Caregiver, Love Thyself

Self is a stranger to many people who never met a stranger in their life -- people who sense another's needs across the airport, but have no understanding of their own inner struggles.

These people are experts in the Other. They bore secrets, tended wounds, and ran to rescue starting in childhood. They gravitate toward helping professions like nursing, teaching, pastoring, counseling, mothering etc. So, obviously, I'm one of the people I'm talking about.

I coached a group of nurses on self-care yesterday. I always open the session asking "Why nursing?" so we hear why each chose this profession. Invariably, someone tells how they started caring for others as a kid. This time, to make the group aware of that common bond, I asked them to raise their hands if they had been secret-bearer, soother, bandage-applier, or other caregiver in childhood. Twenty-three nurses in the room -- 18 hands raised (mine too).

When you start doing something as early as childhood, your identity gets all wrapped up in it. Many caregivers don't know themselves without other people to care for. I didn't know who I was, because I built my identity to suit the needs of others.  It seemed natural to go into a profession where my daily work turns on expressions of compassion.

Not knowing myself, I couldn't create boundaries around my identity, capacity, and responsibilities. I never responded "no." I never turned off.

It still hurts to look back at how deeply this type of living wounded me and impacted my family. 

Reblog: M. Kircher's "Failure Isn't"

While in Laguna Beach, at Rob Bell's Craft Lab, I met Melissa, a Young Adult fiction author, who writes as M. Kircher. We walked a mile back to our hotel, in the dark, and had one of those conversations that just bubbles up and over itself -- immediate connection. We also "learned" to surf together, which she perfectly captured below (I'm the solitary learner on the far left of the surfing photo).


At Craft Lab, Melissa posed a question to Rob about failure, and his answer helped revolutionize my thinking. I planned on blogging about it, but the work has already been done so much better by Melissa! With her permission, I'm reblogging her entire post, titled "Failure Isn't." Fear of failure has haunted me my whole life, and I can point directly to moments where that fear kept me from pursuing dreams. If you can identify, you need the humor and clarity below. If something resonates, please comment on her blog, here.

You can find Melissa's website at www.mkircher.com. Look after the post for information on purchasing her books.



Failure is a word we all fear. No matter your age, your stage in life, your gender or personality, a sense of failure is something we try to avoid at all costs.

I’ve been grappling with failure a lot over the past six years or so (maybe even my whole life)—what it means, what it looks like and if this nebulous ball of crap actually defines me or not.

I’ve decided not, but it’s taken me a while to arrive at this conclusion.

Doubt as Hope

Crisis of faith. Time in the desert. Struggling. Doubt.

I worked hard for a long time to find language and metaphors for my loss of faith. I left a religious culture cemented in certainty to drift, untethered, in a wide ocean of possibilities and fear.

The thing about leaving that culture is, you act exactly the way they tell you you'll act when you're backslidden. Sermons don't move you, and worse, irritate you. You read attempts at proselytizing as an insult to your intelligence and right to self-determination. You forget your religious language fluency, and scrunch your nose in concentration to understand what others mean when they say, "It's my heart to..." or, "The Lord told me..." or, you know, "backslidden." So, I constantly felt one foot in the accusations of the old world, while the toes of the other stretched to pull me toward new thoughts and truths.

El Shaddai & Gender

A couple weeks ago, I posted here about my transformation after learning of God's use of feminine language to describe God's self. I mentioned as a side note a possible translation of God's name, El Shaddai, as "the breasted one." Now, I've got the goods on that, for those of you who like good resources (I know I do).

Reading Rachel Held Evans' Sunday Superlatives (a great source of quality posts and endless new blogs to follow... le sigh), I saw this amazing piece by Susan Pigot titled "El Shaddai and the Gender of God." Susan takes a scholarly approach into the original Hebrew to contextually and linguistically reveal the meaning of "the breasted one."

So often, we live limited lives. More abominably, we enforce limitations on others' lives. In my experience, the use of purely masculine language to discuss God, and the priority placed on male leadership, cut my sex, my story, and my talents out of the narrative. I felt I was left holding a bag with potential that could never be realized.

Now, this language resonates more than ever. I already tore down the walls keeping me from living my whole, gendered life and capacity. But as a mother, I live the power of this imagery every time I breastfeed my daughter.

This name of God weaves with the other names of God. I don't want to take it out of context and prioritize it above the others. When we elevate it INTO context we see how God teaches us about God, how we consequently learn about ourselves, and paradoxically, how that in turn teaches us more about God.

If I ever I think of a pithy title for this cycle, I'll feel like a true wordsmith. Anyone ever heard of one?

Deep (breathing) and Wide (living)

Remember that Sunday school song, "Deep and Wide?" I'll admit, I'm not sure about its purpose -- other than giving large groups of hyper kids something to do with their hands. But the refrain came to mind today as I considered the changes ahead of me.

I lived "shallow and scattered" for years. I ran from opportunities to look deeply into my talents and faults. In college, I wrote a paper about Christians in journalism. I argued that persons of faith report, write, and work with integrity and depth in a field that views belief as undermining to "objectivity." Good paper, actually. Even though my professors held the opposing view, they offered to help me publish the paper. I never followed up. I remember walking away from at least two other offers to publish or promote my writing talent.

We do this. We think we have all the time in the world to get it together, or get off the couch, or love big, or take risks. And, having all the time in the world, we never do.

Deconstructing Gates

Jason recorded my first sermon with our camera. It's shaky, fuzzy, and wobbly. Much like I felt! Although, to be truthful, I enjoyed getting to do this. I appreciate all those who contributed, knowingly or not, to the development of the sermon. The text for the day was John 10:1-10. It wasn't included in the video, so I'll post that passage below.

Our Parent, Who Art in Heaven...

Only photo from that year I could find.
Four generations of Valentine women.

It's 8th grade. With braces, shoulder length hair, and a budding sense of fashion, I exist in that invisible social strata, sandwiched between the kids who attract most of the ridicule, and the kids who attract none of it. What happens in the classroom, like Vegas, stays there. The real jungle is the cafeteria. That cute guy who talked to you in class won't see you in the lunch line, and certainly never offer you a seat at his table.

The group I sit with at lunch has slipped a multi-colored, tightly folded note into my locker. "I really like you, but one of us thinks you laugh too loud, and wants me to tell you not to sit with us anymore."

... (breathe) ...