Flourishing in our passions

No one told me how hard it would be. No one told me how traumatic the birthing experience would feel. No one told me I wasn’t going to fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes on the way home from the hospital. No one told me how long I was going to have to sit in that glider every day nursing my newborn. No one told me how many weeks it was going to take for my body (and my mind!) to recover.

I loved my baby girl fiercely. There was no doubt about it. I was madly in love with her from the first time I held her in my arms and caressed her baby skin. What I didn’t anticipate was the rough transition into motherhood. I did not love my life.

I had gone from a high-energy career as a newspaper reporter and teaching at the university to sitting on a donut pillow in a glider for 6-8 hours a day nursing my baby. I was committed to breastfeeding but I questioned that decision every time I felt the knife-like pain ripple through my chest when she fed. As I sat there, all I could think about were the worst things I had experienced in my life and how I was exposing this perfect child to an imperfect world. I wept. 

Let’s just say I was far from flourishing. Floundering was more like it.

I was grappling with the idea that in gaining a child I was also giving up my identity. My days were blending into my nights and every ounce of energy was spent on my daughter. Motherhood wasn’t as idyllic as I dreamed it would be.

Carving out time for mama

Fast forward 10 years, and now I have 3 girls. Between raising my kids, taxi-driving them to activities, cooking meals, doing laundry, working part-time, hosting a mama workout group and leading at my church, life is full. Through the years I have learned how important it is to carve out time to feed my soul.

Jessica M. Turner, in her book, The Fringe Hours: Making Time For You, speaks into this: “I’m here to tell you that you not only can but must take time to do things that matter to you, no matter how busy life gets…. You should use your gifts and passions not just for others but to fill you up. It is all too common today to run on empty, but I have learned that life is so much better when you make yourself a priority.”

Jessica challenges and inspires me with this idea that we all have little pockets of time that we can and should use to feed our creative souls. I know it’s sometimes overwhelming to even think about doing something for ourselves. I have discovered that I am a better mama when I give myself permission to step outside the to-do list and the responsibilities of the day and pursue something (however small) for me.

Uncovering our passions

There are many things I dream about doing in my “free time,” but only a few things that truly rejuvenate my soul. While I would love to be an organic gardener or painter or dancer or sing in the worship band, those things are not realistic for me in this season.

I have chosen three things that I do for myself regularly that are both realistic and help me venture outside my mommy responsibilities. The first activity is writing. I started writing children’s books before my oldest daughter was born, but after I launched into motherhood I seldom found time to pursue that career goal. When my daughter was a few years old, my husband and I both realized writing was life-giving for me and I had to be intentional about finding time to do it. Writing provides a creative outlet for me.

The second passion I regularly pursue is running. Through the years, I have discovered that running is a kind of therapy for me. When I’m running on a trail or on the track, I feel alive. I have space to think and process. I have room to dream and talk to God. When I am exercising regularly, I find I have more energy for keeping up with my kids. I also feel better about myself physically.

The third key for me is spending quality time with my people. I am an extrovert. I am energized by time with others. It may be as simple as grabbing a cup of coffee with a friend or participating in MOPS. Deeper connection with my people is important to me. I know I need to be intentional about putting it on my schedule. I make it a point to plan girls getaway weekends a few times a year so I can get that much-needed time with the people who support and sharpen me.

Learning to flourish

My challenge to you is to give yourself space to discover your passions. You might need to revive something you loved doing in the past or explore a new hobby. These things don’t need to take a lot of time or money. 

I have a friend who uses her “fringe hours” to grow and arrange succulents. Another friend has a passion for justice issues and uses her time to research and advocate. One mama I know coaches a Zumba class, another makes jewelry, another knits, while a different friend repurposes furniture. I love seeing the ways the women I know have chosen to flourish in their passions. As we flourish ourselves, our family and community benefits too.

This year our theme is a “fierce flourishing.” The word flourish means “to thrive, to grow luxuriantly, to grow in excellence and influence.” I don’t know about you but I long to flourish in this one life I have to live. And even more I would love to be planted in a garden of women flourishing all around me.

Dorina Lazo Gilmore is a mama of three creative and energetic girls. She is also the author of 3 children’s books, including Cora Cooks Pancit, and blogs regularly for Self Talk the Gospel.

A Fierce Flourishing: Embracing Laughter

My 3-year-old loves the Tickle game.

It’s a simple game. I just stand and look at her and say, “I’m gonna tickle you” and she erupts into hysterical laughter. Sometimes I’ll flutter my fingers in front of her to tease her a little bit without touching her. She can’t handle the anticipation. She starts to curl into a ball on the bed and protect her midriff. She knows. She giggles with delight. I’ll pause and go in for a real tickle of her belly or begin to kiss her sweet little neck. Laughter ensues.

Her little laugh is priceless. I wish I could bottle it up and keep it forever. That laugh makes me smile in my soul.

According to the Mayo Clinic, laughter has great short-term and long-term effects on the body. Laughter stimulates the organs, relieves responses to stress, soothes tension, improves our immune systems, relieves pain, help lessen anxiety and depression – and this one may seem obvious – improves our moods.

A Vanderbilt University study found that 15-20 minutes of laughter a day can burn up to 40 calories. Now that’s a fun workout plan!

Research alone is enough to convince me that laughter is beneficial. I have also learned the benefits from personal experience. When my husband died a year ago, my heart was so heavy I felt like I was walking around with a boulder in my chest. The grief was so hard to bear. I also had the added challenge of navigating grief for my three daughters, ages 3, 6 and 9.

Here’s what I learned: It’s important for us to cry. We need to lean into the memories. We need to feel the heartache. We also need to laugh. Laughter ushers in healing.

We have spent time laughing over pictures and funny faces. We laugh over goofy things Daddy used to do like the robot dance. We laugh thinking about the things he might be doing in Heaven today like teaching angels how to do burpees or leading a choir for off-key worshippers.

The book of Ecclesiastes reminds us, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Verse 4 goes on to say, “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance…” I love this juxtaposition of seasons and emotions. The tears are important but so is the laughter and the dancing.

We need to give ourselves permission to laugh. Sometimes we take ourselves too seriously as mamas. It’s easy to get caught up in the guilt and the shame of not measuring up, not having enough patience with our kids, not finishing enough tasks in a day. It’s easy to push laughter aside and forget its benefits.

This year as we press into our theme of “A Fierce Flourishing” and “embracing rest,” I want to challenge you rediscover the things that make you giggle. Laughter bonds people. Laughter builds trust. Get some time with your kids or your mama friends around the table, and give yourself permission to belly laugh.

After all, laughter is the best medicine.

Dorina Lazo Gilmore is the Coordinator of the Bridge MOPS group and a published author. She is a mama of 3 active daughters, ages 3, 6 and 9, who love to jump on the trampoline, paint masterpieces and play the Tickle game.

Be You, Creatively

On Friday, I took my kids to a birthday party. One of the activities was painting. The hostess mama had paints and paper and brushes for each child. She boldly let them go to town. My three daughters, who are wild about painting, filled up every inch of white space with thick, swirling colors. Crimson crashing gold melting green. My littlest even got some fingers in the action. As they painted, I noticed something extraordinary: a light in their eyes. This was the “creator light,” the satisfaction that they were creating something with their own hands.

The legendary painter, Pablo Picasso, said this: “Every child is born an artist. The problem is staying an artist when you grow up.”

This is the difficulty. We learn to edit. We start to look around and compare. We recognize other great artists, and we feel the weight of expectations. We squelch the creative for the practical.

David writes in Psalm 139: 13: “For you created my inmost being: you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

As I read the words of this scripture and others, I discover two things: God is our Creator. He created us to create. 

When I first became a mama, I discovered the urgency of everyday demands often trumped time for myself, time to be creative and unwind. With each child, this time proportionally diminished.

Through the years I have come to understand that I have to be intentional about creative space for myself. God has wired me to create. I bring Him glory when I create. This has looked different in various seasons of my life. My creative seasons have included writing blogs, painting canvases, making jewelry.

In other seasons, it’s been knitting. I love knitting because it involves a beginning and end. I start with a delicious ball of yarn and end up with a little baby hat or chunky scarf. There is something deeply satisfying about holding that finished piece in my hand. I created it. Perhaps it isn’t perfect or what I thought it might look like but it is my creation. I don’t find this deep satisfaction in doing the laundry or scrubbing toilets.

I have had seasons where cooking was my creative space. Sure, it was practical: we needed to eat. Yet I afforded myself some extra time for perusing cookbooks and making something more involved because I knew I need the cooking therapy. I knew the chopping and mixing and tasting was something my creative mama soul needed.

Do you allow yourself creative space?

For you, maybe it’s gardening or arranging bedroom furniture or sewing or making someone feel welcome in conversation or playing guitar. I urge you to stop making excuses about your kids and your shortcomings. Stop “pinning” and start creating.

I love the way Erwin McManus, author of The Artisan Soul, puts it: “When you allow the living God to shake your life loose from all that holds you, and recreate and remake you, you are once again stepping into your artist’s self."

I challenge you today to be you, creatively.

A Piece of Me

Guest blogger

Some days, I hold it together like a champ from diaper to diaper, from meltdown to meltdown. I patiently load and unload the car, buckling, tightening, loosening, unbuckling 4 kids still in car seats. I speak gently to overstimulated and overtired littles. I wipe snotty noses, snotty cheeks, snotty foreheads – somehow this stuff gets everywhere. all. winter. long. I sweep up the majority of what was served to the twins after breakfast, after lunch, after snacks, after dinner… Ok, except for when I save it all for after dinner…

Some days, at the end of these days, I fall into bed exhausted the way that we are meant to be exhausted after a day of good work. And some days, at the end of these days, I fall into bed exhausted.

And discontent.

I love that I get to stay home with these kids and be Mommy. And I have so many meaningful outlets apart from my kids that my discontent feels absurd. I’m at the gym 3 or 4 days a week, Bible study every Tuesday, a mommy workout group, orchestra rehearsal, and another Bible study on Wednesdays, book club twice a month, MOPS at two different churches. I am not doing this alone. I cherish these opportunities to take little breaks from the kids and focus in on my relationships with other ladies and my relationship with God. I cherish these opportunities because they make me a better mommy. They give me more of those days where I am patient, gentle, and the picture of joyful endurance. But then there are days like today.

By 7:15 this morning, I had tucked my sleepy oldest child snugly into my place in bed, nursed both of the girls, changed 3 diapers, and was out the door on my way to a friend’s kid-free birthday breakfast. After dropping by the farmer’s market (ALONE!) on the way home for some local organic chard, romaine, and asparagus, I walked in the front door and was needed. And needed. And needed. And needed. And tired. My boys played with legos for a good 4 hours today; my husband took the girls for a 45 minute walk so I could have a quiet time while the boys played outside. And still, I was tired. 

Some days I can put my finger on it, but this wasn’t one of them.

It has occurred to me several times over the last year that I love to write. I also hate to write, but mostly I love it. I particularly love to have written. A year ago now, I wrote a blog post. A YEAR AGO. And still, I think back to that blog post with great pleasure. I was on an emotional high for a month having accomplished – having completed – something creative and tangible. Something I was proud of – and yes, it was about the kids – but the writing was not the kids – it was me in a way that I don’t get to be me every day. And I’m ok with that, most of the time.

Today, my weariness reminded me that it is often not my circumstances that make me tired. It is not the demands of my kids that dictate how much I will open my eyes to see the joy that God has for me in each moment – and I do believe that He has planted joy for me everywhere. Sometimes I am tired because there is an essential piece of me – a piece God has knit into me – that I am ignoring.

I taught English for several years before signing up to be Mommy. My favorite class to teach was AP Language and Composition. I have always loved reading, and remain a voracious reader as a mommy – staying up late and carrying at least some reading material around in my car or purse “just in case.” There is nothing to hate about reading.  The writing thing is more complicated. Maybe because I don’t have anything personal at stake when I pick up something by someone else. Writing is baring my soul and my skill to be scrutinized. Once something is written, I have to reckon with it. And then the whole blog thing… to be scrutinized by others. That is risky. And personal. And thrilling.

So, here it is. And because it is, I will be a better mommy tomorrow than I was today. I will be a better wife – a grateful wife to the amazing man who kicked me out of the house to read and write and go to Trader Joe’s (ALONE!).

**This piece was reposted from Then Comes Grace.

Heather Fenton is a mama of two boys and twin girls, and is madly in love with her husband of almost 10 years, Mike. She loves music, literature, camping, and running and has a love/hate relationship with writing. 

The Value of Self-Care