Beholding Brokenness
An experience in Mumbai started me down the road of re-thinking my broken pottery metaphor (see...
Broken Pottery
At age 23, soon to be married, I lay under a mosquito net sobbing. No one in the training school I was attending in Bangalore could even begin to understand or provide comfort. Unfortunately, my devotional time fanned the flames of my despair…
SmartBody SmartMind Part 2
We are at an exciting time in history when so much new information is available to help us come out of trauma. Just remember that your “one step at a time” might not look like mine. I’m praying that God leads you as you seek to change your lifestyle and reduce your pain. This whole website is to encourage you that it is possible!
SmartBody SmartMind
In reality, it took hitting a very low point for me to acknowledge that my traumatic accidents from my distant past (33 and 26 years ago) were still impacting my body and mind (or bodymind as many people refer to our unified system!)
Stuck in Overwhelm
Feeling stuck in a bad place physically or emotionally is one of the worst feelings in the world....
Miracle of Maintenance Part 2 – Redefining Success
In my last post, I talked about the miracle of becoming compassionately curious about the chronic...
The Miracle of Maintenance Part 1: Recognizing Tension
I spend about 2 hours per day working on my body to maintain my mobility. If I skip my body work,...
Ascending and Descending
In my last post, you had the chance to journey through different steps of thought in the Visio...
The Downward Spiral
Today I have a Visio Divina experience for you. I invite you to go slowly through this blog post,...
Room to Breathe
This image is about 8 years old and is tucked nicely in my treasured art journal, but the message...
Left Behind
People often leave me behind. Those Type A’s walk fast! But you don’t have to be a Type A to walk faster than me. Because of my disabilities, I walk much slower than most people. I’m okay with this…
Range of Motion
In rehabilitation settings in the US, therapists precisely measure the range of motion (ROM) of...
The Pain Journal
In my last blog entry, I introduced the idea of learning to change my relationship with my pain....
Awareness and Relationship Issues
“I would do anything to change my pain!” Maybe you have thought this too.
The Bar and Back
Self-pity overwhelmed my mind as I walked a quarter mile to the Brew’s Tavern. Yes, I could walk. Praise God for that. But a quarter mile was nothing to my athletic college friends.
Forging a new identity, apart from the “Miracle Girl” label, which was stuck on me in high school, proved to be more difficult than I anticipated.
Waiting Rooms…
I don’t like waiting. I like to get on with things, make them happen. So, when I find myself repeatably in a place where I have no control over events and must just wait, I struggle…
From Shutdown to Stillness
I appreciate your kind responses to my “War-Torn Women” Visio Divina exercise. So many of us can relate on different levels to the need to lament. In this next post, I use the same images to help illustrate what God has taught me about the profound beauty of learning the art of stillness…
War-Torn Women
As I painted the following image, I understood a definite progression of form and thought. So...
Outcome Independent
Well, I guess I’m outcome independent now.
Not sure how I feel about that.
In his book, The Way Out, Alan Gordon promotes the ideal of becoming outcome independent (not emotionally attached to any specific outcome) in our attitude toward our pain.
The Body Jacket
Former addicts understand how to celebrate small victories. People in physical rehabilitation understand how a movement so small and natural to some can represent weeks of hard and painful work when recovering from major injuries. Today’s story is about a very small thing that is very big.
4. Learning to Feel – Anticipation
Coming to the right side of my drawing, and the final leg of my own yellow brick road, I drew one last emotion.
3. Learning to Feel – Pain
Does pain count as an emotion? I feel overwhelmed. I feel love. I feel pain. Yet, while overwhelm bullies its way into my mind, and love rests in my heart, pain very definitely lives in my body.
2. Learning to Feel – Love
Observing my hand doodling delicate designs and shading in the waves of overwhelm, the positive, hopeful part of my brain rose in defense: “Wait.
1. Learning to Feel – Overwhelm
Many growing teachers and leaders have developed their own leadership timeline. By thoughtfully mapping out our educational and leadership experiences, we can all obtain a deeper understanding of just how much God has woven into us.
What this Blog is About
This blog is about moving forward one step at a time, one small decision at a time. Sometimes we hear about our great destiny in God and feel frustrated. Many of us are just trying to get through today..