Beloved

Posted on August 17, 2018 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

You are beloved.

Do you know that?

Truly know it, deep down in the core of you?

Before you were born,

before your parents were born,

before any of your ancestors were born,

before the creation of the world,

you were beloved.

Before you were loved by your parents,

before any of your achievements were praised by teachers,

bosses,

family,

before your friends knew you and loved you,

you were beloved.

You were carefully crafted.

Your physical body,

your personality,

your talents and passions,

all were formed with the greatest and tenderest of care.

The world will try to tell you otherwise.

The world will lie and manipulate you, trying to make you believe that you are

how you look,

what you do,

the way you behave.

Don’t believe it.

You are beloved.

Before you did or were or acted,

you were beloved.

Find and remain with those who tell you the truth.

Hold on to those who remind you that

you are beloved.

And be grateful.

Thank God for choosing you.

Thank God for loving you.

Thank Him by believing that,

by trusting that,

by holding tightly with white knuckles to the idea that

you are beloved.

Art credit: Fairy Tales by Jessie Willcox Smith

Discovering Who I Am

Posted on July 28, 2017 by Elizabeth

This is week two of sharing an archived post with you as I am deep into planning for our upcoming school year. Enjoy the memories!

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

I recently stopped nursing our last little one, and it was harder on my emotions than I expected.

I expected that I would be grateful to have a little extra freedom. I expected that I would be glad to hand over some of the nighttime routine to my husband. I expected that I would be happy to have my body belong only to me again.

I did feel all of those, but only a little.

Overwhelmingly, rather, was a sense of loss. A loss of part of myself, of who I am.

It took me by surprise until I realized that for over nine years I have been either pregnant or nursing. No breaks at all.

Of course that would become a major part of my identity! Nine years is a long time. Almost a decade of being identified as a pregnant or nursing mommy is certainly enough to cement that into who I am as a person.

All of those big emotions (and I am normally not an overly emotional sort of person) made me pause and think hard about who I think I am compared to who I want to be.

As a mom of four children, eight years and younger, it is so easy for that one piece of me to become my entire identity. I’m a mom. It’s what I do twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Even when I am away from my babies, my thoughts are still full of them.

Yet I recognize that I must be careful. Of course being a mom is and always will be a large part of who I am, but I need to guard carefully against it becoming all that I am.

Someday, after all, these babies will not be babies anymore, and being a mom will not fill up quite so much of my time. Or my house.

I must be careful to keep my heart close to God, to make sure that my primary identity is as His child. He is, ultimately, the most important piece of me, the One who is with me always.

I must take care to remain close to my husband. He will, Lord willing, be my dearest companion still when the children have homes of their own.

I must be mindful of my own self. I need to continue reading, continue learning, continue making my art, continue cultivating deep friendships, or getting new ones, from great sites online such as http://chatempanada.com/chat-de-amistad-sala-de-chat-gratis-de-amistad/.

I believe wholeheartedly that if I lose myself in my children, I and they will be the poorer for it.

Yet that piece of who I am is so consuming that I cannot just drift along and expect to hold on to the rest of my self.

I must be deliberate about caring for the other pieces of me. The more I cultivate all of the fragments of me, the richer and deeper the whole of them will become.

I don’t often write about parenting issues, but I supposed that this particular struggle was one that was common to many. I pray that my written thoughts will spark your own heart-searching.

Peace.

The Girl Whom Jesus Loved

Posted on February 10, 2017 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Who are you?

How do you see yourself?

Are you parent, child, sibling, aunt? Are you friend, lover, loner, partier? What about artist, engineer, plumber, teacher?

There once was a man. A pastor and author, one of the main leaders of the Church as it existed then, an eyewitness to Jesus’ miracles. He had a lot going for him.

How did he see himself? What was his self-given identity?

The disciple whom Jesus loved.

That’s it.

No leaning on his accolades, no referencing his great accomplishments (and he had quite the list of them!), no resting on whom he knew, only falling upon what Jesus thought of him.

The other day, one of my daughters came into my bedroom while I was getting dressed for the day. She looked at me for a bit, then asked me why my stomach hung down all funny and whether I wished it wouldn’t.

I don’t always handle these sorts of things this well, and it took every ounce of self control not to cover up, hide, start mumbling excuses about how I know I need to eat fewer pieces of dark chocolate but YOU KIDS drive me to it…

Instead, I knelt down, looked her in the eye and told her that no, I didn’t wish my body was different. I told her that I knew my body was beautiful because God made it. I told her that my body had grown four human beings inside of it and that made it a little stretchy but that I wouldn’t change it if I could because if my stomach wasn’t stretchy, I wouldn’t have four beautiful girls in my life now.

I told her that I was beautiful because God loves me.

She’s only six, so she may not understand just yet, but I want desperately for her and her sisters to only see themselves as one whom Jesus loves. Whether she is looking at her body or her intelligence or her talents, I want her to only see one whom Jesus loves.

I want desperately to be like John.

Every time John refers to himself in his gospel, he calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. Nothing else. He does not identify himself by his name or what he did. Only by how Jesus saw him.

When I get to the end of my life, when I look back on all I have seen, all I have done, and all I am, all I want to see is Jesus.

All I want to be is the girl whom Jesus loved.

Art credit: photo of statue of St. John the Evangelist by John Stephen Dwyer; detail from fresco of Jesus Christ and St. John the Apostle from Ubisi, Georgia

Who Am I?

Posted on January 13, 2017 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

I recently stopped nursing our last little one, and it was harder on my emotions than I expected.

I expected that I would be grateful to have a little extra freedom. I expected that I would be glad to hand over some of the nighttime routine to my husband. I expected that I would be happy to have my body belong only to me again.

I did feel all of those, but only a little.

Overwhelmingly, rather, was a sense of loss. A loss of part of myself, of who I am.

It took me by surprise until I realized that for over nine years I have been either pregnant or nursing. No breaks at all.

Of course that would become a major part of my identity! Nine years is a long time. Almost a decade of being identified as a pregnant or nursing mommy is certainly enough to cement that into who I am as a person.

All of those big emotions (and I am normally not an overly emotional sort of person) made me pause and think hard about who I think I am compared to who I want to be.

As a mom of four children, eight years and younger, it is so easy for that one piece of me to become my entire identity. I’m a mom. It’s what I do twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Even when I am away from my babies, my thoughts are still full of them.

Yet I recognize that I must be careful. Of course being a mom is and always will be a large part of who I am, but I need to guard carefully against it becoming all that I am.

Someday, after all, these babies will not be babies anymore, and being a mom will not fill up quite so much of my time. Or my house.

I must be careful to keep my heart close to God, to make sure that my primary identity is as His child. He is, ultimately, the most important piece of me, the One who is with me always.

I must take care to remain close to my husband. He will, Lord willing, be my dearest companion still when the children have homes of their own.

I must be mindful of my own self. I need to continue reading, continue learning, continue making my art, continue cultivating deep friendships.

I believe wholeheartedly that if I lose myself in my children, I and they will be the poorer for it.

Yet that piece of who I am is so consuming that I cannot just drift along and expect to hold on to the rest of my self.

I must be deliberate about caring for the other pieces of me. The more I cultivate all of the fragments of me, the richer and deeper the whole of them will become.

Those of you with children, what do you do, or for those whose children are older, what have you done to keep yourself from getting lost in your identity as a parent? I am still a mother of little ones, and I need your ideas.

I don’t often write about parenting issues, but I supposed that this particular struggle was one that was common to many. I pray that my written thoughts will spark your own heart-searching.

Peace.