on caring for the human story.

One time, a church asked me to take my post down.

The specifics of the post don't really matter. What matters is that in my post, I was telling a story. My story. It included a few people in leadership and even though I didn't mention names, I was told that in writing the post I was trying to tear down ministries and that I was doing damage and essentially gossiping from a megaphone.

I ended up talking with someone from the church later that week. In all of my communication, this person was the only one who offered a listening ear without any accusation.

We met at a local coffee shop and I shared my story and he shared his and I left with a better understanding of the Gospel.

In that moment, I felt safe. Heard. 

A few years before, Russ and I had a similar situation. He wrote a post about food and community and mentioned briefly that we'd been let go of our position at a church and how devastating that was for us. But, God was molding us. Moving us. Showing us a bit of Himself in the breaking of bread with other people who actually sit and listen and share—something we weren't familiar with until that moment.

Within a few hours, we were contacted by the pastor who told us we were participating in slander. We never even mentioned the church or the pastor by name, but what resulted was confusion and hurt and bruised egos and a reminder that we all read into words what we will.

What makes this situation different?

We still met a coffee shop. We still shared our stories. But this time, I left with a broken heart. This time, I left with even more confusion and hurt because this pastor stared at my husband after he mentioned he was trying to keep his anger in check, let a slow grin cross his face, and said, "get angry man! Cuss at me if you have to - yell even - but say something! Just don't sit there."

And I wondered what is the Church if all we ever do is manipulate people into action?

//

These two situations have left me with this: stories, however broken or fleeting, always trump force. Don't tell me if you're right. Don't tell me I'm wrong. Do sit with me and wrestle through our stories together because then I see a taste of the Church as it's meant to be: broken but living out something beautiful in our strengths. Because even if we disagree, if you're willing to hold my story in your hand with care it covers all the petty nuances of faith.

//

A few years ago Russ and I found a community who approach human care—and every issue within—with the purpose of listening and sharing. What's resulted is more than a community, it's a family. And even though we may not agree on everything, we know we'll hold the stories shared with care. Because of that, we grow. We learn. We shift. We change.

The first time we showed up to IdeaCamp, people welcomed us with open arms (even though we were online). We were considered charter members. Part of the tribe. Equals. And the the ideas started to spread. One meeting turned into many - in DC, Las Vegas, Portland. We were finally able to attend the gathering in Arkansas, and that weekend completely changed the trajectory of our story in two ways. 

- I was there as a blogger. During a workshop on the orphan crisis in Ethiopia, I suddenly felt overwhelmed with the amount of people there who turned their skills into something tangible for aid on the ground. Dentists started organizations for dental care. Doctors created built in health care for the people in the surrounding villages where they adopted from years earlier. Finally I couldn't stay silent anymore. I spoke up - as a writer, I struggle. I can go overseas, but I don't have this burning desire or talent to engage in the community while I'm there. Only when I'm home, spitting the stories out on my computer, does my help seem anything remotely like those of the healthcare or education fronts. And then a doctor looked at me and smiled.

"Don't you see?" he said, "you are the luckiest of us all. YOU have the ability to share the greatest story - the only story - that matters. We share it with our tools. You share it with your words." 

And it was such a simple response but in that moment something within me shifted. My purpose crystallized. I was a writer. I was a writer. I was born to tell stories. I was born to tell HIS stories. Yes. This. This I knew in the deepest parts of my soul. I fit here. I belonged.

- I was also there as an adoptive mom. At the time, Russ and I planned to adopt from Ethiopia. However, every time I chose to hold a story with the question of ethics or of the importance of churches engaging in local care or the corruption within the foster care system, I broke a little more. It wasn't enough for us to do what everyone else was doing. Our story didn't match up with the glamorous picture painted of international adoptions and the rescue of orphans involved - the picture I latched onto before I traveled and met orphans with names. Orphans with homes. Orphans with no plans or need for adoption. And just like something earlier shifted within my purpose, another latch fell into place after participating in discourse and pushing and wrestling through the grittiness of the adoption care issue. Our story? Our story was meant for domestic adoption.

Our story was meant to be engaging in the messiness and awkwardness and brokenness of holding the story of a birth mother's pain in our hand.

Looking her in the eye. Not knowing what to say except thank you times a million. Not knowing how to hold or handle her smiles and you're welcomes times a million. And when the tears come, when her relief spills over in tears, I was meant to grab her hand. I saw it so vividly then, and I had no idea how accurate the picture was for our future situation. Now, two years later, we're in the midst of this very thing. Holding the story of our son's birth mother gently within our own hearts. Knowing the sacrifice she made. Knowing the difficulty involved. Knowing the breaking happening on all sides and realizing the messiness of it all doesn't allow for clean anything.

And I saw this first with Idea Camp.

//

In September, Idea Camp comes to Austin. I've been wanting one here since the beginning. Those who've been with me can prove it. Wouldn't it be awesome to hold one here? I'd say. We could focus on story. How to tell one well. How to engage the Church in storytelling that holds the whole of it and not just the clean parts. 

And really, even though the focus is IC: Human Care, isn't that what storytelling is? Caring for the human involved? Truly listening to their side - however messy or different - and seeing where it may intersect with your own?

I've seen mountains of assumption moved within this tribe. People who would never be seen together sitting across from each other and working through what it means to participate in civil discourse. Answering questions with humility and openness. And everyone leaves with a deeper picture of what it means to live out the Gospel.

I'll be there, taking notes and soaking in the conversation. I hope to see you there, too.

considering the questions

I want to feel both the beauty and the pain of the age we are living in. I want to survive my life without becoming numb. I want to speak and comprehend words of wounding without having these words become the landscape where I dwell. I want to possess a light touch that can elevate darkness to the realm of stars.

- Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds

When Women Were Birds has been one of the most inspiring and influential pieces I've read this year. The first time I read this paragraph toward the end of the book, I sat at my desk with tears streaming down my face because this. THIS is what I want for my words - a light touch that can elevate darkness to the realm of stars. 

In this book, Williams works through the mystery of her mother gifting her with blank journals when she died. Written in essay form, she mixes memoir, narrative, and poetry as she figures out what the blank pages mean, what her mother was trying to say, and how a writer can find her voice. The chapters are sometimes short and rarely linear. This works with Williams' purpose of untying the knots of self-doubt and personal trauma. 

What works with this passage is the way she's proclaiming herself with clarity and strength. Earlier in the book, she asks what is the sound of a woman covering her mouth with her eyes wide open. Here, she pushes the hand away and opens her mouth. She speaks against society's reliance on numbing agents and shows willingness to write the hard thing without dwelling there. And then, as she always does, she dusts the sentences with a touch of poetry - creating a nuance in her writing that is specifically hers. 

Typically, writers tend to be introspective. We take in a lot and sometimes, forget to push it out through words. The questions, the tensions, the epiphanies - they all seem to fall into a hidden reservoir and if we aren't careful, become lost to our psyche. There's power in working out the questions in our writing. If done correctly and with care, we may even brush up against our own voice and poetry.

Practice: Consider the questions, tensions and epiphanies you've experienced lately. Work your way through one of these in words. Take time over the next few days and continue writing, chipping away at some of the thoughts and perceptions you've considered in the past. Write until you know something different or brush up against what you know to be your voice. Approach the words of wounding without dwelling in those spaces and see what happens. Break it down, polish the words, and push it out - make it known.

//

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on storytelling :: for freedom & healing

Editor's Note :: I received an email from my dear friend Morgan with this post attached on Friday and I couldn't wait to share with it you so I scheduled it for today. I've never met Morgan face-to-face (yet) but she is a soul-sister in ways that aren't really explainable. I can't wait for you to get to know her too. 

//

“The Universe is made of stories, not atoms.” Muriel Rukeyser, Poet

I used to do  this thing when my preteen heart was breaking:

I would lean my back against a wall and invite my tears to come. And they would, slowly at first. I would rest my head in be in my hands, and dig my shoulder blades like daggers into the surface behind me. Then I would nurse the hurt until my tears reached impressive momentum. Then, at the perfect moment of anguish,  I would slide down the wall, all the way to my bottom and burst into weeping. Sometimes, for dramatic effect, I would pretend to take a swig of a bottle of liquire.

It was a fine performance. And one that always, for some reason, made me feel better.

Yes, I was a dramatic child. Yes, like many little girls, I fancied the dream of being a movie star.  But looking back on it now, knowing what I know about life and how we humans deal with it best, I know my little tragic scene was more than that.

It was storytelling.

“The Universe is made of stories, not atoms,” as the poet Muriel Rukeyser once wrote.  Poets, intuits of human experience, have always known the importance story plays in our life as human beings. Cavemen knew it too, arching narrative of hunts and love on dark walls for thousands of years. Storytelling has always been a fundamental form of communication.

Neuroscientist also echo the importance of story in our lives, sharing with us their research on how the brain learns more through story than through graphs and facts and figures. Of course, mothers and kindergarten teachers have known this for years. That’s why singing the ABC’s has always been more effective than giving toddlers flashcards.  And why in Sunday school to teach children about God we read from the gospel stories instead of Leviticus lines of rules.

I have found that story is tremendously useful intra-personally too. The stories I tell myself are the most important ones. Victor Frankl, a pyschologist from Vienna who came after Freud, said our primary motivation isn’t for pleasure (as Freud is famous for contending) but for meaning. Frankl says, above all, we want our lives to make sense.

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”  Victor Frankl

A good story has a strong narrative and a narrative helps give us meaning. As a teenager, heart aching with emotion, my tame and padded suburban life didn’t match the wild and rough within.  So I needed a different narrative to validate the truth in my heart.

Breakdowns aren’t pity parties; they are a profound search for meaning.

If you are feeling lost, maybe you need one?

For me, pretending I was a down and out character who just received a final blow and was now a heap of tears on the floor somehow gave me hope. It brought me to a defining moment where I could stay on the floor and melt into the floorboards, or I could muster up the strength within and move on. I didn’t know Victor Frankl’s words then, but my soul was already wise to their truth:

“...There was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”

Suffering doesn’t sound like something we want to do. But I think Frankl’s point is that suffering is something we all are doing anyways, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Part of creating true romance and meaningful adventure in our life is suffering for the right reasons, not the wrong ones. Suffering for lack of meaning and purpose is a sad shame, suffering for truth and beauty is noble.

Don’t mistake me for telling you to be a martyr. I”m not. I don’t believe in diving headlong into suffering for suffering’s sake. No way! But I do believe in the sweet suffering that comes when we choose to fight the good fight for the people and the dreams that matter most to us; the good fight for our heart to come alive. The suffering that might look like a sacrifice of sleep, or a delay in gratification, or putting someone else’s needs above your own for a day.  Or the suffering that might look like facing the pain of years of neglect or disappointment to finally let it all go and get your hopes high enough to dream big dreams again.

Crying is good. A deep weeping is a new beginning, a wash where life can begin again. So maybe, at this awakening of your desire to live a life of romance and adventure, you need a good cry.

Take over the scene.

In the quiet of your closet slide down the wall, all the way down to your bottom. Be as dramatic as you can muster up the gusto to be. Wail in a way the Academy would be proud. Pretend you are a character who has reached her rock bottom and is about to find a strength she never knew she had to rise again.

This is healing. This is freedom. This is storytelling.

//

Morgan Day Cecil is writer/romance revolutionary/maidservant of encouragement. She blogs about creating life with true romance and meaningful adventure at morgandaycecil.com.  She would love to connect with you on twitter and facebook and heck, why not , instagram and pinterest too.

i'm not alone

"You're going to need to find the ability to say no. Up until now, it's been about saying yes. After your baby is born? Choose wisely. Build in those margins." 

I was talking with a friend on the phone when she told me this. It's been just about the only piece of advice I've listened to concerning motherhood+creativity. Probably because this friend is a lot like me. She doesn't just crave those moments of creative respite - she needs them. 

So this past week, my calendar lay bare. I've been filling her up - making sure every spare moment is filled. This week? I took a trip to the library and stocked up on a few books. I cashed in an Amazon gift card and added a few more. I {tried} to sleep and when I couldn't, I allowed myself that extra dose of grace in the morning when it was just too difficult to get out of bed.

I'm slowly putting up the walls. I feel it. A maybe here - a no there - brick by brick I'm building the boundaries I will need in order to not stretch myself too thin. I've scheduled guest posts throughout June, and a friend is armed and waiting to step in to complete the Spring session of Story101. 

I'm realizing slowly: it's better to go deep than wide.

And I have no idea what my life will look like tomorrow or three weeks from now. This isn't me trying to build a schedule of sorts only to have it blown to pieces by colic or diaper changes. 

It is me learning a different type of self-care: one that includes my future son. Every decision I've made in the past few weeks carries the slight overlay of motherhood. Could I host a retreat with my husband and our three month old? Could I start a third round of Story101 in July? Will I have the mental where-with-all to tackle manuscript edits during June? I don't know. But the confidence is growing just in case I can and the grace is waiting even if I can't. Because it's not about proving something. It's not about saying to the world that I can do this or that even when - it's about bringing something out of nothing. It's about the rush of capturing beauty on the page and the thrill that pushes through my veins when the words fall hot. It's about #littlelionman watching his mother come alive before his eyes.

And when my husband chuckles and whispers under his breath no one tells my wife what she can't do, I remember I'm not alone. 

limp and dangling

We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles - Annie Dillard

A few years ago, I taught Annie Dillard's essay Living Like Weasels and was gobsmacked by the truth of these paragraphs. I stared at the words while my students discussed diction and syntax and my breathe caught when I realized what resonated with me so deeply.

I wasn't living like a weasel in those moments. My one thing was darting every which way in front of me, evading my grip and slipping through my claws every time I got close. 

If I wasn't careful, I'd lose it for good.

This marked the beginning of many soul-conversations sessions with myself. I knew teaching was where I needed to be in that moment, but what about in a year? Two? Five? Was staying up late grading papers and wishing I could write going to fulfill me forever? 

Absolutely not.

It was as if in that singular moment the realization of where I was and where I wanted to be catapulted me into a new reality where I was clinging to my one thing for all its worth. For the first time, I believed in my calling.

I went home and started writing my novel that evening. A month later I had 55,000 words toward a complete story. Three years later, I sat in a Barnes and Noble and signed copies for strangers.

I started incorporating the importance of story—and living your story—into my lesson plans at school. Students left my classroom saying, "if we learned anything, it's that our stories are important..."

I went to a conference on STORY and in the spring when I took part in a storytelling class, both personal and written, for my church's get trained program I realized my purpose: taking my knowledge of writing and inspiration out of the classroom and into the church. 

I just had no idea it would be behind the computer screen.

Voicing my dreams—however crazy—is the one thing that kept my necessity limp and dangling from my jaw.

So I keep doing it, however far-fetched they seem. Last year, I had no idea I would be here - speaking into you and your dreams and holding high the banner for women and their freedom. It took a friend looking me in the eye and telling me these dreams were worth the risk for me to understand my heart beats a certain way for a reason.

Let me do this for you?

I'm reaching over and grabbing hold of your hand. Those dreams? They matter. Even the ones that seem sort of nebulous and hanging in the balance of reality. The way you move, the way you react, the way you light up: it all matters.

A few months ago, starting a business seemed not only impossible, but ridiculous. Foolish. Not for me. 

Until I sat down, listened to my dreams, and realized it was exactly what my heart wanted to do. Coupling writing + inspiring others to live out their best story? Done. I'm there. 

And I couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

This comes from my 30 days to finding your one thing. Want in on daily prompts+inspiration? Sign up here.