brave

Invitation to be Brave

Without realizing it, I had slowly become a coward.  This week, God invited me to step out of that hiding place and really live again.

Ever since I burned out at the end of 2007, I somewhat unconsciously swung from go-with-a-gusto approach to life to self-protection mode. (Visit here for my blog dedicated to my burnout experience.)  I think it’s natural and understandable that I reacted to feeling utterly depleted and spent from life by being careful with how I used my time and energy.  But I was gently shown this week that the pendulum had swung to the other extreme.  I had, in a way, over-corrected.
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Breastmilk bags

The Story of My Milk: How I Stumbled into Feeding a Hundred Babies

Being the idealist that I am, before I had Alena, I imagined our feeding times to be like this:  myself as a gentle, nurturing mother looking affectionately at the sweet babe suckling at my breast as we nestled together in the rocking chair.  A week after we brought her home, that picture could not be farther from reality.  Well, everything except for the rocking chair.  It was 6am in the morning, she was thrashing about and crying, I was hysterical and crying, and milk was everywhere but in her tummy.
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Permission to be yourself

You Hereby Have Permission to Be Yourself

In my conversations with people, one of the recurring unspoken sentiments I hear is a request for permission to be themselves.  No one actually says it in quite those words, of course, but under the surface, the question often is, “Am I ok (especially if I’m not like others)?”
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