My friend, Emily Wierenga, has been one of the kindest online friends I have ever had. The proof is in the pudding, how she has treated me time and again. I do believe so often that we learn to be kind to others by learning to be kind to ourselves. After all, we’ve been told to love others as ourselves.

Today Emily shares with us here a little about her process of learning how to love herself – and thereby how to nourish herself. Maybe this is why I have felt so fed by her.

Notice that comments are open today, because Emily is offering a copy of Mom in the Mirror! Now enjoy — Emily:

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I never wanted to be known as the girl with the eating disorder.

And now I’ve got a book with chapters and paragraphs and sentences stating that I am that very girl, the one who starved herself from the ages of nine until 13, and nine? People ask. Why so young?

But I tell them, I didn’t feel nine. I felt very, very old.

And sometimes it’s hard to remember (as I put down words like Hospital and Calories and Mirror), that I am more than that now. That I have always been more. That we are all more than our reflection.

But you couldn’t have told that to the girl with the mushroom cut and the big plastic glasses who stared into the long mirror in the dim-lit hallway while Dad typed away in his office, the door that was always closed because he was a pastor, and why do churches keep their entrances locked?

And Mum in the kitchen cooking supper in her apron.

I really don’t think it had much at all to do with eating, and does it ever? Do we sneak bags of chips or cookies or bowls of ice cream because we love food? Or because we hate ourselves?

And I think it’s because as women, as mothers, we put ourselves last so often, that we don’t believe we deserve goodness. We feel we don’t deserve beauty or gifts or to sit down and enjoy a good long meal with a glass of wine because there are children to be bathed and put to bed, and clothes to be folded and toys to be put away and, and…

And this is what I saw stretched across my mother’s face, as she stood weary by the stove in her apron. And she tried to love us the only way she knew how: by homeschooling us and dishing up heaping plates of food and sewing us clothes, but all I wanted was for her to hold me and tell me I was beautiful.

But she’d never had anyone do that for her, not her mother nor her father nor my father.

We all need someone to be love, incarnate, so we can put our faith in it.

My husband leans in on the pillows and I ask him to tell me, just one more time. “But why?” he says, this farm-boy that walked me through my relapse when I was 23.

“Don’t you know?” I shake my head.

“Tell me again,” I say.

“I love you.” He pulls me close. “I’ve never stopped loving you,” he says. “And I never will.”

I let him kiss me then.

And I’m learning to stand up for myself this way, to treat my body with kindness. And I know it has nothing to do with me. I know it has everything to do with me being a product of God’s genius. His hands molding dust into skin into breath.

He’s the one who makes me beautiful. So I sit boldly at the kitchen table in the afternoon light and eat a bowl of ice cream, my sons beside me, eating theirs, because we need to do this together, this life. This learning to eat, this learning to be gentle with ourselves and others.

Because lies can’t grow in the light.

And light is love.

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I’m giving away a hard-cover copy of my new book today, Mom in the Mirror: Body Image, Beauty and Life After Pregnancy, co-authored by Dr. Dena Cabrera, and foreword by supermodel Emme. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Giving birth produces life in more than one sense. It’s the baby powder, milky-breathed spirit found in the softest limbs you’ve ever felt, and it’s the respect a man feels for his wife as he watches her give up her body for another.

And it’s the deep-rooted soul satisfying feeling of knowing you were born for more than the mirror. That you were born to see the face of God in your child, and to know, you yourself are a miracle.

I want you to have this book! Tell me ONE thing that you love about yourself, and you’ll be entered into the draw!

Otherwise, you can order it through the book’s website, here: www.mominthemirrorbook.com.

Emily Wierenga is a mom to two beautiful boys, wife to a handsome math teacher, and author of Chasing Silhouettes: How to Help a Loved One Battling an Eating Disorder (www.chasingsilhouettes.com) and Mom in the Mirror: Body Image, Beauty and Life After Pregnancy (www.mominthemirrorbook.com). To learn more, please visit www.emilywierenga.com.

Something strange has happened the past few months. Come on over to (in)courage and let me tell you about it!

The property here with this rock house has many old buildings. The outhouse is at the very back with a tree through the seat. It’s caddywompus, leaning in the same direction as the chicken house. Once upon a time this place had chickens and was a tomato cannery. Now the antique tin waves in the wind. The tool shed is hanging with iron pulleys rusted to hooks. Strangely shaped jars are full of spiders and nails. I’ve loved it that way for so long.

When Grandma lived here, the small coy pond was lined in black-eyed susans and coneflowers. The azaleas were huge, pruned and watered like a woman had made it her day job. And she had.

Now the entire place is tangled in honeysuckle. I don’t love honeysuckle any more. I pull it away like a rope around the neck of my roses. The lilacs still overcome, peeking purple heads out and filling our yard with rich perfume. The wisteria droops way up high from a towering tree. Theses plants, especially the lily bulbs, may be at least 60 years old.

Our boys are the 6^th generation to have lived in this house. Grandma planted the yellow roses during World War II while Grandpa was in Italy, the Grandpa with a purple heart who held my firstborn and wept.

But I didn’t know that when I started praying Kingdom Come how it would trump my other requests, even in my own heart. Part of asking the Kingdom here as it is in Heaven is asking for debts to be pardoned: accounts balanced, hurts forgiven, everything aimed at Jubilee.

It wasn’t our plan, but we own two houses – one where friends rent, and this rock house property. I’ve asked Him to do what He does in His strange way to set us free, and then Seth got an email from a very nice family asking if they could buy the Rock House.

They came from far away to view it, twice. And as they were making a decision, our friends in our other house decided to buy that house, too.

I walked the property, crawled through the chicken house, squished my mud boots in the horse field. I buried my face in the lilacs and stood still. The bees and the train whistle.

There’s an ache, but I am not sad, not one little lick.

I packed photographs. What meant to be a ten minute project turned into an hour. One by one, I noted the smoother skin on faces I love. Our lives are beautiful. On to the next thing, and it will be beautiful, too – such a lily, then gone.

I hope to be writing my book in the Fall, settled into a new house. We immediately found one that we love. The thing about it though is that we have to move into it before the end of May! That explains why I have disappeared from the webbernets. My brain is a scramble of furniture and what’s for supper and bow and yard sale and Man boy boy boy boy.

My extroverted heart has sucked up inside itself and has made roughly 67 lists of things to do. I also got the kind of sick that happens when you haven’t rested, the kind where you only use your voice to horse whisper scream that the baby is asleep.

I’ll have a few guest posts, and I’ll write a few, too, but these parts will be mostly quiet. I can’t wait to show you my new house and to settle into a good spot to write. I’ll have an office. I haven’t had a room of my own since I was in high school. It’s a complex, happy thing, but it’s pretty simple, too – all temporary. Let’s hold it, love it, and let it run right through our blessed fingers.

Kingdom Come.

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Let’s keep up with each other on Facebook. I love hearing from you so much. Come tell me what it is that’s running through your fingers right now.

Put your email address over there in the sidebar and click SUBSCRIBE to know when I post.

Working through what I processed in Part 1 of Let the Game Changer Change the Game has been such a leap toward freedom for me. I’m still working it out, so Part 2 of this conversation is over at (In)Courage today about Hope for the Rejected.

“My Great Grandmother was a young maid for a wealthy farm owner, and she got pregnant, just a young thing, before she was married.”

That was the teaser, so head on over yonder and read the rest.

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Old friends, I feel like we’re on a roller coaster, but a good one. Are you doing okay? Let me know in all the secret ways we do. I like the facebook conversations and messages a bunch. New friends, please come on to Facebook and join us!

I walk up to the edge of a canyon and hear “jump,” and I see with my eyes that I can’t make it across. “Jump!” He says, but I’m held to the ground by fear of a million things. One by one I cut free, naming and turning. Letting go – lighter and lighter. Before I have it in me to be afraid, my feet lift. When I undo from the weight, I’ve gone over the edge, and I fly.

The night I lost my cousin, I went to an All Sons and Daughters concert and sat throbbing during the song “All the Poor and Powerless.” My Jeremiah was gone, and the song said, “Go on and tell it to the masses / That He is God / We will sing out / Hallelujah.” Jude had fallen asleep in my lap, and I soaked his shirt, we in that pew, telling Jesus we would all tell of His great love for us. So much of me had said NO for so long.

It’s been about 10 weeks since, I think, and I’ve stood at the edge uncurling my fingers. Some days I tighten my grip, but other days I am released. When we sang that song, I broke. Then in my processing how to let go of my need to be accepted by others, my friend asked me what I was so afraid of. I know that ministry is hard. It will hurt, and what if no one ministers back to me?

I knew immediately that the LORD Himself would minister to me. He gives endurance, peace, hope, compassion, comfort, and Love. When from God, these things do not go away – even with fire, even in all the pouring out.

Last night was my first time to speak to a large crowd. I sat on a stool and had a podium and a mic. I said it outright that I was totally nervous. I had waves of fear and tall waves of peace. But then when I began to speak, I looked in the eyes of all those beautiful college babies, and I loved them so much. I told them everything hard and wonderful that I knew in the moment, how I didn’t know what I was doing.

I didn’t do a spectacular job, and I know some things to change for next time, but I promise the Holy Spirit used my lack. Some sat with me on the edge of our seats like cliffs at a canyon. Do we plunge? Do we live in darkness or in the light? Do we ride the wings or do we plummet? Either way, we’re going over.

When the band came back up, I sat to worship. In that moment I desperately wanted to hear someone, or everyone, say that I had done well, but then I asked Jesus to minister to me instead.

The one leading the band with the young Sean Hayes voice was up there for his very first time, too. And what song did he lead last, after I asked the Lord to come to me? He played “All the Poor and Powerless,” the song that broke me, the one that sent me out. The crowd was extra big, and they all sang, and I knew that’s all I ever wanted was to hear them sing Hallelujah. The young man prayed at the end, and his voice trembled. We were moved, and it was never me. Never ever.

A girl came to believe last night. I know that the invisible work He calls us to do will last forever. We’re going over. Kingdom Come.

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