Storytelling — Page 2

Doing the Work – for SheLoves

August 22, 2014 By Diana

It is always a joy to contribute a monthly essay to SheLoves magazine, one of the most welcoming places on the internet. This month, I was asked to bring something a little bit different – to write about spiritual direction as a part of a special week on mentoring ministries. Please follow me over there to read the entire piece.

They sit in the red leather chair. Or they’re across the country, taking to me by Skype. Either way, I sit in my small study, settle deep into my hand-made, craftsman-style armchair, a lit candle by my side, my spirit ready, waiting.

They come to be heard, to be seen in ways that are welcoming and formational. I come to learn, to listen, to pray. And what we find is a kind of newness, a refreshing reminder of God’s presence and an ever-increasing willingness to do this good work. Together.

Spiritual direction is what it’s called. Companionship-on-the-way is what it is. Long a practice of the ancient church, surfacing in the 20th century in broader and wider corners of Christendom, this partnering together is holy ground, a sacred place where one person, trained in a variety of disciplines, prayerfully listens to the life of another, asking gentle questions, pulling out threads, weaving them together into a new idea, a new question, a glimpse of what the Spirit is doing.

I am relatively new to the whole idea of direction. I first began to hear and read about it in the late 1980s. I learned that direction is not therapy, though it incorporates many ideas and even techniques from that discipline. It is also not pastoral counseling, something I did quite a lot of during the seventeen years that I was a pastor. It is its own unique animal, a thing not quite like any other, a process that is hard to describe, difficult to encapsulate.

I began direction for the first time when I moved to Santa Barbara in the late 1990s and continued with it for three years. I took a break from that process for a while and then, about ten years ago, a new boss suggested I look into pursuing certification as a director myself, and a seed was planted, deep in my spirit.

So come on over and join the conversation, okay? Just click on this line . . .

Filed Under: community, Encouragement, ministry, Mystery, SheLoves, Spiritual Direction, Spiritual Formation, Storytelling

“Speak: How Your Story Can Change the World” – a reflection

August 5, 2014 By Diana

From the very first words I ever put out on this blog, this has been my theme and my call:

“Tell stories, Diana. Tell your stories.”

When I first began to write in this space, I didn’t have a strong rationale for that stance, I just knew in my spirit that this was to be a place of story-telling. Not argument, not academic theological wrestling, not diatribe.

A sermon or two? Well, yes – those always included stories.

Some prayers once in a while? Those, too, are part of my own story, my journey as a disciple and as a pastor.

An occasional book review? Yup, those, too. Because reading is a vital part of writing, especially helpful in the writing of personal stories.

And there have always been a lot of photographs, too. Because, well — you guessed it! Pictures tell stories, sometimes better than words do.

Over these last four years of more regular blogging, the theme of story has come front and center for me, and time after time, my choice to be a story-teller has been confirmed and validated.

Being invited to write at A Deeper Story was a great and miraculous gift, one that allowed me to tell some of my stories to a larger audience, in a place that welcomed whatever it is I have to bring to the story-telling table.

So now, the Editor-in-Chief of ADS has written a book. A fine book, an easy-to-read book. And guess what it’s about? Well, of course it is — it’s about telling YOUR story, because YOUR story is important.

And it’s about telling your story because that is a much better, gentler, more effective way to interact with one another in this online space and in everyday life. On the back cover of this delicious new book, Nish Weiseth asks this critical question:

“How would your life be different if you shared your stories rather than your opinions?“

Can I get an ‘amen’ to that??

How many times a day do you find yourself in a situation where you feel frustrated, ignored, misunderstood, even rejected by the words and/or actions of someone else? Maybe a someone you don’t know all that much about. And what if knowing that someone’s back-story might help you understand why he/she acts the way they do?

Because knowing someone’s story makes a huge difference in how we see them, how we approach them, what we say to them and how we say it. Stories are powerful and effective ways for us to see one another as whole people. People who have been wounded, who have survived, who have made mistakes, who have learned from some of those mistakes and repeated too many of them. When we know someone’s story, we are able to hear them differently, to hold their words and actions with a greater sense of equanimity and compassion.

Stories can change the world. Surely, Jesus thought so — he used all kinds of them during his ministry years. This faith that we hold dear is built on THE story, the one about grace and love and finding and seeking and life and death and resurrection. I stake my life on that story.

Woven throughout Nish’s wonderful book are eight examples of story-telling from the pages of A Deeper Story, a lovely addition to the overarching theme, each one a stellar example of how vulnerable, searching story-telling touches hearts and changes lives.

What if instead of arguing with one another, we told each other our stories? What if we committed ourselves to learning about one another before offering judgment? What if we stopped the frantic searching for how-to, if we took a break from finding a-new-and-better-program? What if we began asking, “Who are you?” “Why are you here?” Rather than, “How can I make you stay and look like everybody else here at this church?”

What if we trusted that God is going before us in each person who comes through our doors, that God has been at work long before we ever came along, that the newcomer or the millennial or the senior or the one who doesn’t look like the rest of us is already on the way into the kingdom?

What if our role is simply to tell our story and then listen to the other’s? Could it be that straight-ahead, that personal, that simple?

Oh, I think Nish is onto something. Really, I do.

You can find Nish’s new book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, LifeWay, or Christianbook.com

I received an advance copy and am absolutely delighted to write about and recommend this book. I took it down to the beach and read it in 2.5 hours, front to back. And marked it up a lot, too.

Filed Under: A Deeper Story, Book Essay, Book Review, Creativity, Encouragement, hope, Storytelling

When It Rains . . .

August 4, 2014 By Diana

So . . . remember that post I wrote last week? The one about Love and Fear? Yeah, that one.

About three days after it went live, I apparently had a kind of panic attack, the night before I was to visit the surgeon to learn if I’d be on schedule for this healing process or have to add more weeks on the dang scooter.

That was NOT fun. And it set off a bout of esophageal problems that I’ve run into once or twice before — days of heartburn, back and chest pain, inability to eat much at all. Last time this happened, it took the better part of a month to resolve.

The great news I got at the surgeon’s office (begin partial weight-bearing and physical therapy now, two weeks ahead of schedule) was quickly offset by feeling absolutely lousy and remarkably frightened about it all.

So much for ‘love casting out fear,’ right? It seems this is a lesson I never quite learn. And it’s not going to get any better as I continue to age, of that I am quite certain. As we get older, a lot of our youthful defenses can’t quite pull off what they once could, and different kinds of intervention sometimes become necessary.

My kind and patient husband and I went through one long day of medical testing to confirm my own diagnosis of this condition and my gastro doc ‘just happened’ to be in the lobby when I was near his section of our clinic. He promptly did a complete endoscopy.

The confirmation came when he sprayed an absolutely vile tasting numbing agent into the back of my throat and for the 60-90 minutes that stuff numbed me up, I was symptom free. He did find a few small things going on in that department, but apart from the very likely possibility of a spasm in that long tube between throat and tummy, there is no clear reason for this siege.

Except.

Stress brought on by worry.

Man, that’s hard for me to put into writing. So, he prescribed some stomach-soothing liquid medication, and a new variety of prescription GERD treatment.

And also? Ativan, to be taken whenever I feel that panic rising.

Somehow, that feels like a huge personal failure to me. Yet another of the many painful lessons I’m learning as we walk through this L O N G period of recovery and rehab. Deep breathing and the Jesus prayer are not always going to cover it all. They’re just not.

Despite my ill health, my disappointment in myself, and my overall fatigue with ALL of this, I wanted to go to church. It was Communion Sunday and Pastor Don was into 1 John 5. Oh, how I needed to worship, to sing, to pray, to hear the Word. And to sit with God’s people.

I was reminded — again! — that we don’t do this journey alone, we belong to one another. That’s the way God designed and intended the Christian journey to flourish. We gather together, in the same space, and we remember that we cannot do this discipleship thing without the company of others.

And when you’ve been sitting on your butt for 7+ weeks, these moments of community gathering are essential, believe me when I tell you this. The service was lovely, filled with grace and good humor, lovely music, a well-preached word. And the Table.

Oh, the Table. The remembering and the re-membering and the visual picture of the body of Christ streaming forward to share in the Body of Christ. Yes, yes! I needed this.

This is the great, old palm tree that stands tall in my backyard. I love it. And when I manage to scooter my way to the chaise lounge that faces it, I sit and stare for a while. And I marvel.

Birds by the dozens flit in and out of it’s immensity. All kinds of birds, from tiny sparrows to red-headed woodpeckers to noisy black crows. And there’s room there, room for every one of them. A safe space to build a nest, to nurture the hatchlings, and to rest, away from the dangers of coyote and bobcat, of riding mower and leaf blower.

I am deeply blessed to be able to say that church has always been such a place for me. Worship is a safe place, a nurturing place. A restful place. I’m so grateful that this is true in my life and that, despite the frustrations and limitations of these weeks, I am still able to be there.

It’s a humbling thing to have to acknowledge that even after many years of following Jesus, and many experiences of grace made real, I still do battle with fear and worry. I am asking for grace, most especially for myself just now. And for gracious acceptance of the limits within which I must live the rest of my life. The physical ones are difficult enough. But the emotional and spiritual ones? Those are proving to be the biggies, the ones that need daily relinquishment.

As always, I’m standin’ in the need of prayer.

Filed Under: Aging, Beauty, Birds, Church, community, Encouragement, Fear, God's gifts, Hard Things, hope, personal journey, Storytelling, The Church

Finding Home

July 1, 2014 By Diana

I was young. Really young. Married at 20, midway through my senior year at UCLA, planning a Big Trip soon after graduation. I looked forward to that trip with eager anticipation, eagerly awaiting a chance to Get Out, Get Away, Be On Our Own.

Actually, it was a bit more than a trip. It was a two-year commitment to live and work in a country far from our home in southern California, a two-year trek to a very different life, a very different place. I’ve written about it here (see the African Journey page up top to see those six posts) and I’ve mentioned it here and at other places around the web.

But I don’t think I’ve ever talked about what it was like to come home again, to find my way back to the familiar, to re-enter our larger family circles, this time as a new mom and a more thoughtful and experienced world traveler.

It was good. And it was hard.

It was good because I desperately wanted our brand new, 5-month-old daughter to know her grandparents and other extended family. It was good because we were eager to see where God would lead us next. It was good because we both come from loving, involved family systems and we had missed that. A lot.

It was hard for many of the same reasons. Going away for two years was one of the best gifts we ever gave our marriage. Both number-one children, each of us deeply infected with perfectionism and performance pressure, it was good for us to move very far away, where there were no family resources to rely on, where we would be forced to rely on one another and to make our way into a complex, new-to-us cultural venue — or two. Zambian and missionary cultures presented two very different sets of challenges.

The first two months back found us in my parents’ small guest house — really my dad’s study in their backyard — with no bathroom and no kitchen. For two l o n g months, while we waited out the job search and began to resettle into 20th century American life. Overall, it was a good time, a rich reminder of the blessings that were ours because of the families in which we grew up.

But it’s always tough to move back in with your parents after you’ve left home, isn’t it? And my relationship with my mom has always been fraught with multiple levels of complexity. We love each other very much, but I gotta tell you, there is no one on this earth who can get under my skin like she can!

I began a lifelong battle with my weight while we lived there for those two months. All of my growing up life, my mother worried about how I looked. She had me taking diet pills in high school, sent me with cottage cheese for lunch, worried that I’d be both too tall and too heavy to get a man.

And once we came home from Africa, beautiful new baby in tow, almost her first words to me were, “Gettin’ a little broad across the beam, aren’t you?”

And I had gained a few pounds with that baby. A few. But I look at those pictures now and I wonder — what in heck was she talking about?

F-22

I’ve often wondered if my complicated relationship with food isn’t directly related to that kind of offhand, semi-snide comment from my mother. Mom’s fears about me took root and I responded in a strange and opposite way. I think maybe it was the only form of rebellion I could muster, because I was a very, VERY good girl while I lived in their home.

But once that baby was here — and another one less than two years later, and another one just 2.5 years after that? Well, let’s just say, something in me — both physiological and psychological — shifted, and I began piling on the pounds.

Eventually, my mom seemed to find peace with the ‘real me,’ and now, in her dementing years, she cannot stop telling me how wonderful I look, what a fine person I am, how proud she is of me.

And how jealous she is of me, too.

That last one has been a stunner for me, a slice of real-life cognitive dissonance that I haven’t yet fully internalized. We’ve been home for 45 years now — and I’m still finding my way.

Because coming home is hard to do. And finding home can take a lifetime. Emily Wierenga has written a brand-new memoir, releasing today, called, “Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look.” It’s a rich memoir, laced with poignant story-telling and honest reflection. She, too, traveled far to find out that home was right where she left it.

I encourage you to read this intriguing story, to reflect with Emily as she discovers that her parents, whom she never felt loved her very well, truly do love her, with all their hearts.

Described as a ‘travel memoir, this book is actually a beautiful story of two marriages, her own and her parents’. And the revelation that sang to me was this one: when her mom became so very ill that her father became a primary caregiver, Emily’s parents found one another in ways both new and beautiful.

Emily has said elsewhere that her parents’ changing marriage became the beautiful one that it now is because her sometimes acid-tongued mom began to submit herself to her husband’s caring leadership. But as I read it, it seemed so much more than that. I saw a couple blossoming into newness of love because they each submitted to the other, in the process discovering each other all over again.

Emily and Trenton go through a long and often difficult process of rediscovery as well. And there, too, what Emily describes is a lovely journey for each of them, as they both learn to love and submit, love and submit.

It’s a beautiful book, one I recommend to you for it’s lyrical prose and it’s heartfelt commitment to truth telling. I received an advanced reader’s copy of “Atlas Girl,” and am grateful to have read it and more than happy to review it. Reading it prompts a lot of personal reflection on the meaning of home and what it means to find home after a long season of wandering. I encourage you to read it yourself.

Atlas-Girl-Cover-3D_small-150x150

“Atlas Girl is more than a book; it’s a journey in which Emily Wierenga takes you by the hand and invites you into the broken places in her life. She shares the unexpected beauty God has created in those places as he’s made her heart whole again, and how he can do the same for you. If you’ve ever been hurt or gone through a hard time, this book will give you hope and a new understanding of God’s love for you.” ~ Holley Gerth, bestselling author of You’re Already Amazing

“The best memoirs combine the storytelling elements of a novel–smart pacing, tactile details, people you care about–with the deep insights and spiritual takeaway of great nonfiction. Emily Wierenga deftly serves up that rich blend in Atlas Girl, a nonlinear, wholly moving account of her life’s journey so far. Her honesty is raw, real. Her faith is hard-won. And when it finally pours out, her love–oh, her love soars off the page and makes a nest in our hearts. Brilliant and beautiful.”~ Liz Curtis Higgs, bestselling author of Bad Girls of the Bible: And What We Can Learn from Them

“This isn’t just a book, this is a journey. Of grief and wonder, loss and gain. Emily tells a world-spanning story that this world needs in Atlas Girl!” ~ Jon Acuff, New York Times bestselling author ofStart and Stuff Christians Like

Filed Under: An African Journey, Book Review, community, Encouragement, family, Marriage, memoir, Storytelling, Travel

Too Much? — A Deeper Story

April 30, 2014 By Diana

I am privileged to write each month at A Deeper Story. This month’s story comes from a seminary classroom experience a very long time ago. But somehow the issue lingers. See what you think:

As I remember, it was somewhere between two and four in the afternoon, on a Monday. A lovely spring day, temperate California weather, a low simmer of chatter and anticipation in our small seminary classroom.

There were about 20 of us taking a course on Conflict Resolution, from a moderately well-known professor who had written on the topic and had always seemed to me to be kind and soft-spoken. Maybe that’s why his response startled me so.

We were divided into pairs and given a scenario to act out, to role-play. My partner was a nice young man, whom I did not know, and we were assigned the following:

You are a married couple shopping for furniture for your home. When you arrive at the store, the wife discovers that the husband has already purchased furniture without telling her about it. How does the discussion unfold between you?

There was no advance notice, no conversation between us ahead of time. “Just plunge in,” the teacher said. “Act it out.”

So I did.

I stated my disappointment clearly, firmly, with a moderately low level of emotion, at least to my ears. And to the ears of every other woman in the class, I later discovered.

As soon as I finished speaking, this well-respected professor very carefully and deliberately crossed his legs and placed his hands in his lap, as if to protect himself, and said, “Wow, Diana. Way to challenge his manhood!”

To say I was stunned would be a severe understatement. I am a large person, this I know. I am a strong person. This I also know. I am also moderately articulate and quick on my feet. I expressed my disappointment with the ‘husband’ clearly, but not harshly.

Yet to this man, whose specialty was conflict, I was overbearing, aggressive, out for the kill — just plain too much. I was embarrassed to the point of humiliation. In addition, I was really, really confused.

If a woman states her case plainly, is she aggressive? Is she emasculating? Is she crossing some kind of invisible line in the sand? If the roles had been reversed, if the ‘husband’ had spoken similarly to the ‘wife,’ would that have elicited the same response?

Please join me over at ADS to continue this conversation. . .

Filed Under: A Deeper Story, authority, Hard Things, personal journey, Storytelling

The Gentler, More Subtle Way: A Book Review & a Giveaway!!

April 14, 2014 By Diana

There are a whole lotta ways to write a ‘come to Jesus’ story. Strong stories of dramatic conversions are always around — usually quite popular, in fact. And they are often told in lurid detail, outlining the horrors of drug abuse, or alcoholism, of sexual misconduct or abuse, telling tales of wild living and rough edges. LOTS of very rough edges.

When I was an adolescent and young adult, I used to quietly envy anyone with such a story. Why? Because mine was so ordinary – my life was pretty much drama-free. I never got ‘saved’ from anything horrific, so I had no redemption story worth telling. As I got older, however, and began having and raising children, that envy just dissipated and was blown away by the sweet breeze of grace. In truth, that old envy morphed into a deep well of gratitude. I am grateful for the story that is uniquely mine to tell, uniquely mine to live.

As I lived into my own life, I began to realize that ordinary no longer looked so bad. In fact, ordinary began to take on all kinds of layers, colors, even edges. I slowly came to understand that God works in all kinds of ways, his children to redeem. All kinds of ways. For some, that may mean drama, and lots of it. For others of us, those grace-breezes are gentler and more subtle. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to redemption stories — everyone has a story worth telling, and ANY story of grace-at-work is a story I want to hear.

Or read.

And believe me when I tell you this, Michelle DeRusha has told us a corker. This is, hands down, one of the best spiritual memoirs I have ever read. It is honest, hysterically funny at points, gracious and gratifying and gorgeous. It took seven years for this beautiful gem to come to light and the wait has been so worth it. SO worth it.

Michelle tells us how her particular childhood experience of church did not lead her to an understanding of grace. So instead of looking to God for help, she focussed all her considerable energy and intelligence on taking charge of her own life, choosing to believe there was no God. She grew up and went to college in New England, working in NYC for a while. During graduate school, she met and married her husband, Brad, whose personal faith was strong and steady and whose heart welcomed Michelle exactly where she was. Together, they moved to the midwestern state of Nebraska, welcoming one little boy almost immediately and a second, several years later.

Their Nebraska adventure became Michelle’s faith adventure and the story is told in crackling prose, filled with descriptions that bring both belly laughs and tears of recognition. They began attending a Lutheran church because apparently, EVERYONE in Nebraska goes to church. Brad felt right at home and Michelle managed to ‘cough’ her way through the Nicene Creed for the first few years! Slowly, but surely, the beauty of the gospel began to seep into her spirit, however, and her big questions began to subtly change. Instead of, “Why believe in God?”, she began to ask, “Why not believe in God?”

Michelle’s story is quite different from mine. I’ve known and believed in Jesus for as long as I can remember, and despite occasional bouts of what Madeleine L’Engle used to call ‘viral atheism,’ my faith has always been a part of my story. Michelle came to Jesus later in life, as a young mom in her 30s, carrying a long history of disbelief and disconnection from faith. And yet, I resonated so strongly with this book. Why?

Because I am a misfit, too. Not in the same ways that Michelle believes she is — after all, I know the lingo, right? I’m familiar with the Bible, I know a lot about church history, biblical studies — you know the drill. But Michelle puts her finger on something very, very important in this book: the truth that most of us don’t ‘fit’ in one way or another.

And also? The bigger truth that it doesn’t matter that we don’t fit. Because being a misfit — well, that’s what makes us who we are. And Michelle, misfit though she may be, speaks for all of us as she writes about doubt, flashes of insight, small gifts of grace in the middle of daily living.

Because this is our story, too. This story of not fitting in, not having all the answers, not getting it. What she — and we — come to realize is that all of that is okay. It is more than okay — it is the way in. The way in to a vibrant, day-to-day relationship with the living God, the way in which a spiritual misfit becomes God’s Beloved Misfit. “We are all walking around shining like the sun,” Thomas Merton says (and Michelle quotes on page 98). ALL of us, dear friends, beloved misfits, shining like the sun. Wow.

FRIENDS! I have TWO copies of Michelle’s beautiful book to give away! All you have to do is tell me you’d like a chance to win one and, if your name is drawn, I’ll be delighted to send you your very own copy. Put a word in the comments and I’ll have my granddaughters draw a name on Easter Sunday. Winners announced next Monday!

Filed Under: Book Review, Church, Confession, Encouragement, memoir, personal journey, Spiritual Formation, Spiritual Misfit, Storytelling, Writing

What a Woman Is Worth — Launch Day!!

April 1, 2014 By Diana

The Big Day is finally here! A wonderful collection of essays, edited and organized by Tamara Lunardo, is releasing today on Amazon! I am honored to be included — in fact, to contribute the final piece in the collection — with a remarkable group of women writers, speaking to the truth that women matter. No matter how life has treated us, we matter to God and we matter to one another.

Here’s the beautiful cover of our book and at the end of this post is a shot of the back cover, too. As those of you who read here with any regularity will know, this essay was written quite a while ago! Almost exactly two years ago, to be exact. Lilly is now 4 years and 2 months old; in this piece she is not yet two. But the truth of who she is is always the same. Here is the first section of the final essay in this fine collection:

Lilly is 22 months old, and a real pistol. Funny, charming, inquisitive, secure in herself and in the love of her family. She plays with us two days each week – one of the perks of grandparenting and retirement. And every time she’s here, I celebrate who she is becoming.

Last week, she climbed up onto my bed (where all good computer work is done in this house) and begged to see ‘pichures, pichures!’ So I opened iPhoto and went directly to her favorite event: her older sister’s 6th birthday party. Each time we look at this set, we scroll through all 90 photos, identifying as many people as we can, usually lingering longest at the pictures of the ‘happy cake-cake.’

Lilly has not quite grasped the truth that these ‘pichures’ she loves so much are only 2-dimensional representations and not actually tiny versions of the people she sees every day. Sometimes she will cup her hands next to the screen and say, “I pick her up! I pick her up!” puzzled that she can’t quite make that happen.

But one day last week, she surprised me with words that marked my heart in a powerful way. She surprised me with what she did understand. She saw a close-up of her own face. And she patted the screen gently, saying, “Oooh, that’s Rirry [still working on those L’s]. She so cute. I love her.”

“She so cute…I love her.” I wrapped my arms around her small body and kissed her on the back of the neck and said, “Oh, YES, Lilly. You are so cute and I love you, too. I hope and I pray that you will always be able to look at yourself in exactly this way. Always.”

What is it that happens to us between early childhood and adulthood? Why is it so easy for us to lose that clear, common-sense, of-course-I’m-loveable-it’s-just-so-obvious-I’m sure-you-can-see-this-too sense of our value, our worth, our intrinsic ‘rightness?’ And what, as parents, aunts and uncles, siblings, cousins, grandparents of girls – what can we do to foster an atmosphere in which little girls will always see themselves this way? When we look in the mirror at age 16 or 21 or 35 or 50 or 75 or 90, why shouldn’t we be able to see ourselves through eyes of love?

Is this not the message of the Gospel? Is this not the Truth that Jesus saw and taught and modeled and lived? That fundamentally, to be a human person is a good, good thing. So good that God chose to be clothed with our flesh, to walk through the steps of our life, to eat and sleep and laugh and cry, to connect with others and to spend time alone, to hang out with all different kinds of people and see each of them as interesting and important and valuable? Yes, I think so. . .

To read the rest, you’ll just have to buy the book!

Filed Under: Book Essay, community, Dreams/Dreaming, Encouragement, family, personal journey, Storytelling, synchro blogs/blog hops, What a Woman Is Worth, women, Writing

On Vulnerability and Boundaries — A Guest Post for Nacole Simmons

March 26, 2014 By Diana

In the fall of 2006, I got a new boss. He arrived on the scene after two years of searching, two years marked by upheaval in my life, personally and professionally. I had been working as an Associate Pastor, part-time, for almost ten years by then, and I was deeply relieved to welcome him and to learn to work with him and for him.

One of the first things he asked me to do was start a blog. Yes, you read that right. My boss, the senior pastor, asked me to begin writing on a blog. He already had one, and used it for brief reflections on life and ministry, very rarely for anything personal.

But I’m not wired in the same way, and when I was invited to write, I chose to get pretty vulnerable, pretty quickly. And I loved it. I was careful, especially when trying to write out the difficulties that always attend a new working relationship. I tried to make it about me, and what I was thinking/feeling. And, for the most part, I found my way to a pretty good balance. I posted infrequently, about once or twice a month for that first year. I learned to import photos, and often chose to write about my family, especially my grandkids.

But in July of 2007, something hard happened. Our son-in-law was in the midst of a long and very difficult dying, suffering from the after-effects of intensive radiation to his head and neck when he was a teenager. Our daughter was trying to finish a masters’ degree in special education, so that she could go to work after fifteen years as a homemaker. Her husband was on full disability at that point, and they desperately needed medical insurance. Her program required a 10-week internship at a hospital 400 miles north of her home and she worked like a champ to make everything happen. Some weeks, her husband was well enough to go with her, but some weeks, he needed to be closer to home.

We housed her husband and two younger sons (the eldest was working at a camp on Catalina Island that summer) for one of those closer-to-home weeks. And that experience was one of the most difficult times I’ve ever walked through. Watching someone you love suffer — and watching how that suffering impinges on the lives of two young people — well, it was hard, sad, painful. . . there are no words.

But I tried to find them anyhow. I wrote a post, not using names, about watching this particular kind of suffering. I finished it late one night, posted it and went to bed. At 7:00 the next morning, I went in and removed it, feeling unsettled about writing something so deeply personal.

The post was up for less than twelve hours.

But in that time, someone close to him found it and was deeply wounded by it. I was crushed — repentant, sorrowful, so sorry for causing pain and for further complicating my daughter’s life. My heroic girl was already exhausted and overwhelmed and my post made everything worse.

I crossed a line, one that I deeply regret.

Please follow me over to Nacole’s site to read the rest of this post . . .

Filed Under: Blogging, Confession, Encouragement, family, Grandparenting, Guest Post, Hard Things, Marriage, personal journey, Spiritual Formation, Storytelling, The Journey with Mom

“Love Idol” — a Book Review

March 25, 2014 By Diana

photo courtesy of Diane Bailey from the Love Idol Launch Team

It’s been a big day! A good day for my friend Jennifer Dukes Lee. Her first book has been released, set free into the world to be read, savored, underlined, dog-eared, learned from and treasured.

“Love Idol: Letting go of your need for approval . . . and seeing yourself through God’s eyes” is now available at your favorite bookseller. I encourage you to pick up a copy — or three or four, for friends, family or small group — and read your way through Jen’s journey from perfectionist-people-pleaser, unsure-of-God’s-existence, to sold-out-believer, one-who-knows-she-is-loved.

This is a journey we all need to take, this way of grace, this road that begins with our desperate need to be seen, to be valued, to be loved. This road that can so easily lead to detours and dead ends, each one echoing with the voice of our enemy, the one who taunts and teases and tantalizes. It is so easy — too easy — to succumb to the demands of our shadow selves — the Inner Critic, the Sarcastic Belittler, the Over-Eager-Achiever, the Proud Performer — when all that is needed is the recognition that we are already loved, already accepted, already approved before we do anything.

It’s paradoxical, really. The simplest truth is the hardest one to believe, to live. And Jennifer wrestles well with the slippery edges of it all. Telling stories about herself, her marriage, her children, her past career and her current calling, she weaves in biblical stories and truths like the pro she is. Before she became a farmer’s wife, mom, and blogger, Jen was an award-winning journalist and her story-telling ability shines delightfully on every page.

All along the way, she casually drops in some great one-liners:

We all have two choices in times of angst or worry: raise the fist or bend the will.

Sometimes a face-plant into the dirt is the best way to humble the hurried and harried.

How do I take these brain-deep answers and make them heart-deep?

“Dear God, help me get over myself today.”

I doubt that even Jesus Himself would suggest bullet-pointed answers to life’s most pressing questions. He didn’t outline easy steps for us; He offered an easy yoke.

Personal strength is not necessarily a virtue. Neither is got-it-togetherness.

We tell each other that it’s safe to be authentic, but are we making unthreatening places for people to be less than perfect?

This is a book written for women, and that may be my only critique. Why? Because I think this is a message for everyone, every person who has ever dealt with an overwhelming need to be loved and approved, who has ever felt driven to perform perfectly, who has ever allowed fear and/or pride to be the controlling emotion behind every decision. And I know that men face these demons as well as women.

Whichever gender you are, wherever you are on this journey of faith, Love Idol is a rich resource for you, and I heartily and happily recommend it to you.

Filed Under: biblical reflection, Book Review, Confession, Encouragement, Hard Things, Storytelling, women

FOUND: a Story of Questions, Grace & Everyday Prayer — A Book Review

March 11, 2014 By Diana

Sometimes when I read a book that is new to me, and I discover that I like it, that I’m intrigued by some of the ideas presented or the way language is used, I dog-ear a page that catches my eye. If the book really speaks to my heart, you might find 20 or 30 such pages scattered throughout.

Micha Boyett’s beautiful new book — part memoir, part prayer journal, part glory — has so many down-turned pages that I can no longer close it completely. Oh my, this woman can write! And what she writes? It speaks right into my heart, with hope, honesty and beauty.

I’ve read Micha’s blog, Mama Monk, for over three years now, made the move with her to Patheos, even guest-posted for her once. So I’ve been looking forward to seeing her heart and reading her words in a longer format for quite a while. And I am not disappointed. Micha has been on a journey, a search, for the heart of prayer, the heart of God. A pastor to students in her twenties, convinced that God had Big Plans for her life, plans that she ‘needed’ to discover and fulfill, she found herself in her early thirties as a stay-at-home mom to one, and then two beautiful boys.

What happened to those Big Plans, she wondered? Was she somehow missing the Important Work God had for her to do? Over the course of this gentle book — outlined according to the prayer schedule of St. Benedict — she learns that where she is right now is, indeed, important. That the work she does, the rhythms of child-care, housework, hospitality, marriage and writing — these are the things of life, and Spirit and love-made-real.

Reading that last paragraph might make you think that this is a book for women. Yes, it is. It is also a book for men. This is a book for anyone who earnestly desires to discover God in the midst of the movements of an ordinary day, anyone who longs to know that the work of their hands is blessed and beautiful.

Along the way, Micha writes evocatively about taking time for silence and retreat at a couple of local monasteries, she describes what she learns in spiritual direction, she shows us how her husband helps her to see herself and her ideas about God in new and different ways, she whispers that loneliness can be an invitation to a deeper faith. And somewhere in there, she talks about . . . fly-fishing.

Just two pages, a small story — but one of the most beautiful things I’ve read in a long, long time. Here’s a small piece of it:

“I raise my rod and cast the line out. It’s beautiful. Sometimes I think fly-fishing is like praying the rosary; moving slow through each bead, letting the physical act move my unfocused body from distraction into awareness. It’s the repetition, the sameness of coming to God with simple words and rhythm, that opens me to recognize the God-already-here. . . Prayer is not as hard as I make it out to be. Again and again, lift and unfold. Lay that line out, let it meander a little. Do it again. I am not profound. I am not brave in spirit. My faith is threadbare and self-consumed, but I am loved, I am loved, I am loved.” – pg. 226-227

With all my heart, I recommend this book to you. It is rich, captivating, lush with beautiful language and ideas. And most of all, it is touchable. Micha is no plaster saint, she is a real, flesh-and-blood woman, wife, mother, pastor, writer, seeker. She invites you along for the journey, and friends? it is a trip so worth taking.

I received an advanced reader’s copy of this lovely book. In exchange for that, I committed to write an honest review. This is it. Buy this book. Mark it up, keep it nearby, go back to it, keep a list of favorite lines. Yes. Do it.

Here are what a few others are saying about this fine book:

“I devoured this kind and generous book: Micha is singing the longings of all the tired mother
pilgrims. Every word is like motherhood: elegant, earthy, loving, and present.”
—Sarah Bessey, author of Jesus Feminist

“With this beautiful book, Micha Boyett opens a door to Benedictine spirituality through
regular, busy people can enter and taste, see, smell, hear, and feel what it means to live life as a
prayer. This debut sets Boyett apart as one of the most promising new writers of a generation.”
—Rachel Held Evans, author of A Year of Biblical Womanhood

“Reading Found is like taking a deep breath of grace. You’ll hear the echo of your own
questions and doubts in the gentle ways Micha Boyett addresses her own, and by the end,
you’ll feel the quiet goodness of enough. For anyone who’s ever gotten prayer all tangled up in
performance—this one’s for you.”
—Addie Zierman, author of When We Were On Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith,
Tangled Love and Starting Over

“This book is stunning. Beautifully written, Micha Boyett’s Found is a penetrating story, rich
in humanity and faith, the kind of book that stays with you long after you’ve read its last page.
Like Henri Nouwen and Madeline L’Engle, Boyett’s spiritual journey is divinely practical, a
relatable and potentially anointed narrative that renews, inspires, and reminds us that we are not
lost.”
—Matthew Paul Turner, author of Churched and Our Great Big American God

“Micha Boyett is in search for the beauty in the everyday, the prayer that hides itself in dinners
and diapers and naps. She is as skilled of a tour guide for Benedictine spirituality as she is for
her own story, and in these pages you will find that the sacred has been there all along.”
—Adam S. McHugh, author of Introverts in the Church

“In Found, Micha Boyett tells the small story of her own redemptions, inviting readers into a
life of earnest spiritual seeking. Written in reflective bursts of prose mirroring monastic hours
and the holy calendar, Boyett has created an account of spiritual resolve, believing that the
most important journeys of the heart are the modest ones.”
—Dave Harrity, director of ANTLER and author of Making Manifest: On Faith,
Creativity, and the Kingdom at Hand