Oh, these motherhood days, what a contrast they’re proving to be.

There are moments of lush joy…

baby smiles
toddler conversations
knowing glances between this wife and her husband

But some days the dust and sand of it all start blowing in. Thick and fast until it’s all I see.

No one ever wants their life (or creativity, or relationships, or spirit) to become a desert, do they? Deserts are places of Desolation. Aridity. Isolation.

 

 

But I’m learning not to hate, but to embrace these desert places.

Like every desert I’ve been in, I’ve realised that for all they lack, deserts teem with life and the terrain is sharply beautiful.

 

The sand has scrubbed the air clean.
The stars are so bright you’re kept awake in wonder.
The stillness is heavy, drawing you in.

 

And it’s only when I’m in a desert place that the questions I ignore are allowed to rise in my soul…

Can I really matter?

And it’s only because I’m in the desert that I have pause enough to hear the answer…

“You came out here searching with a question, and I came out here looking for you with the answer! I’ve never quit loving you and I never will. Expect love, love and more love.” [Jeremiah 31:2-3]

 

 

So if the desert is where you find yourself today, I encourage you to open your soul to God, breathe the clean air, embrace the pause and let His love remind you again and again…

 

“I am enough for you always, even in this place.”

 

 

 

Images by Chantelle Malone Creative and Whisky Winter from their 2014 Morrocan adventure. (You guys need to go back – been too long!)

Today a news article circulated about reCAPTCHA, the annoying system where you type the illegible word to prove you’re not a robot.

Turns out they’re pulling those words from out-of-print or rare books for the google books project. And humans all around the world (whenever they confirm they aren’t a robot) are actually doing what technology cannot to digitise those texts.

I’m amazed at how much good will I feel toward this annoying little process now, where before there was only rage at how illegible the words were. I’m so impressed that I might even consider this company if I ever need that kind of service, whereas before the ‘bad design’ or ‘poor pixellation’ would have had me avoid them.

This is the power of why.

It may not change the facts of a situation, but a clear ‘why’ changes attitudes, it changes perception, it changes the way people engage with you and what you’re offering. Better yet, if people can understand their place in the ‘why’ they’ll be more willing to be personally inconvenienced to align their mission with yours.

Thanks reCAPTCHA PR team for the great reminder of the importance of articulating our ‘why’.

 

I saw a pine tree last week. Beautiful ridged bark, deep green needles and a faint, clean scent that draws you in.

It reminded me so much of a morning Zac and I had at the top of the San Jacinto mountains in the Coachella Valley. The smell of fresh pine needles filled that quiet air, crunching under our feet as we made our way through cold, sunny clearings. Tall pines creating a forest in the desert, 3000ft up on a mountain with the clouds.

As I left my memories, I considered the pine in front of me. It too was beautiful, old, with gnarled bark and even had that familiar clean scent if you bent in close. It made me sad to think that this tree would never know it was a bonsai.

Over the years specialist hands had made tiny cuts to ensure that this tree grew old, with all the appearance and trappings of a mature pine, but never reaching the size and majesty of its potential.

I thought about how easy it is for me to be bonsai-ed by fear.

You’re not enough. Snip Snip.

You’re too much. Snip Snip.

You don’t have the experience. Snip Snip.

You don’t have the guts. Snip Snip.

You don’t have the charisma. Snip Snip.

 

Fear is insidious like that, if I let it have its way… it won’t destroy me, it’ll shrink me. Fooling me into thinking that I am mature, that I’ve arrived, that I’m everything I can be.

Sure, I may look like the real thing, I smell like the real thing, heck I may even be the real thing. But don’t for a second entertain that I’m anywhere close to what I’m capable of.

What has fear been snipping away it in your life?

Is it time to go rogue and reject its scissors, time to be more mighty than you could ever have thought possible?

Two years ago, on a course with 30 other young leaders, my mind wandered and I disctincly remember seeing a picture of myself madly trying to plaster over cracks.

I felt God speak.

 

Clare, you keep trying to mend the cracks that appear in your life
I hate to break it to you, but what you’re doing is futile…
They’re not just surface cracks, they are as deep as the Grand Canyon.
You’re not something that can be smoothed out.
Your experiences, hurts, joys and beautiful outlook aren’t meant to be fixed.
People don’t marvel at a mended crack in the road.
But they do at the Grand Canyon.
That enormous, deep, dangerous, beautiful canyon.
With its big stories and long history, paths at the top, river at the bottom.
Open to explore and interact with.
That’s what I want for your heart, openness for all who interact with you.
Let them down to the depths.
Let them see the heights.
Let them see how I can make broken things beautiful.

 

So to those that are weary from trying to keep up appearances…
To those that are tired of smoothing over their personality…
To those who keep trying to deny the marks their experiences have left on their soul…

Greetings from the Grand Canyon! Wish you were here.

xx

She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

J. D. Salinger

I get asked about these so often I’m going to write about them here.

For 2.5years now, we’ve been using cloth nappies for our boys. It was a big initial investment, that I hoped would pay off and it totally has!

Here’s what we use, tips for making it work in a busy home and my answers to the FAQs I get asked the most…

Continue reading →

A friend mentioned last week that breaking up is rarely talked about in Christian circles. They wondered if the fear/awkwardness of a break up was contributing to the lack of dating in their crew. I dunno if that’s a main reason, but it can’t hurt to talk about it, right? Like all matters of the heart, it’s better to be on the front foot and entering the fray, than guessing from the sidelines and never getting amongst it.

So let’s call it, breaking up SUCKS, no one wins but it does happen and you want to make it as least sucky as possible… So here’s my humble offering on how to do it well. From the gal who has been the breaker x2 and the breakee x2. Continue reading →

Radio Silence.

I’ve had a lot on my mind.

I’m 3 months pregnant, unexpectedly (which sounds so naive whenever I say it, but it’s true). I also know this is an incredible blessing, the timing sucks but we’re very happy to add to our family. I’ve so many friends who struggle beyond reasonable struggle to have babies and here I am accidentally growing one. The world isn’t fair, I’m coming to peace with that.

What’s been eating at my mind is this: We aren’t fully covered by health insurance, and the public discharge times in Western Australia for a second baby is wild… 6 hrs. I’m terrified that birth will trigger the same hormone drops that led to my anxiety attacks in 2014 and I won’t have that round-the-clock support in those crazy few days.

Anxiety is no fun. This particular worry has been running races in my head the last couple of months. It’s only now that I sit down to write that I have clarity about what God is teaching me about the sword of the spirit… Continue reading →

I’ve sat down to write this part of the series about 17 times. And I haven’t posted one word yet.

Maybe it’s because writing about what goes on in your head is like trying to see ahead in a fog. I find thinking about thoughts one of the hardest things to do… those well-worn neural pathways make looking at each thought, its origins, its logical conclusion so sub-conscious. So the neural pathway becomes an 8-lane LA Freeway and you’ve missed 5 exits before you realize too late.

Oh the challenge to fit every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), it’s so hard to do when the freeway to defeatism is your usual route. When driving down the highway of insecurity is so familiar you don’t even remember driving it. When loneliness or the pride of individualism are your quick drive to answers.

When I read about the helmet of salvation, God whispers to me, “Don’t let anything get through to your head, without it passing through the salvation mindset.”

I need to change the roads my thoughts travel. Heck, I need to change the city I live in. Get off those old roads entirely and move to a new part of town. New towns with easy avenues and beautiful vistas. A Godly perspective, where the road is easy and what you carry is light. Where the driver is God and you’re a friend in the passenger seat. Where the focus is less on the roads and the destination, but who you get to travel with.

Those are the roads I want my mind to travel on. What a great incentive to guard my mind with the salvation I find in Christ.

These are my thoughts from Ephesians 6… A series inspired by a moment where I asked God to protect my heart, my family and my loved ones. In that moment, I strongly felt Him challenge me: “I’ve given you all the armour you need, but it’s useless in a pile on the ground. Pick it up. Put it on.”

I have learned to kiss the wave that slams me into the Rock of Ages

-Charles Spurgeon

How many times do you find yourself wishing for calmer seas. Less work. More relaxing?

I love these words. I can’t get them out of my head this week.

The hard times? The daily grind? The relentlessness of life? It’s meant to carry us, no, slam us back into the arms of our creator. Why fight it?

It’s like swimming against a tsunami.

Let life continually carry you back to one who made you, the one who knows you best, the one who will be the strength of your heart for all your days.