Author: Christa

Growing pains

~ Christa ~ Leave a comment

I’ve written before about how Nine Years Old feels like an important milestone. The realization of this began percolating for me earlier this year, as my oldest daughter prepared to turn nine.

Nine was when I began to experience anxiety. It was also the first year I remember feeling shame. A couple of kids in my class informed me that I was chubby. The kidney reflux that I had been battling since I was born flared up again, requiring several hospitalizations. The physical pain of the disorder was exceeded by the terrifying humiliation of the procedures to try to correct it. During this time, the bubbly, outgoing kid I had been grew quieter. I found myself unable to think of what to say to people my age. I was shy. By the time I was 13, the shame was so pervasive, it was hard to know where it left off and I began.

*****

Last night, Emma joined a local basketball league and attended her first practice.

When I was around eleven, I tried out for basketball at my small private school. I didn’t make the team. I proceeded to try out for softball. I didn’t make the team. Nevertheless, I persisted, and tried out for cheerleading. I didn’t make the team.

When Emma asked if she could join the basketball league – anyone who wants can be on the team – I felt the tenderness of pre-teen Christa. My heart leapt at the chance for Emma to have what I didn’t have.

It brought to my mind two things: first, the amazing capacity of this life to give us do-overs.

I wish my parents had been paying closer attention to my desire to play sports. I would have never been an all-star, but I think with the right help, I could have made a team, or at the least played on a city league. I think that would have given me more confidence around my peers.

As pastors, my parents devoted countless hours to the church. They have both told me as I’ve grown up that they wish they would have spent more time focusing on our family and what we needed as kids and less time at church. They’ve apologized for that.

I know one day, I will have to apologize to my kids for something I wish I had done differently.

As I parent, I am so thankful to have the ability to call my parents up and talk with them about raising babies. There is such kind grace in being able to cry and laugh with your own parents. The laughing part is important. We laugh together at how hard and absurd parenting can be, and it makes the heaviness of knowing I will make mistakes at parenting – the one thing I most want to get right, just like my parents wanted to get it right! – more bearable.

I am thankful for do-overs. That, as parents and children and people, we get to keep loving each other until we get it right.

Second, thinking about trying out for the basketball team reminded me of my lifelong quest for coolness.

I’m smart. During middle school and high school, I took special summer classes just for fun. I graduated high school and college with a high GPA.

But what I wanted to be was COOL.

I wanted to be like the girls who played sports and were effortlessly pretty and always knew the right thing to say. I wanted to fit in. I wanted people to like me.

I married my husband because he is cool. He’s the coolest person I’ve ever met. But he’s the kind of cool you can talk to. It’s cool beyond cool, because he couldn’t care less if he’s cool or not. He is himself.

And that’s cool.

It’s been in recent years that I feel I’ve “achieved” coolness in a way that no one can ever take it from me. Which is kinda funny, because in recent years I’ve become an in-my-30s mother of two who drives a minivan. (Not just drives a minivan. I love my minivan.)

For me, coolness means I feel comfortable with my self. I’m at ease with my self. This has a direct relationship with my shedding of shame in recent years. It doesn’t mean that shame doesn’t ever show up. Sometimes, still, when I make a mistake or am anxious for whatever reason, a voice whispers to me, “Should I be ashamed of my self?”

The difference is that now the answer comes, always, “No. A thousand times, no.”

I hope we’ve given Emma what she needs in order to grow up feeling cool. To grow up feeling like she is alright, just as she is. Or maybe peace with one’s self is only found on the other side of a struggle. Maybe that is part of being human.

*****

The weight of all of this sits with me. It is in my heart. Sometimes I sit in meditation, with outstretched hands, and I actually feel the heaviness in the skin of my palms. I don’t have any other answer but to be with it. With the weight of humanity. Of imperfections and failure and anxiety and shame and do-overs and coolness. To love the hell out of all of it.

Rumi wrote, “Through love all pain will turn to medicine.”

Reproductive health care is not “just one issue”

~ Christa ~ Leave a comment

I love Bernie Sanders. I voted for him in the primary. But Bernie is wrong to refer to reproductive rights as “just one issue,” as he did yesterday in his defense of campaigning for an anti-choice mayoral candidate in Nebraska: “I think you just can’t exclude people who disagree with us on one issue.”

For context, Bernie recently declined to endorse Jon Ossoff, Democratic candidate for the Georgia congressional seat Tom Perez left open when he became Trump’s Health & Human Services Secretary, stating that Ossoff was “not progressive” on economic issues.

I want candidates who are progressive on economic issues, too. It is inconsistent, however, to hold such a hard line with Ossoff yet be willing to overlook the harmful anti-choice stance of another Democratic candidate.

Here’s the bottom line, and listen up, because this is important:

Abortion is not just one issue. It’s health and economics and education and stability of families.

Most of all, access to abortion is VIEWING WOMEN AS AUTONOMOUS BEINGS.

And that is everything.

Namaste

~ Christa ~ Leave a comment

In the past few months, I’ve been dealing with age-related angst in a serious way for the first time.
“When did that start looking like that?!”
“Is this supposed to be happening so soon?”

I’ve found renewed solidarity and humor in Nora Ephron’s book I Feel Bad About My Neck.

Strangely, though, I would say my self esteem is higher now than it’s ever been (we humans are messy and full of contradictions), even higher than just five years ago when I would have considered my self pretty evolved in terms of self acceptance. Today I realized perhaps that’s because five years ago I was working at a yoga studio in Southern California.

Life tip: if you want to feel good about your self, don’t hang out with people who are habitually on juice cleanses.

A Prayer for Easter

~ Christa ~ Leave a comment

Witnessing the strength of our bodies and minds,
Spirit of Life, rejoice with us.

Witnessing our recognition by our selves and others; our being heard, seen, known, and accepted,
Spirit of Life, rejoice with us.

Witnessing our abundance; the times when we have plenty; the needs that are extravagantly met,
Spirit of Life, rejoice with us.

Witnessing the communion and unity among us,
Spirit of Life, rejoice with us.

Witnessing the healing of our grief and our ashes turning to beauty,
Spirit of Life, rejoice with us.

Witnessing our agency,
Spirit of Life, rejoice with us.

Witnessing how we use our agency to create and perpetuate equality and justice,
Spirit of Life, rejoice with us.

Witnessing our enlightenment,
Spirit of Life, rejoice with us.

Witnessing the wide path within which we walk,
Spirit of Life, rejoice with us.

Witnessing our words and actions and attitudes that have bound up brokenness and created joy,
Spirit of Life, rejoice with us.

Witnessing our wholeness,
Spirit of Life, rejoice with us.

Witnessing our contentment,
Spirit of Life, rejoice with us.

Good Friday

~ Christa ~ Leave a comment

Good Friday. We call it good because we know what happens on Sunday, but the first Good Friday was anything but. The weary world that rejoiced at Christ’s birth now groaned in grief at his death.

Growing up, the part of the Crucifixion story that transfixed me the most was the tearing from top to bottom of the veil separating the inner court of the Temple from the Holy of Holies, where God lived.

This is still the jewel I most cherish from my evangelical upbringing: that we can know God for our selves. There is no veil separating us from God. The pain of our humanity – grief and death – ushers us into a knowing of the sacred.

The OR Principle

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I discovered the OR Principle last year while standing in a fitting room, and it changed my life.

My wardrobe includes what is essentially a dozen variations on the same loose, soft material, you-can-breathe-in-it Loft blouse. One can never have too many of these blouses, and I was trying on a new one for summer. I looked in the mirror at my bare arms and thought, “I really HAVE to work on toning my arms.”

The words floated in my brain, and each letter was tipped with the same stones that line a flagellant’s whip. This is always how such thoughts appear to me. A whip that was handed to me in a fitting room many, many years ago when I was just a child, when someone pointed to my stomach and told me I needed to “lose that belly.” The whip was given to me as if it were my birthright as a woman. I was to carry it with me for life. It was to be used as necessary to force both body and soul to submit.

As women, whenever something doesn’t fit – whether it’s a blouse or a job or a relationship – our first instinct is to think of how we can change our selves. That is the default solution. That is the norm. Our realities and our bodies are the aberrations to be controlled. Squished, contorted, fit into the appropriate space.

But this time, as soon as I began to calculate how many gym classes I needed to take and how many calories I need to not take in order to get my arms in shape, a new thought formed and even escaped through my mouth: “OR.”

That’s exactly how I said it. It was a bold, 20-point font OR.

“OR, designers could start making shirts with some damn sleeves on them,” I said.

And everything changed.

In the year since, every time the whip appears above my head, there is an OR right behind it, gently placing its hand over the one holding the whip.

When I am feeling trapped by a problem at work or home, OR opens a door: “This situation is hopeless. I’ll never get it right. I’ll never be good enough. OR…… there may be a different way that I just haven’t thought of yet.”

OR is an invitation to a bigger life. OR opens up space.

OR has a great sense of humor. OR is the wise woman I’ve always wanted to be. The one who has seen it all. Who knows that the energy of her wild spirit should not be used up in keeping a running mental log of calories. OR knows that the way to get a bikini body is to put a bikini on her body. OR knows that it is also perfectly fine to want sleeves on her shirt. OR’s body is soft and strong and sturdy. It exists outside the purview of others to judge. She is soft and strong and sturdy. She exists outside the purview of others to judge.

I am soft and strong and sturdy. I exist outside the purview of others to judge.

You do, too.

 

* * * * *

If this post resonates with you, I’d love to hear about it! Comment below or join me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram (c_v_bennett).

Using stories to teach our kids about strong food

~ Christa ~ Leave a comment

I recently got a shout out from Dr. Sam Spillman, local physical therapist/chiropractor/golf game improver/wellness advisor/philanthropist, for a conversation we had about modeling healthy eating habits for kids.

Sam appreciated that I talk with my children about food being strong or weak, instead of good or bad. Additionally, I only talk about weak in terms of which foods would not help our bodies be strong if we ate too much of them.

I don’t want any food to be off the table (ha! pun intended) for my kids. I want them to appreciate the deliciousness of buttercream frosting. I want them to know what cotton candy tastes like. I want them to drink champagne at their friends’ weddings (in 20 years, of course).

I also want them to have information about which foods will do the most to make their muscles and bones and brain strong and healthy.

One way that I’ve found to do this without entering lecture mode is telling my kids a story. In fact, we have one story in particular, about a little girl named Arianna. She loved ice cream so much that she decided to open an ice cream shop. At every meal, every day, she ate watermelon and mango ice cream with strawberry boba on top. One day she started to walk up the stairs, but she couldn’t! She couldn’t even lift up her legs. Her mom and dad rushed her to the doctor, who told her that her muscles had TURNED TO GAK because they had not had enough strong food. So Arianna started eating strong food again, and her muscles and bones grew stronger. She still ate watermelon and mango ice cream with strawberry boba on top, but not at every meal. Just sometimes.

My kids love this silly story. One reason is that they helped me create it. I often play a game with them where I start a story and pause to let them fill in the blanks. Emma named Arianna and picked out her favorite flavors of ice cream. Years later, Emma’s little sister Maggie loves this story because she knows I told it to her big sister when she was Maggie’s age.

As a mom of an almost-nine year old and a three AND A HALF year old, I am still learning how to best teach truly healthy, joyful ways of fueling our bodies and celebrating life, without the shame that, unfortunately, so often attaches itself to food and eating. Story telling with exaggerated parts to help children understand consequences is one tool that seems to resonate with my girls. I hope it might be useful for your family, too.

Praise report

~ Christa ~ Leave a comment

Some days are hard. You feel a little directionless and like you’re falling behind on EVERYTHING. Some days you come down with a stomach bug and will yourself to pull it together for your kid’s talent show at school. You don’t even have the energy to wash your hair, even though you realize {whisper} you haven’t washed it in several days.

And some days are great. Some days you wake up having had enough sleep and the sun is shining and you work all day uninterrupted and you GET SO DANG MUCH ACCOMPLISHED. #praisereport

The day I found out Christians could be Democrats

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One of the most important reasons I started this blog: to fill the void of too-few liberal voices talking about how our faith inspires our politics.

When I was about ten years old, growing up in a conservative Christian home, I asked my grandmother if she was a Republican or a Democrat. Obviously, I knew she was going to say Republican, because all Christians were Republicans. (My grandparents, who were given awards for their perfect Sunday School attendance – as adults! – and watched Bill Gaither Homecoming videos, were most definitely Christians, in the cultural sense and in the most personal.)

Except she said she was a Democrat, and it poked a hole in my worldview.

It was the first hint I had that politics might be more complicated than I had previously realized. (To be fair, I was ten. The entire world was more complicated than I had previously realized.) What I didn’t know then was that Democrats, with their New Deal and Social Security and fairer labor laws, had made the American Dream possible for people like my grandparents, who never graduated high school; who drove a garbage truck; who worked at a factory. Democrats made it possible for them, and so many others, to create a good life out of hard work and to raise children who had more than they did. One of their sons went on to own his own business. Another, my dad, got a doctoral degree. My grandparents were so proud.

My grandfather who was a garbage truck driver was also a farmer. At his funeral, people our family didn’t even know packed into the church and later told us how he would bring them food from the farm when they were down on their luck. That was part of my inheritance from my family: I learned that you’re supposed to help other people because that’s what Jesus would do. That’s what love would do.

Republicans argue that government shouldn’t be in the business of helping people, because people should be helping people. I can understand that to some degree. Certainly, the onus is on us as individuals to love our neighbors as our selves.

Unfortunately, no matter how I and my local faith community may help people, I have to recognize that not all people have access to a community that gives generously. I have to recognize that too often churches place restrictions on their helping, that exclude the very people who may need it the most. Additionally, I recognize that not all congregations have equal resources to help their communities. Some areas of the country need more help than others. I appreciate that there is a federal government that can provide help and is accountable to us, its people, for doing so in fair ways.

One may deride that as socialism, but when all is said and done, it is, for me, more personal than any political label. It’s about my faith. It’s about what I learned, deep in my bones, from the words of Jesus and the life of my grandma and grandpa.

A prayer for Lent

~ Christa ~ Leave a comment

Witnessing the dis-eases of our bodies and minds,
Spirit of Life, have mercy on us.

Witnessing that which prevents us from hearing and being heard, from seeing and being seen, from knowing and being known,
Spirit of Life, have mercy on us.

Witnessing our lack, the times when we do not have enough, the needs that go unmet,
Spirit of Life, have mercy on us.

Witnessing the dis-connection between us, we who are made for connection,
Spirit of Life, have mercy on us.

Witnessing our grief, and our grief too great even for tears,
Spirit of Life, have mercy on us.

Witnessing our powerlessness,
Spirit of Life, have mercy on us.

Witnessing how we use our power in ways that create and perpetuate inequality and injustice,
Spirit of Life, have mercy on us.

Witnessing our ignorances,
Spirit of Life, have mercy on us.

Witnessing the choice we make when there is no good choice,
Spirit of Life, have mercy on us.

Witnessing our words and actions and attitudes that cause brokenness,
Spirit of Life, have mercy on us.

Witnessing our brokenness,
Spirit of Life, have mercy on us.

Witnessing our pain,
Spirit of Life, have mercy on us.

*****

Feel free to download and share:
prayer-for-lent

Praise report

~ Christa ~ Leave a comment

I’m a big believer in Praise Reports, as we used to call them in Sunday School. Not because I want to make my life look like it’s perfect – you know I’m also a big believer in #keepingitreal.

I believe in Praise Reports because gratitude and contentment are practices, and I have found the more I practice, the more natural they feel. I believe in Praise Reports because I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety for a long, long time, and one of the most powerful antidotes is having a full cup emotionally. So when I experience goodness, I try to let it all in, drink it up, get full.

So. Praise Report: I love having returned to my job as a freelance fundraiser/grantwriter/social media guru. I’m currently focused on the last bit, and I love that I get paid to use social media to communicate. I find it engaging and exciting and meaningful. And fun. Did I mention fun?

And I love that I have more afternoons to pick this girl up from the bus stop. Just look at her. Those ridiculous dimples. Those eyes through which her smart and funny and creative soul shines. The upturned cuffs of her jeans with her Chuck Taylors, which I know she planned just so, because she loves putting outfits together, and I could see her being some sort of designer one day.

Praise Report. And all God’s children said, Amen.

IMG_1769.JPG

Yoga breath

~ Christa ~ Leave a comment

Yoga classes are like church services for me in that they are a time when I am open and honest and vulnerable with my self. Last summer, I was dealing with some challenges, and being with the heaviness of those challenges in the rawness of yoga was too much. It had moved from discomfort to pain, and it stung. I had to stop attending classes for awhile.

And that’s ok.

In yoga, the whole point is your breath. In vinyasa flow yoga, teachers will tell you that if your breathing becomes too labored during practice, if you can’t maintain that steady, long inhale & exhale, come back to child’s pose, where you lay your forehead on the mat, chest draped over your knees. All tucked into a safe cocoon, resting your weight on the earth, sinking back into a rhythmic breath. Because yoga isn’t how far you can lift your leg in the air or behind your head. It’s breathing.

Not going to yoga class for awhile was my returning to child’s pose.

It was easing up for as long as it took for me to catch my breath. As long as it took for things to become lighter again.

Of course, it was also a sign. When things are heavy, it can mean an opportunity for us to grow stronger. It can also indicate that something needs to change. Sometimes, as it was in this case, it is both.

Last week, I gave myself a present of a month-pass to yoga. I’ve been to several classes since then, and it feels so, so good to be in that room again, breathing, expanding, being strong.

Breathe with me, wherever you are. Let your breath carry comfort to the hidden places where pain is stuck. Let it open you up to possibilities, those you can dream of and those you can’t, for joy and wellbeing.

Breathe with me.

PS I call this image Tree Pose with Trees. The best kind of tree pose. Obviously.

tree-pose-with-trees

Nature therapy

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nature-therapy-trees-picOn Monday, I engaged in nature therapy down at the creek near our house. Nature therapy is a very sophisticated form of self care, involving mud and sunshine.

*****

One of the benefits of being married to a neuroscientist has been a clearer understanding – and, subsequently, acceptance – of the anxiety that has accompanied me from a young age. I better understand anxiety to be a physiological activity of my body (some people say brain, but you know our brains are part of our bodies, right?). The activity is a result of my genetic make-up and its response to circumstances. It is something I experience. I used to think it meant something about who I was, but, while my sense of self and anxiety have some interplay, they are not the same.

In the past couple of years, I have begun talking more candidly about anxiety, which has helped take some of its sting away. I have told friends that I had to change plans because I was feeling anxious and needed to give my self a time out, in the same way I might have said, “I’ve broken my leg and can’t make our hiking trip.”

*****

On Monday, I was feeling anxious. I put one foot in front of the other as we traipsed through the woods down to the creek. I breathed in and out. I paid attention to how the ground felt bumpy beneath my feet and to the temperature of the air on my skin.

*****

For years, when I’ve talked with close friends and my husband and my therapist about depression and anxiety, I’ve said that I’ve dealt with them since I was 13. On Monday, I realized that I’ve actually dealt with anxiety since I was 9.

This thought crystallized in my mind as I sat on a rock, using a long stick to stir the creek water soup that my toddler and I were making together.

*****

In addition to my toddler, I have Emma, an eight year old who turns nine in April. I wonder what nine will be like for her.

*****

Maggie and I stomped around in the mud to feel it squish up between our toes. We knelt and built mud castles. Being Mama means to be making constantly. Making dinner, making doctor appointments, making children’s hearts and my own heart.

It is not in isolation that I walk with anxiety, that I breathe through it, that I learn how to recognize when it is rising and step away from control. Let it flow away. Like the creek over our feet.

I am doing it while holding the hands of my baby girls, which makes it easier and harder, but – for me – it is also the only way. In cupping their hearts with gentle hands, I hold my own. I put broken pieces back together, the crevices filled in with mud and spit and love. In other words, with grace.

nature-therapy-mom-mag-pic

Nevertheless, she persisted.

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Last night on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell inadvertently told the story of women throughout history: “Nevertheless, she persisted.”

Ironically, he meant his statement as a pejorative comment on Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was attempting to read Coretta Scott King’s 1986 letter to the Senate regarding then-US Attorney Jeff Session’s nomination to a federal judgeships. In her testimony, King urged the Senate not to confirm Sessions, based on his poor record on civil rights.

McConnell and his Republican colleagues voted to refuse Warren permission to continue speaking. McConnell stated: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

A black woman who led the civil rights movement and a senator reading her words, silenced.

All of our lives, we have been warned. We have been explained to. We have persisted anyway.

Because we have children to feed and jobs to do and stories to tell. The strength that grows babies within our wombs sustains our persistence. We will never stop birthing a better future.

I am reminded of the words of another powerful woman of color, Maya Angelou:

“Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.”

When my first baby girl was born, I wrote her a blessing: May you roar like a lion.

We will not be silenced. We will roar. We will persist.

emma-roar

Bind up the brokenhearted

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Two passages of Scripture are on my mind this Inauguration morning, from the Psalms and from Isaiah:

“Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies.
Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry…
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted…”

“God has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.”

God is Love, and we are here to do Love’s work, to bind up each other’s broken hearts, to do good, to seek peace, to work for freedom. Let’s do this. Also, let’s give out a lot of hugs today. I am pretty sure Jesus said that, too. The disciples just forgot to write it down.