I learned to say no to a lot of things. I said no to sports and music lessons for my kids in the fall. I said no to meetings and more committees. I said no to 100% homemade meals. I said no to conferences I was invited to attend. I even said no to some things I really love doing like bringing meals to new mamas, birthday parties, holiday traditions. I said yes to more margin. 

Please understand: I have not arrived. I'm still learning how to rest and why it's imperative to my soul. Some days it just means getting a hot shower and that's about it.

My encouragement to you in 2014 is not to make more resolutions and heap more pressure on yourself. I urge you to say “no” more, to wrap yourself in grace. Protect your family time. Resist Facebook or Pinterest or Downton Abbey or Candy Crush or whatever else might suck your time instead of restoring margin. (Read no judgment here. You need to decide what restorative rest looks like for you.) 

Find more ways to help your family connect, to make your marriage sizzle, to rejuvenate your mama soul. Carve out time with your Maker. Rest. I give you permission. 

Dorina Lazo Gilmore is the Coordinator of The Bridge MOPS group. She loves knitting, running and cooking to recharge her mama soul.

**We would love to hear from you! How are you carving out margin for your family in 2014?