QUESTIONS OF CALLING
unearthing beauty, mining meaning, and seeking truth
This is a place for anyone who wants more, who is not content to be comfortable, who seeks a life of truth and meaning, not just happiness.
Here, we ask hard questions, tell true stories, and turn life inside out to unearth the ragged beauty within.
I’m honored to have you to join me.
Emotional Burnout: Protecting Your Mental Health as an Introvert and Mother
I’m just gonna say it: Recently, I’ve wondered if having a third child was a mistake.
It has nothing to do with the actual child: our youngest is as sweet and easy as you could hope for, full of toothless grins, adorable squeals, and delighted giggles.
Rather, my doubt has to do with feeling completely overwhelmed and burnt out by the constant stream of needs and emotions that demand my attention. Constant. Even when I’m at work or they’ve all gone to bed, their hypothetical future needs and past emotions are at the forefront of my psyche, buzzing like static, fraying my attention and swamping my heart. . .
When You Feel Like a Failure: Befriending Your Sense of Inadequacy
Sometimes I don’t feel called to motherhood.
That’s not something we’re really allowed to say, but it’s true—both for me and for many moms with whom I’ve spoken.
A couple of weeks ago, my husband had a zoom meeting right through dinnertime, so it was just me with my three girls, ages 5, 3, and 3 months…
Riding Out the Storm: Finding Strength in Life’s Hardest Moments
On the surface, my life is pretty good, great even. I’m incredibly privileged, with three beautiful children, a loving husband, a flexible, meaningful job, great friends.
But sometimes I feel like I’m drowning.
Not the thrashing, panicked, violent kind of drowning. Rather, like I am fighting a rip tide day after day, treading water, working so very hard just to stay afloat, weary to the bone—drowning almost imperceptibly. Silently. Drifting further and further from shore as I struggle to summon another surge of energy and intention . . .
A Childlike Faith
We were taking an evening walk around the neighborhood, dodging the thunderstorm that menaced on the radar forecast. My infant was strapped to my chest, and I pushed my worn out three-year-old in the stroller. My five-year-old walked on her own two feet, running and skipping, leaping and twirling, her legs long like a gazelle, her voice a constant stream of questions and commentary.
Suddenly the conversation took a serious turn. "Mom, I wish God didn't exist."
Postpartum: The Second Birth No One Told Me About
When I was pregnant with my first baby, I read obsessively about pregnancy, labor, and delivery. I read about cribs and car seats, strollers and swaddles. Thanks to some savvy friends, I even read some about breastfeeding, though I didn’t learn many basic facts about babies and their care until after our little girl had arrived and started making it very clear that we were not meeting all of her needs, at which time I read more.
What I never read anything about was what would happen to me after she was born. Not just physically—which offered plenty of its own surprises and challenges—but also mentally and emotionally. . .
What the Selfie Doesn’t Show: The Hidden Reality of Postpartum Recovery
Ten days after the birth of my third child, I caught my reflection in the mirror as I walked by with my little nugget on my shoulder and admired my relatively flat belly. “Look at me!” I thought, “I’m bouncing back so fast!” I snapped this photo to post on Instagram later with a witty caption to show everyone how un-pregnant I was looking.
But thankfully, before I had time to post it, I realized that this photo was a lie.
8 Damaging Myths for Moms and Liberating Truths to Dispel Them (Part II)
(Myths 5-8)
Gretchen Rubin has shared Niels Bohr’s famous quote, “The opposite of a great truth is also true.” I think we can apply this in a slightly different way to say that the opposite of a great myth is also a myth. You cannot spend every waking moment caring for your children and also take care of yourself. You cannot simultaneously be the mom who gives up her career to stay home with her kids full-time and be the mom who follows her dreams while making a six-figure (or even five-figure) income.
If we allow ourselves to be caught between the opposing expectations of the Good Mom, we’ll always feel like we’re failing, no matter how great we’re actually doing. So it’s essential that we call these ideas what they are and shrug off their impossible burden, for only then can we be free to step into our own version of motherhood, to be the unique, imperfect, but deeply good mother that we were designed to be.
8 Damaging Myths for (New) Moms and Liberating Truths to Dispel Them (Part I)
(Myths 1-4)
We all pick up ideas about what it means to be a good mother either implicitly through culture and casual comments or explicitly through taught expectations, both well-meaning and less benevolent. And when our experience doesn’t match these expectations—either our own or those of others—we assume that the problem lies with us. We are not doing it right. We are defective in some way. We are not cut out for the task—the task that, by the way, all real women are naturally born to do effortlessly. Ergo, we must not be a good/real/godly woman.
Even if we don’t articulate these conclusions in words, they can swirl around in our hearts and poison our souls. . .
From Fracture to Forgiveness: Navigating a Painful Mother-Daughter Relationship in the Haze of Postpartum
One of the many unexpected side effects of becoming a mom is the way it forces you to look at your relationship with your own mother anew. For some, this elicits feelings of profound gratitude, love, and admiration. For others, the feelings are much less positive.
This story is one of the latter. This author (who asked to remain anonymous) remembers her journey to forgiveness with a mother who could not be there to support her and how she learned from becoming a mother herself to understand and forgive her mother.
Laurie Davis: Embracing the Unexpected
Life never ends up looking quite the way we imagine, and this is especially true for the postpartum stage. No matter how much we try to prepare, we will be bombarded with challenges—and joys—that we did not expect.
This was especially true for Laurie, but as she shares in this story about an at-birth Down syndrome diagnosis, there is one thing about motherhood that we can count on absolutely: our purpose.
Maggie Shackelford: No Going Back
A question for myself and other postpartum people: Why are we so determined to convince the world that we never had a baby? Why do we need to bounce back? Why do we need to erase any sign or hint on our bodies that we just grew and birthed life into the world?
Our culture is obsessed with how quickly birthing people return from this cataclysmic experience and back to “real” life. You get patted on the back for leaving your house with the infant days after giving birth, for fitting into your pre pregnancy clothes as soon as possible, for being “productive” again (because keeping an infant alive isn’t productive). . .
What About Mary? Ruminations on the Postpartum Journey of the Mother of God
My perspective on Christmas has changed dramatically after having a baby (or three). I still love it: the twinkle lights, the carols, the sense of hunkering down during the long, dark nights, the joy of Christmas morning gift giving. And of course, the reason for the season—the celebration of the miraculous incarnation of God in the form of a tiny, helpless human.
But having incubated, birthed, and cared for three tiny, helpless humans myself, I am acutely aware of Mary's experience in all this. The Christmas season, for me, has become intimately tied to the experience of late pregnancy (Advent), labor and delivery (Christmas Day), and postpartum motherhood (the other eleven days of the Christmas season leading up to Epiphany). And I can’t help but wonder: how did Mary fare those first weeks and months after she gave birth?
Rachel Kang: Making Space for the Miracle
Advent is a time of waiting. A time of wondering. A pregnant pause before the wild, wonderful whirl of Christmas. Or at least, that is how it was intended.
In the reflection below, Rachel Kang shares her story of waiting, of making space for the miracle to come.
When Callings Conflict
What if you’re called in multiple directions at once? What if the realities of your life—good, precious gifts—seem to be designed to prevent you from pursuing the other callings you’ve worked so hard to discern and develop?
These are the questions I’ve been struggling with recently as I feel another life growing within me and see her due date nearing on the calendar.