Faith

(in)courage one another | #mamas(in)grace

October 2, 2012 By Kayla Aimee

A few months ago the ladies at (in)courage invited me to be a part of a new portion of the site that they are launching today. I waited until the very, very last minute to accept because, while incredibly honored, my time is spread far too thin and I wanted to prayerfully consider it. But at the eleventh hour I pressed send on my yes.

The new communities page at (in)courage says this: “We love the idea of conversations continuing way beyond the comments on a blog post and spilling over into deep, meaningful connections. We believe friendship can transcend time zones, cultures and blog comment boxes. And we want to connect you with friends who get where you’re at and can encourage you along the way.”

My friend Wendy and I will be hosting a small community for mamas to chat about motherhood, sharing encouragement and grace and other random stuff such as the fun things we find on Pinterest (don’t act like you’re not addicted to Pinterest!) You can find us here, a little BlogFrog community called mamas(in)grace and you are welcome to join us.

For every thing there is a season and the ministry of motherhood is currently the captivation of my heart and that is the central reason that I wanted to do this. I have no idea what I am doing. I’m just livin’ on a prayer when it comes to this mama thing. Like Bon Jovi. Except sort of nothing like Bon Jovi. I seriously just can’t help myself when it comes to song lyric references.

When Wendy and I were talking through motherhood, I think we both shared the same feelings that sometimes? Sometimes when you’re walking around with dirty hair because you haven’t showered in three days (okay, five) and your dry shampoo really isn’t cutting it and your toddler just poured an entire bottle of bubbles on the dog and then said dog ran from said toddler in terror and attempted to de-bubble their fur by rolling around on your couch?* Those moments can make it hard to remember things like about how motherhood is a high calling to make an eternal difference.

That’s really what mamas(in)grace is about. A breather, some mommy time, a reminder, shared grace. A meeting place to do life together, where we’re at. Our first session will run from October 2 (that is today, hooray!) through December 2, 2012. There’s no to-do list, nothing to check off, no books to read. It’s just a place to talk via our keyboards, a conversation on a common bond. If you’d like to join us, we’re chatting here.

If you are not a mama or you just prefer a community that doesn’t center on motherhood, there are so many places for you! From marriage-focused groups, to groups for all the single ladies (put your hands up!**) to empty nesters and more. Click here to see a full list of community groups.

* True story, morning glory. No Lucy Dogs were harmed in the bubble dousing incident of 2012.

** I really can’t even help myself. I’m like “Self, don’t throw random song lyrics by Beyonce into serious posts about things like grace” but then my fingers refuse to click backspace because who doesn’t love the singles ladies song?

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The 7 Project| Closet Confessions

September 6, 2012 By Kayla Aimee

The thing is, it was winter. I blame this entirely on the cold weather. I mean, lying there snuggled under two four eleven blankets with a hot chocolate in one hand and a book in the other? It’s easy to forget about things like sundresses and spaghetti straps.

That’s the story of how I opened my dresser drawer one hot summer day and discovered that I no longer owned any shorts. Because I read 7 in the winter time. And as I closed the book on Month Two, I simultaneously opened the door to the closet and began throwing everything I owned into a box hastily labeled “DONATE.”

Eventually logic returned to me but not before I decided that I no longer needed shorts. Or skirts. Or bathing suit cover-ups. And also bathing suits. Apparently, I confused “Donate Excess Clothing” with “A Pox On Summertime!” I just wiped summertime out of the seasons like those astronomers who pretend Pluto isn’t one of the planets.*

(It’s a problem for me but the people who would have been blinded by my pasty white legs are giving thanks to Jen Hatmaker.)

One box grew to two and then three and then fifteen. Fifteen boxes of clothes and accessories and if I had stacked them around me they would have been a physical representation of the spiritual wall I had been building as I attached myself to my possessions.

(Or an incredibly awesome box fort.)

After I read 7 I saw abundance everywhere. There was the fruitful, the “I came so that you may have life and have it in abundance” and there was the amassed, the abundance of things that I collected and held on to so tightly that it kept the former at bay.

7 changed my entire life.

But the breakthrough came in my closet. That’s not even a spiritual metaphor.

Except now that I think about it, one time, in college my closet was literally too full of clothes for me to fit in so I asked my roommate if I could borrow her closet. Not her clothes, her actual closet. So that I could pray in it. Because my own prayer closet was too full of clothes.

(Actually, that probably is some sort of metaphor.)

(Also, yes I WAS praying about a boy and a few years later he totally married me. Let this be a lesson to you. I don’t know what that lesson is except maybe make friends with someone who is less messy than you so you can room with them in college and pray in their closet about your future husband.)

I remembered reading this post by Angie Smith, one where she was teaching her girls to give beyond their castoffs. To give sacrificially, to part with the hard things. It’s easy to rehome those pants that emphasize all the things you don’t like about your post-childbirth bum. You, pants that did nothing to make me look like Pippa Middleton, you will not be missed.

It’s the strappy pink heels that I don’t want to part with. Barely worn, sitting pretty on my shelf they sneak into my conscience and say “Give.” And I’m all “No, I want wear you because who doesn’t wear heels to chase their toddler? And also you can’t even talk because you are shoes so stop saying convicting sorts of things to me.”

But more of 7 pours out of my heart and I recall the part about how people need shoes, good shoes, not ones that are worn down. I want to give and give well.

I gingerly place the pink strappy heels on top of a discarded bridesmaid dress and as the daylight flashes across the sequins and the sparkles dance over the bare closet wall I think of the girl who will find her prom attire in a box of donated clothing. I am ashamed. I am humbled. I am committed. This is only the smallest of starts

I am participating in the Bloom Book Club for the book 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess. These are my somewhat extended thoughts on Chapter Two, not surprisingly I have much more to say. I don’t really know when to stop talking. It’s sort of a problem. Image via manilla.com, that’s not actually my bum or my shoes.

* My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Nine? What are you even thinking, NASA?

16 Comments Filed Under: Faith, The 7 Project | My Rambling Thoughts About The Book

DaySpring Share Your Story | On Gardening and 7

July 21, 2012 By Kayla Aimee

This is tactile now. A literal I-can-see-the-fruit-of-my-labor success as I pluck a strawberry from our garden. This little berry from a combination of soil and water and sun and love. We planted a garden and here it is and feels like a tiny little miracle.

Mostly because of the fact that we planted a garden and we kept it alive. Well, as long as you don’t count the rosemary. I’m not really sure where we went wrong with the rosemary.

Scarlette marches outside behind me in the morning, watering can in hand and shrieks delightedly as she very carefully waters the squash. I pick some lettuce for tonight’s salad and recite nursery rhymes to her.

“Look how our garden grows.”

I wanted to do this. I wanted to put my hands in the soil and bring them out holding a harvest.

I cut up the squash and think about how this one came from the vine.

I think about The Vine and I feel connected, to the Creator of the earth I’ve sown, to the Word of life that makes all things new.

This isn’t my fault. I read this book and it changed my life and made me grow a garden and donate all my clothes and start thinking outside myself about how much abundance I have in life and in grace and why am I not sharing it more? Thanks for ~~nothing~~ everything, Jen Hatmaker.

I’m putting visual reminders everywhere. There is dry erase marker scrawled across my bathroom mirror. There are sticky notes on the fridge holding words with so much more weight than grocery lists. There are words that go before me as I leave the house and again as I enter.

I don’t want to forget this.

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

And then pass it along.

The products in these photos are c/o DaySpring, who provided them in order that I might tell more of my story. The outdoor mat is my favorite, it’s a welcome message to those who cross the threshold into my home so that I can practice the gift of hospitality but it’s a welcome message for me as well, a refreshing reminder as my feet cross it several times a day in the most mundane of errand running.

You can click HERE to read stories from some other lovely women and enter to win a flag + mat set of your own.

In addition, DaySpring is offering 25% off of all products in the entire store, such as a the garden flag and welcome mat pictured above, with code JOY2012.

*disclosure: I am a DaySpring affiliate and my referral links are used but you can just go right to DaySpring’s site and still use the code if you prefer

4 Comments Filed Under: Faith, Uncategorized

The Weight Of Glory, If You Held It In Your Hands

June 12, 2012 By Kayla Aimee

She shifts her weight as she scans the teething biscuits, glancing up at Scarlette reaching for them from the shopping cart. “Oh, how old is she?” she asks

“Nineteen months” I reply, inwardly shaking my head at how fast time is passing

“She’s so tiny!” she exclaims, then wonders if she was premature. She wants to know how early she was, a question that always breeds more questions and I now am sharing my story again.

The question I am most frequently asked here about our experience with Scarlette is related to my faith. And for the longest time I didn’t answer because I felt as though it was so complex. Both raging at God and fully relying on Him in the same heartbeat seemed too hard to give words to.

It’s been impressed upon my heart lately to be a good steward of our story, this story. And though it isn’t the one I would have written, I trust the Author and I am humbled to narrate it.

So today I gave it words and I am honored to have them over at (in)courage. I hope that you would take a moment to read it and hear my heart. This? This is how we got through it.

(in)courage post: It Was On A Tuesday

{(in)courage is a community for women of faith. Each morning I sit coffee in hand and read the daily post as part of my devotional. I’m honored to house a portion of our story on this home for the hearts of women.}

15 Comments Filed Under: Faith, Uncategorized

On Motherhood: Happiness

March 2, 2012 By Kayla Aimee

I was asked to write a piece for Life Well Lived about parenting, more specifically on the topic of happiness. “How do you teach the children in your life happiness?” they asked me.

I’m new at this parenting thing. I thought I still had plenty of time to read all the books, to get organized, to prepare for motherhood and then Scarlette arrived three and a half months early causing me to dive in feet first. I still haven’t found my footing.

I walked away from my open inbox and asked my husband the question still up on the screen. “How are we going to teach her happiness?”

Jeff’s eyes filled with tears.

(He was chopping onions.)

I know. It sounded like a beautiful moment in our parenting, me all serenely posing thoughtful parenting questions while my sentimental husband pondered them. That would have made an excellent blog post, especially if I had any idea how to take pictures with an artful lens flare.

What actually happened was that I burst into the kitchen on my teary-eyed husband (who’d like me to reiterate that he was crying BECAUSE OF THE ONIONS) in a panic. Because that little line of text on my screen? The one someone wanted me to write a response to like I knew what I was talking about? It was just one more thing about raising a child that I hadn’t even thought of yet.

It’s overwhelming sometimes, this huge responsibility of raising a whole person. It would be easy to write this as if I knew. As if I had it all together. As if I sat down to write this and the keyboard gave life to all my natural parenting wisdom.

But it wouldn’t be true.

Often people comment on the time Scarlette spent in the hospital. “I don’t know how you did it” people say. That time was automatic, more doing than thinking. This? This time of shaping her, not wanting to suppress her natural personality, of wanting to cultivate good in her and correcting her while still making sure she feels loved? This time is easily fraught with insecurities. Am I a good mother?

There are so many things I want to teach her. Grace and honor and confidence and love. Kindness and forgiveness and compassion. The sweetness of an engaging and enduring friendship, the beauty of investing in and serving others, the importance of self worth. And colors and numbers and shapes and animals and “I have no idea what a square root is, go ask your father.”

I sat on the kitchen counter while Jeff sauted the onions and pondered all of it aloud.

“I think WE have to be happy.”

I can teach her so many things. I can tell her stories and paint her pictures with my words. I’m good with words.

But it’s me she’s going to look at. It’s me she’s going to watch and mimic and it’s me she’s going to one day thank as she stands on a stage somewhere because I’m her mother and that is who you want to make proud.

Overwhelming.

So I did something I haven’t done in some time. I sat down with my bible and looked up every single verse about happiness. It’s where I should have started, the paper thin pages that hold more wisdom than I.

And I settled my heart on a time-worn passage of simple text that says to me “I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. ” – ecc 7.14

She won’t see me be perfect. She’ll even see me be sad. But I hope she sees that I’m truly happy even in the midst of experiencing other emotions, and that the simple source of my joy is in the Lord.

They told me I only needed to write a few sentences…