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.

Mara Eller 7/10/21 Mara Eller 7/10/21

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 . . .

Mara Eller 6/26/21 Mara Eller 6/26/21

Life, Unexpected

I did not expect August to look like this, to have us going on five months trapped in our houses and visiting with friends almost exclusively via screens, the oppressive summer heat having become another warden, barricading us in our homes day after day as the school year looms (for us both as teachers and as parents) full of uncertainty and anxiety…

Mara Eller 4/29/21 Mara Eller 4/29/21

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.

Mara Eller 4/26/21 Mara Eller 4/26/21

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.

Mara Eller 4/19/21 Mara Eller 4/19/21

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. . .