Guest Posts

Thankful Thursdays Guest Post: Gratefulness – The Journey

It’s that time for Thankful Thursdays again! I created this guest series partly as a way to help new writers gain experience as well as a way to appreciate the diversity of my readers and to learn from their different perspectives. Today’s post comes from Jackie, a young aspiring writer in NYC. I really appreciated this post for showing that we can be thankful not only for things we have and gifts we’ve been given, but also for the blessing of our own ability to change and to grow.

Gratefulness: The Journey

I was incredibly honored to be considered for a guest post on someone else’s blog. “Thankful Thursdays” is a concept I am excited to be a part of and I was very anxious to share my point of view. My first interaction with Lily was through another post about a similar idea so I was excited to share my thoughts with her and with the followers on her blog.

As I do with any good news I receive I told my girlfriend. She is usually the person I celebrate victories with so I informed her of the good news and arrogantly stated how suited I would be for this guest post because I practice being grateful so often.

“Let’s not get crazy, I think you’re about 50% of the way,” my girlfriend stated honestly. I was annoyed by her response. How could she put in a pinhole in my excitement about blogging and working with other bloggers? I immediately went on the defense.

Going on the defense made me reflect on the role that gratitude and joy had in my life. Was I doing enough? Was I really digging deeper into the experiences and gestures around me and truly appreciating what I have been given? I found myself incredibly lost in thought.

I have always found direction in writing about what I know. Writing provides structure for my thought process. I started writing about my current transition into financial and personal independence. I am taking over the rent and utility bills for my parents’ apartment while they make their transition into their first time as home owners. Independence is a lot of new territory for me to explore and I quickly realized that I may not be practicing being grateful as much as I thought I was.

While I am far from blind to the big blessings in my journey towards independence, I find myself realizing just how grateful I am for small things –from something as simple as a home cooked meal from my mother to something large like the luxury of not paying rent for a few more months. Reflecting on my personal growth into adulthood has opened my eyes to see that being thankful isn’t just about counting your blessings. I find that being grateful and appreciating the growth inside of me has become part of my journey.

The saying, “You never know what you have til it’s gone” has been truly appropriate for me. The slow losses of luxuries I’ve always known have opened my eyes to how precious they actually are and I see both the practice and concept of embracing life’s blessings as a part of the journey.

There is always room for improvement. There is always something that you might be missing. Counting your blessings might seem obvious, but feeling them deeply could take a lifetime with each life experience giving you more perspective. Maybe it’s my desire for perfection or to be a better version of myself each day, but this journey is what counts for me.

Image Credit: weheartit.com

Image Credit: weheartit.com

About the Author:

My aspirations of becoming a writer seem to be never ending. I’m 26 trying to navigate my way through life using my blog as the outlet to tell my story and feed this dream that won’t seem to go away despite reality. Follow my journey at https://talesfromtheanxietyridden.wordpress.com/.

Sacred Spaces: A Very Revealing Guest Post

One of the cool things about blogging is connecting with other people who “speak your language.” For me these are often people from different parts of the world who I would never have known existed if it wasn’t for blogging. Some of the people I feel most connected to are people I’ve never met in person. But a few of my good blogging friends are actually people I knew in the past as acquaintances and only truly connected with them years later through writing.

Sometimes these relationships make me feel a sense of loss over the missed opportunity to spend time with that person when we were in the same place, but they also makes me thankful that it’s not too late to know them now.  Meredith is on of those people for me. Meredith and I went to Wheaton College together. We had a few classes together. We were even on the newspaper staff together for a while. But we never really got to know each other. Fast forward four years to Meredith starting her blog Very Revealing. As soon as I started reading her blog all I could think was, “Why were we not best friends in college? I adore her!”

Over the past year or so we’ve gotten to know one another better and have been able to encourage one another with our respective writing goals. Meredith wrote a great piece for my Sex and the Church series in the fall and today I have the great honor of sharing a guest post about unexpected sacred spaces over at her blog.

If you know me, it probably won’t surprise you to know that I wrote about the most sacred place I know of- Disneyworld. Here’s a little excerpt for you:

“I’m not a runner. Actually, I’m not anything even remotely athletic. In fact, I don’t think I’d done any exercise whatspever for about a year when my best friend (also not a runner) asked me if I wanted to run the Disney Princess Half Marathon with her. None of that stopped me from immediately saying yes.”

Read the rest of this post here and check out some of Meredith’s work while you are there! I promise you won’t be disappointed!

PS – I will be skipping my usual Friday Book Chat this week since this post falls on a Friday. But I will be back with a new book-related post next week!

Thankful Thursdays Guest Post: Finding the Joy (Losing the Judgement)

It’s that time for Thankful Thursday again! Are you excited? Because I’m excited! I connected with Rox Nicholl through the wonderful world of blogging and I think she’s just a lovely soul. I really enjoyed this post, especially the connection she draws between more joy and less judgment. This post reminded me that being thankful for one small thing can be powerful in itself. What one small thing are you thankful for today?

It was going to be brilliant. Brilliant, I tell you. Sparkly, witty, thought-provoking and funny, and all wrapped up with a glittery bow that would leave a smile on your face. Brilliant. And by “it”, I am referring to this particular guest post. I had been thinking about it for two weeks, without the opportunity to put a thought down (Little Person was on holiday, so there simply was no space to do anything except look after her and make sure the house didn’t explode). Thankfulness. Find the joy, lose the judgement. It was going to be brilliant.

And then I fell ill. My throat turned into some red, raw monster of slime. Food turned to glass as soon as I tried to swallow. For a week, it was all I could do to fetch Little Person from school and hide under a blanket on the sofa while I watched her play. Thankfulness? What thankfulness? Joy? What joy?

But here’s the thing. I have been learning about thankfulness – specifically how true thankfulness comes from a place of joy. And joy cannot occupy the same space as judgement. I hadn’t been aiming to find joy, I had been aiming to lose the judgement. Specifically, I’d been trying to learn to stop myself from saying all sorts of nasty things about the people driving the cars I share the roads with on a regular basis. So instead of “look at that idiot driving so dangerously”, I was trying “that driver seems to be in a rush. I hope that he isn’t late for his meeting.” After a little effort, I began to notice people that were driving well, and I noticed I was a more relaxed driver too.

So I decided on a wider application. Finding the joy in the every day. Daffodils bobbing on the wind. Little Person’s smile when I picked her up from school. The Dude taking care of the entire bedtime routine, even though he had been at work the whole day. A freezer full of food that could just be slapped in the oven at a moment’s notice (got to love fish fingers and chips). A friend who dropped by with a portion of (homemade!) soup to soothe my throat and then skedaddled off so I could rest. Maybe not a thousand things to be grateful for, but sometimes, real appreciation for two or three small things means so much more.

So even though I wasn’t overwhelmed with joy and thankfulness as the germs were doing battle for my body (status report: the body has fought back and is currently launching an offensive that should see us to victory), I was more thankful than I had ever had reason to think I would be. So often, when I am ill and I am laid low, guilt follows on the heels of pain. I haven’t done the laundry. I’m not cooking good enough food. I’m leaving The Dude to do all the work, and abandoning Little Person in front of the television. Bad mother. Bad wife. Bad person. (Am I the only one to do this to myself, as though it’s not enough to feel bad physically, I have to feel bad mentally too?) But not this time. This time, it was alright for me to not do these things. I could just rest and trust The Dude to take care of it. Not brilliant, but good enough.

It’s so easy to think of thankfulness as this big, bright gem of a thing, something grand to aspire to. It’s so easy to think that we have to be thankful for everything, and find big profound lessons to be grateful for within every life experience. But maybe gratitude is just an attitude that says, I’m going to notice the smallest tiniest thing that can give me joy, and be thankful for that.

Maybe it’s the joy that makes it brilliant, after all.

About the Author:

I blog about the lessons I find in the every day – being a wife to The Dude, mother to Little Person, a stranger in a strange land (I’m a South African living in North East England, which is the bit you never hear about), pretending to own a cat. When I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing, or doing crochet. Or avoiding the laundry pile. My current Secret Project is a novel that addresses the question of what happens when faith and fear collide. You can find me at www.roxnicholl.wordpress.com or follow me @roxnicholl (Twitter/Instagram)

Rituals: Reading to Sleep

Today I am over at Cara Meredith’s blog, be, mama. be. joining in with her ongoing guest series on rituals. Cara is an internet friend whose writing is always inspiring to me so I was honored when she asked if I would contribute to this series about the every day rituals that make life richer. I chose to write about my life-long habit of reading myself to sleep.

“And so I grew to love the way it felt to fall asleep to the rhythm of words, whether the cadence of my mother’s voice or my own internal voice as I read to myself. Reading before bed became as natural as brushing my teeth and putting on my pajamas.”

Read the rest of my post here and check out the rest of Cara’s blog while you’re over there!

Photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons: Dineshraj Goomany.

Thankful Thursdays Guest Post: I Live Gratitude

A few weeks ago I wrote this post about practicing gratitude in the everyday rhythms of life. In that post I also mentioned that I’d like to do a Thankful Thursdays guest series and invited other bloggers who were interested in writing a guest post to contact me. I was blown away by the response.

Over the past few years I’ve become absolutely convinced that there is a direct relationship between gratitude and joy. Some of the most joyful people I know are not the ones who have the best things or who don’t experience hardships. They are simply people who remain grateful for the gifts in their lives instead of becoming bitter or cynical. 

More recently I have realized gratitude doesn’t always come naturally – it is something we have to practice. This can be difficult to do, especially when we don’t feel particularly thankful, but I am convinced it’s a spiritual discipline we are called to practice.

I asked writers to share their own thoughts and reflections on gratitude and the role that it plays in their lives.

Today we are kicking off the series with a post from Pradnya Vernekar. Pradnya is  a new friend I “met” when she took the challenge to participate in her own 52 Weeks of Adventure. I’ve enjoyed reading about her adventures and getting to know her over the internet. As you’ll see from this post, Pradnya oozes positivity. I always finish her posts with a smile on my face. I hope you enjoy this reflection on the many things we can be thankful for.

Header Image Credit: Symphony of Joy on Flickr Creative Commons

I Live Gratitude

Photo Credit: Sujoy Datta

Photo Credit: Sujoy Datta

Gratitude for me means learning to live as if everything in life is a miracle. Gratitude for me means being thankful for all the abundance in my life. Gratitude for me means being surrounded by positive people with pure hearts. Gratitude for me means all of this and much more!

I thank God that I am able to experience and see the breathtaking sunrise with my eyes, that I can hear the waves lashing out at each other and calming down as they approach the shore, that I can smell the corn being grilled on the barbeque, that my tongue salivates to have a bite of that corn, that my feet sink in the sand and I feel I am drowning as the waves disappear back into the sea, that I can fill my palms with water and throw it at my soulmate for fun, that my heart pounds with life when I see a flock of birds intersecting the sunrise and flying over the waters in a single line, that my brain has such vital power to process so many beautiful things at once and let me appreciate the goodness in the world. I am just thankful that my body and my mind are in harmony and let me create happiness from the smallest of things! Many of us take the innumerable functions our body and mind carry out for granted, losing out on the best of life’s moments. Be thankful that you have everything intact in your body and try to acknowledge its greatness!

I thank God that I have 24 hours in a day to follow my heart and do things I love the most. I thank him that on a Monday evening with rain pouring outside, I can sit in my balcony, sipping hot coffee and doing what I love the most – writing! I am grateful to God for blessing me with this unique prowess of writing, enabling me to touch the hearts of people through my expressions in my own small way. I thank God for the love and affection I receive from my readers which cannot be measured in dollars.

I thank God that I get my nutritious meals on time and my home is filled with love and laughter, that I have a terrific soulmate who respects me, that my parents raised me to be a humble human being, that my sister holds my family together, that my in-laws are angels, that I have true friends who genuinely care for me!

I thank God every morning for giving me another day to explore, to enjoy, to learn and breathe! When my hands make a ‘namastey’ with eyes closed in front of God, I do not seek anything from Him. I just THANK Him for the unlimited abundance he has blessed me with and still continues with his blessings!

I simply live gratitude!

Photo Credit: Prachi Chaudhari

Photo Credit: Prachi Chaudhari

About the Author: Pradnya is a dynamic HR, an avid reader, an amateur poet and a natural writer. She is an ardent believer in God and tries to dig up happiness even in the darkest of mines. Join her as she takes you on a joyride called ‘life’ at Wanderings of my Mind and 52 Weeks of Adventure.

To Be (or Not To Be) a Mom: The Continuing Saga

Back in October I wrote this guest post for my friend Brett over at his site, Irresistibly Fish. I had every intention of posting it over here as well, but somehow it slipped through the cracks. I’m posting it here today because I never had the opportunity to share it here and it’s something I’m still really wrestling with in my life right now. Brett has an entire series on his blog called “To Be a Mom” that you should check out if you want to hear some great perspectives on motherhood. (I was the only guest blogger who is not actually a mom).

I do want to be sensitive to any of you who may be struggling with infertility or grieving miscarriages.  I understand that it may be hurtful to hear someone else questioning if they even want children if you have lost deeply-wanted children or are struggling with infertility. It is so not my intention to cause you more pain so I wanted to post this “trigger warning” for those of you who may not want to read this one. 

Also, to be clear, this is not a criticism of people who choose to have children. I believe there are many people who are meant to be parents. This is just an exploration of my own sense of purpose and calling.

***

To be a mom used to be something I dreamed of. As early as elementary school l I told people I  was telling people that I planned to have six kids (mostly girls with one or two boys thrown in). I regularly made and updated lists of my favorite baby names.

I grew up in a home where motherhood was valued and praised. I have a wonderful, selfless, self-sacrificing mother and my dad adores her. Since I have two sisters who are significantly younger than me, I started practicing my mothering skills at a young age.

To be clear, there was never any pressure or expectation placed on me by my family that my calling in life was to be a wife and mother. I simply had a natural bent towards domesticity and nurture. I like cooking and baking and I love small children. I think I “get” them better than I get adults. Maybe this is because there are parts of childhood I’ve never outgrown – for example, the urge to stomp my feet when I am frustrated or to sing tuneless songs narrating what I’m doing or to be scared of things like balloons that might pop at any moment – so I understand where they’re coming from a lot of the time.

I started babysitting when I was twelve didn’t stop until I was 25. I taught 4-year old Sunday school class at my church all through college and after college I transitioned into full-time nannying, which is the closest you can get to parenting without actually having your own kids. (Of course, this varies from situation to situation, but in some of my jobs I did the grocery shopping, prepared meals, did homework and school projects, washed clothes, bought clothes, arranged play dates, bought birthday presents for parties, and attended school functions so I honestly think it’s fair to say that this was part-time parenting).

I met my husband at 18 and was married at 22. Our plan was always to wait a few years before we started our family, but I still wanted a big brood of kids and felt pressure not to wait too long. As I was nearing 25 and nothing was happening for me career-wise I started to think, “Maybe we should start having kids.” I believed that having kids would be meaningful and frankly, I believed I’d be good at it. It was something I’d always wanted to do.

And then, about two years ago, something in me changed. I can’t explain exactly how or why, but I woke up one day and I no longer felt the desire to have children. People joke that nannying is its own form of birth control. I don’t think it was that nannying made me stop wanting kids. But I do think nannying made me want to be the right kind of parent.

To be a mom, to really be a good mom, you must be willing to die to yourself and to invest the best of who you are into your children. I have a mom like that, so I know what it looks like. I have worked with different kinds of families and there is a profound difference between the parents whose priority is their children and who are willing to sacrifice their comfort, their careers, and their dreams to invest in their kids and the parents whose priority is themselves or their careers or the image they want to project. I don’t doubt that these second kinds of parents love their children. But based on my experience with those kids, I don’t think they are being the kind of parents their kids need them to be.

I started to wonder why I had wanted a family in the first place. Why do most people have children? I don’t mean that in a flippant or cynical way. It’s something I asked very seriously. One of my deeply held beliefs is that WHY we do things matters tremendously. So I started to ask. Do I want children because I’m hoping they will give me a sense of purpose? Because it’s the next thing to cross off the list? Because nothing else in life is working out and this feels like the next logical step? Because I’m afraid of missing out? Because I believe it will express a unique kind of love with my husband? Because I’m curious about what a mini-me-and-Jonathan would be like?

For many people, the desire to have kids is probably some combination of those things. And that’s not necessarily wrong. I’ve just come to believe that, for me, those reasons are not ENOUGH. For me, there has to be a deeper sense of calling and with that a commitment to sacrificing whatever is required to parent well.

Understanding what parenting really means and what it requires has convinced me that it isn’t something that should be undertaken lightly. I genuinely believe that God took the desire for children away from me for a season because it isn’t the right time. Not long after I’d had this total change of heart, the opportunity for my husband and I to move overseas came up. Our move abroad has been one of the best decisions we’ve ever made, and we wouldn’t have made it if we’d had a child or even been trying to have one.

I don’t know if this feeling will last forever or if God will bring back that desire again at the right time. I do believe that God is ultimately in control of my family and that whether or not we have children depends on him much more than on me. But as much as it depends on me, I want to make sure I pursue motherhood for the right reasons. And if I should get pregnant unintentionally, then I will embrace that as a clear sign of God’s timing and will trust that he will equip me for what he’s calling me to.

I used to long for motherhood, but now to be (or not to be) a mom is something I strive to hold with open hands. I want to keep it in proper perspective, neither looking at it as a means of personal fulfilment nor refusing it out of fear or selfishness. To be a mom is a high calling, but it isn’t everyone’s calling. I want to be sure I’m listening to mine.

 

Image from; joannagoddard.blogspot.com

Sex and the Church: Why We Need a Theology of Sex

Today I am excited to post the last piece in my guest series on Sex and the Church. I am even more excited to have my friend, Karissa Knox Sorrell, sharing her thoughts and experiences on a topic that we are both so passionate about. Karissa is an internet-friend-turning-real-life-friend which is one of the best things about being part of the blogging world. She is a beautiful and thoughtful writer whose self-described “faith wrestling” challenges and encourages me.  

If you missed the other parts of this series you can read them here, here, here, here, and here.

****

The teenager stared at her reflection in the girls’ bathroom mirror, tears spilling down her cheeks. Suddenly, someone else entered the bathroom and rushed to her side. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m  – I’m – pregnant!” she choked out between sobs.

“Don’t you know you’re supposed to use a condom?” the friend asked.

The girl’s brow furrowed. “We did use a condom!” she exclaimed.

The video went on for about twenty more minutes, and then my youth pastor turned it off and talked to us about waiting until marriage to have sex. “You don’t want to find yourself in that girl’s situation,” he said. “Remember I Corinthians 6:19 and 20? Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” I underlined that verse in my Bible when I went home that night. I agreed with every word my youth pastor had said, internalizing the idea that sex had consequences and promising myself that I would wait.

I grew up in the True Love Waits era. I wore the T-shirt, signed the card, and once even wrote a newspaper article for my high school newspaper about waiting until marriage. Like a good Christian girl, I waited until my wedding night to have sex. But there was one problem: I still had an enormous amount of guilt and shame. I was afraid of my own body and its impulses. I had no idea how to embrace sex without feeling dirty. The scare tactics that had been used to get me to avoid sex had a side effect: They taught me that sex was bad, not beautiful.

I have come to believe that one of the problems with sex and the church is that we base our beliefs about romantic relationships and marriage on Bible verses that are about sex, not about romantic relationships and marriage. We need to be teaching our young people how to have healthy relationships, not simply to avoid sex.

I decided to do a little experiment and using Bible Gateway.com. I did a search of the NIV version of the Bible for the word sex. There were 77 verses about sex. The Old Testament had 42 verses and the New Testament had 35 verses.

23 of the 77 verses about sex had the words “do not” or “abstain.”

24 of the 77 verses about sex had the word “immoral” or “immorality.”

There was not one verse that had a positive connotation.

Let me say it again: Every single Bible verse about sex is negative. 

Is it any wonder that early in my marriage I was plagued with shame even though I was finally “allowed” to have sex? No. Because no one had ever told me how to have a marriage. They’d only told me how not to ruin a marriage. But unfortunately in process of trying not to ruin my future marriage, I damaged my understanding of sex, the body, and loving relationships.

Why wasn’t anyone teaching us about respect and listening and compromise? What wasn’t anyone teaching us how to express anger or disappointment or confusion in a healthy way? Why wasn’t anyone teaching us how to have a great sexual relationship? Why were we taught to hate our bodies, to cover up, to be afraid of our impulses, and to shame ourselves for any sexual feeling? I mean, six one-hour sessions of premarital counseling can not make up for years of being told that marriage is about one and only one thing: being sexually pure.

Now obviously my little internet search doesn’t make me a theologian who’s spent time on exegesis and hermeneutics. Song of Solomon is obviously a very sensuous book, and there are plenty of verses in the Bible that speak about love and speak to husbands and wives. And most of the verses about sex were encouraging believers to avoid sexual promiscuity, not sex itself.

But the fact remains that generally, sex is spoken of negatively in the Bible. When I couple that with the teachings I grew up on that always framed discussions about marriage and relationships around sex, I feel like I can confidently say that we have based our theology of romantic relationships and marriage on a handful of verses that are addressing sexual acts and that have a negative connotation.

So where does the church go from here? We can start by treating young people and singles as whole persons instead of walking hormonal messes. We can embrace a more holistic view of relationships and marriage, acknowledging the many facets of making a life with someone rather than simply focusing on sex. We can stop avoiding conversations about sex once the wedding rings go on. The church talks a lot about sex before people are married, but once they are, the topic becomes taboo. But that should be time to talk even more about sex and how to enjoy it!

It’s time for the church to do better. It’s time to rework and reframe our theology of relationships, sex, and marriage.

****

Karissa's BioKarissa Knox Sorrell is a writer and poet from Nashville, Tennessee. She also works with ESOL students and teachers. Karissa writes about faith wrestling, cultural intersections, reading, writing, and family life. Read more of her work at her blog or follow her on Twitter. 

 

 

Featured Image Credit: Jesus1st-Anime2nd at Deviant Art