Today I’m pretty excited to share with you some wise words from my dear friend Emily Wierenga.  Em and I have held hands across miles through lost babies and broken dreams and cheered for one another when God has brought new dreams from the ashes of scorched places.  Emily is a true friend, a kindred heart, and a beautiful writer who’s words are always balm to my soul.  She has a new book releasing this month called “Making It Home” and I can’t say enough good things about this woman or the way her heart beats to bring healing to broken spots.  It is my great pleasure to welcome Emily to my corner of the web today.

“The heartbeat is fast—166 beats per minute,” the technician told me a week ago in the blue hush of the ultrasound room. “Is that good?” I said. “Oh yes, that’s very good—very strong.” Then he told me to hold my breath and I did, and then released as he played back the sound he’d just recorded—the beautiful “ba-boom, ba-boom” of life, its fluid line sketched across the screen and the baby’s arms and legs kicking like tiny sticks on a peanut. Our child was two centimeters—just over an inch, at 9 weeks, 2 days old. Due March 14, 2015. “It’s implanted perfectly—it’s got a beautiful place in your uterus. It’s very comfortable,” he said, smiling at me, knowing this was my fifth pregnancy but only the third to make it this far. And finally I let myself smile back. My baby was comfortable. My body was making a home for this little one, and the insides of my soul relaxed. And for a moment it felt like the past year and a half of trying for, and then conceiving and miscarrying and then grieving and trying again–trying to conceive for nearly 12 months—it was all worth it. Because after losing a couple of babies, you learn—even as you take folic acid and prenatal pills and progesterone to protect the conception—you learn also to protect your heart. Trent was sitting with me on the bed in the dimly lit room—our baby dancing on the screen. He looked over and his fingers played with mine. And it didn’t just feel like another baby—who was alive and comfortable and growing well. It felt like God saying, “See how I keep my promises—even when they look different than you expected.” The past year has been a test to our faith. We got pregnant last April, and I didn’t know I was pregnant until one night I heard God say, “Don’t drink anymore,” because I’d had a glass of wine that evening. “You’re pregnant,” I heard God say, and the next day I took the test, and I was. I don’t take hearing God’s voice lightly but it’s a still small whisper which started back when I was in high school, and the more I read his Word, the more I recognize his voice. Trent and I were deliriously happy for two months, because a year earlier we’d both had a vision of another child joining our family. Up until that point we’d been happy with our two boys (and two foster boys at the time made it a full house). And then, the blood. And the cramping and the clots and the sitting very still trying not to move just in case you can somehow stop the dying. And all the time, me hearing God say that our baby would live—in that same small voice, and us, believing, until I was in the hospital room and the sac slipped into the toilet. When the nurse came out holding the sac of our child, God vanished. A flash of light, and He was gone. My faith has never felt more like an abandoned store, all boarded up, a “for rent” sign in the window. And I’m not sure I would have ever opened up those windows if it hadn’t been for an email waiting for me when I got home, from a friend who hadn’t known I’d miscarried—a prophetic friend whom I trust with all my heart. “God placed you near my heart this morning, and He held you there so very tenderly,” she wrote. “And He wants you to know that everything He said to you is true. It may not make sense right now, but He has not lied to you. He will fulfill His promises.” That day in the ultrasound room, our peanut swishing across the screen to the thump, thump, thump of life—like horses galloping—I felt His promises wrap around me. And friend, I want to reassure you that He will fulfill the words He has spoken to you as well. It may not make sense right now. Your faith might feel like that abandoned building. But God does not play tricks with us. You can trust Him. He does allow us to walk through fires, and floods, and earthquakes and famines, yes, but He is right there with us, going through all of it at our side, because He cares. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He delights in you, sings over you, and desires to quiet you with His love. And we can say with confidence—we, a throng of women on bended knee—“I will wait for the Lord—to show his goodness in the land of the living.”   (I’m celebrating the release of my new memoir, Making It Home: Finding My Way To Peace, Identity and Purpose. Get your copy HERE!)   What does it mean to be a woman and to make a home? Does it mean homeschooling children or going to the office every day? Cooking gourmet meals and making Pinterest-worthy home décor? In Making It Home: Finding My Way to Peace, Identity, and Purpose, author and blogger Emily Wierenga takes readers on an unconventional journey through marriage, miscarriage, foster parenting and the daily struggle of longing to be known, inviting them into a quest for identity in the midst of life’s daily interruptions. Releasing September 2015; order HERE. Proceeds benefit Emily’s non-profit, The Lulu Tree.     Sign up for the FREE Making It Home webcast featuring Liz Curtis Higgs, Holley Gerth, Jennifer Dukes Lee and Jo Ann Fore (with Emily Wierenga as host), 8 pm CT on September 10, 2015, HERE (http://eepurl.com/bqa8fX). Once you sign up you’ll be automatically entered for a giveaway of each of the author’s books!   Emily T. Wierenga is an award-winning journalist, columnist, artist, author, founder of The Lulu Tree and blogger at www.emilywierenga.com. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Relevant, Charisma, Desiring God, The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, Dayspring’s (in)courage and Focus on the Family. She is the author of six books including the travel memoir Atlas Girl and speaks regularly about her journey with anorexia. She lives in Alberta, Canada, with her husband, Trenton, and their children. For more info, please visit www.emilywierenga.com. Find her on Twitter or Facebook.

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a guest around these parts, but I’m happy to welcome back my friend Claire Diaz-Ortiz sharing about her new book today that releases today!  Wise words to make the most of our lives.  We all want to look back and have led a life that is full and hopeful, and Claire has some pretty neat practices that are simple enough to help us pinpoint just how we make sure we’re living the life that we want!

Thanks Claire for popping by!

The concept of evaluating your days is not new. Many productivity gurus tout its wisdom, and emphasize its place in our lives. It works because it makes sense. It’s a small thing you can do that makes a big difference.

If we don’t have a goal, we’ll never get where we want to go. And if we don’t stop and evaluate where we are, we’ll never know if we’re there.

In the spirit of small life hacks that make a big difference, I can’t stress enough the importance of looking back and asking:

What was the best thing I did today?

You might be intrigued, and surprised, by some of the answers. Yes, it might be the obvious: “When I ate chocolate ice cream,” or “When I watched the game.”

But it might also be something more unexpected. “When I read for five minutes in the waiting room,” or “When I was running and it started raining,” or “When I played with my daughter when she woke up at three a.m..” Whatever it is, this question aims to help you figure out if you can do more of that thing in order to make every day better.

Now, I don’t stop there, and I typically go further to ask another question:

What was the best thing I did last week?

And,

What was the best thing I did last month?

If you ask yourself these simple questions, you’re bound to find out some unexpected, and illuminating things about yourself and the ways you spend your time. Most important, you’ll see some guideposts to how you should be better spending your time in the future. I’m a fan for doing this with great regularity, and what I find most amazing about this practice is that it isn’t hard or scientific, but it is immediately rewarding.

By simply looking at a week’s worth of days tracked, I can see what it is that I like doing most, and what I should be doing more of. By expanding that – and looking at a whole month’s worth – I learn even more. How am I really spending my days and how to I want to be spending them better?

Simple tracking can lead to simple changes.

About Claire

Claire Diaz-Ortiz is an author, speaker and Silicon Valley innovator who was an early employee at Twitter. Named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company, she holds an MBA and other degrees from Stanford and Oxford and has been featured widely in print and broadcast media. She writes a popular blog at ClaireDiazOrtiz.com and is the author of several books. The above is an adapted excerpt from her latest book, The Better Life: Small Things You Can Do Right Where You Are.

I’m thrilled to pieces to host my sweet friend Emily Weirenga today as she shares a bit from her new book, one which I had the privilege of reading curled up by a fire in the mountains a few months ago.  I love it!  Her writing is beautiful, and the story is one that transported me around her life with her.  I think you’ll love it too!  So please join me in welcoming, Emily today!

Atlas Girl (& Memoir Giveaway!)

By Emily T .Wierenga

Mum had said to sit close to the bus driver, so I sat as far away as possible.

And now an Ojibway man in a red bandana and stubble cheek was snoring on my shoulder.

He smelled like communion wine, the kind my father served in plastic cups which we slid empty into the pew’s tiny cup holders.

He smelled like beer, like the late August summers when I was entering puberty, cleaning up the Corn Fest fairgrounds in my Sunday dress with my family. The beer cans all clanging like empty songs against each other in their black garbage bags, and it was what good Christians did. Cleaned up after sinners’ parties and marched in pro-life rallies and it was always us, versus them. And all I ever wanted was to be them.

But always, we were taught to be kind to them, and so I let this man sleep on my shoulder in the Greyhound bus headed west while I tucked up my legs and tried to shrink inside my 18-year-old frame.

Tried to close my eyes against the cold of the window but it had been two days since I’d hugged my younger brother, Keith, and my sisters, Allison and Meredith; since Mum—whose name is Yvonne, which means beautiful girl— had held me to her soft clean cotton shirt and her arms had said all of the words she’d never been able to voice.

The Reverend Ernest Dow, or Dad, had loaded my cardboard boxes full of Value Village clothes onto the bus and kissed me on the cheek and smiled in a way that apologized. I was the eldest, and I was the first to leave. But then again, I’d left long before getting on that bus.

I’d slid my guitar, then, beside the cardboard boxes, its black case covered in hippie flower stickers and the address for the Greyhound depot in Edmonton, 40 hours away.

And we still weren’t there yet, and I hoped there would be mountains.

I should know, I thought. I should know whether or not there will be mountains.

My parents had raised us to believe in God, to believe in music, and to believe in travel.

We’d visited Edmonton as children, piled into our blue Plymouth Voyager and we’d driven from Ontario to California, no air conditioning, living off crusty bun sandwiches and tenting every night.

And there was Disneyland and the ocean and me nearly drowning because I was all rib. My body too tired to care. And we’d traveled home through Canada, through Edmonton, but all I remembered was the mall. West Edmonton Mall and how it had hurt me to walk its miles, thin as I was.

I was hospitalized soon after that trip. The submarine sandwiches hadn’t been enough to fill the cracks. But oh, how my parents taught us to love the open road. We caught the bug young, and here I was, and I couldn’t remember where the Rockies began and ended.

I scratched at the night as though it were frost on my window, but all I could see were the bright yellow lines on the highway, like dashes in a sentence, like long pauses that never ended.

***

This is an excerpt from my new memoir, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look, releasing July 1^st through Baker Books.

As Logan says in her review, “I’m not sure if Emily Wierenga’s Atlas Girl is poetry or prose, or just deserves it’s own category of lovely word crafting, but what I do know is that it is transporting. Her gifted weaving of time and place and story captivated me from the first page and held on to me as I floated, fully engaged, throughout the entire book. Emily said, ‘We don’t live for ourselves. We live for all of those whom our lives touch,’ and her arms reach out and touch the life of the reader as she shares the intersection of people and God in her own life. Cheering, clapping, loving this book and the woman who has borne her soul amidst the pages.”

~ Logan Lane Wolfram, executive director and owner of Allume; author of Life for Dessert

From the back cover:

“Disillusioned and yearning for freedom, Emily Wierenga left home at age eighteen with no intention of ever returning. Broken down by organized religion, a childhood battle with anorexia, and her parents’ rigidity, she set out to find God somewhere else–anywhere else. Her travels took her across Canada, Central America, the United States, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. She had no idea that her faith was waiting for her the whole time–in the place she least expected it.

“Poignant and passionate, Atlas Girl is a very personal story of a universal yearning for home and the assurance that we are known, forgiven, and beloved. Readers will find in this memoir a true description of living faith as a two-way pursuit in a world fraught with distraction. Anyone who wrestles with the brokenness we find in the world will love this emotional journey into the arms of the God who heals all wounds.”

I am excited to give away a copy of ATLAS GIRL today! Just leave a comment below to win.

Click HERE for a free excerpt.

I’m also giving away a FREE e-book to anyone who orders Atlas Girl. Just order HERE, and send a receipt to: atlasgirlbookreceipt@gmail.com, and you’ll receive A House That God Built: 7 Essentials to Writing Inspirational Memoir — an absolutely FREE e-book co-authored by myself and editor/memoir teacher Mick Silva.

ALL proceeds from Atlas Girl will go towards my non-profit, The Lulu Tree. The Lulu Tree is dedicated to preventing tomorrow’s orphans by equipping today’s mothers. It is a grassroots organization bringing healing and hope to women and children in the slums of Uganda through the arts, community, and the gospel.

Emily T. Wierenga is an award-winning journalist, blogger, commissioned artist and columnist, as well as the author of five books including the memoir,Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look (Baker Books). She lives in Alberta, Canada with her husband and two sons. For more info, please visit www.emilywierenga.com. Find her on Twitter or Facebook.

I spend lots of my time focusing on equipping and training women to use their voices for the Kingdom of God in my job at Allume.  It’s a privilege to see women steward their resources and abilities to share the message of Jesus.  But primarily, Allume rounds up a group of women ranging in ages from about 25-60.  Not to say that there aren’t younger voices present, but it’s just not the bulk of what I’m dealing in on a daily basis.

So when one of our all-time favorite babysitters, Chloe, told me recently what she was doing at her high school, I just wanted to give nod to the next generation who are setting the world on fire for Jesus too.

And you know what, I just think it’s worth celebrating what one young woman I love is doing!

I think it’s worth sharing about this in Chloe’s own words.

Ignite began as a dream I had over the summer, which at the time I thought was unattainable. However, God has shown me that through Him all things are possible. I have known this from childhood, but to see Him actually apply this elementary teaching in such a huge way in my life renders me speechless.

I am a Co-President of Solid Rock, a small Christian organization at Hillcrest High School in Simpsonville, SC. We meet on Friday mornings to worship, pray, and hear teachings from local youth pastors. I’m not sure how to express this in so many words, but the atmosphere of Hillcrest is dark. Our goal is to change that, but with a force of so few it feels impossible. That’s where the dream comes in. I dreamt that we could host the original founder of Solid Rock, Clayton King, in our school in an event that would bring Christians and non-Christians together and serve as the impetus behind a radical culture change in our school.

Fast forward a few months, and I was babysitting for a pastor in the area. He inquired after Solid Rock and I told him about my dream as a wish that would be great but not reachable. To my surprise, he brought out his cell phone and insisted that I call Clayton and ask him himself. Mr. King immediately responded to me with an emphatic “yes.” That “yes” was echoed by my friends, my teachers, my principal, my church, other churches, and people I had never met before, when I began to share what was going to

Today, there is an Ignite team of youth pastors and student leaders that meet together to plan our event. So far thirty churches around Upstate SC have pledged support. Ignite will take place on May 18 at 6 pm at Hillcrest High School in Simpsonville, SC. We will have bands, iPad giveaways, t-shirts, anything that will make this event exciting for people in attendance.

Our goal for this event is to see thousands attend and hundreds receive Christ. We have a capacity for 5,000 on one side of our football stadium. Through this event, I want to change our school. I want to change our city and I want to change the lives of the broken people that I see every day in the hallway. However, making a one-time decision is not enough. We speak the name “Ignite” as a projection of how this will affect the lives of the students attending, but we also know that fire has the tendency to die out. This is where the local church comes in. After decisions are made, we will have the students fill out decision cards, and distribute the cards among the churches that are closest to the particular student. It will then be up to that youth group to provide a welcoming

Although I know that God will ultimately provide, hosting Clayton King and bands and iPads and t-shirts and promotions has proven somewhat costly. We are looking at over $5,000. But I know that God is a God of abundance and He will do way more than just cover our expenses. Your church can support Ignite by giving directly to Solid Rock and designating “Ignite.” Please bring your youth group and friends to our event. Promote it to other churches. But most importantly, pray for us.

Long term, I have no idea where God will take Ignite. Some of my fellow Ignite leaders want to see it become a non-profit organization, taking Ignite from school to school. I am just happy to have played my small role in what God is doing to build His kingdom here in the Golden Strip area.

Can I get a standing ovation for the power of perseverance?  For the initiative taken by a few students…STUDENTS!  I not only want to celebrate what God is doing in the lives of the next generation, but I’d love to ask you to come alongside and support them as well.  Pray, encourage, attend (if you’re in Upstate SC), and prayerfully consider giving to support these students as they seek to ignite their own generation for Jesus as well!

Way to go Chloe! I’m so proud of you!!!

**If anyone wants to donate, it’s super old school with a check sent to Hillcrest High School, ATTN: Jill Ball (the Solid Rock sponsor). The check should be made out to Solid Rock Club specified for “Ignite.”  

Re-entry from a life-changing trip can be hard.

Hard… because the moment I walk through my door, my real life hat with all its responsibilities sits firmly on my head again. Carpools, dinner, kissing boo boos, parenting, and decision making…they don’t wait for jet lag to be gone to come flooding back over me.

It’s a flinging back into reality with little to no time for recovery from the emotional investments and drains of a trip that settled me square in the middle of a 7 hour time difference.  It is beautiful to return home, but it doesn’t come without challenges.

We come home and life goes on…

And while I know that I am different returning home from the past 10 days in Uganda, there has to be at least some tangible remain in my thinking…a take-away, so to speak.

One of the beautiful things about a blogging and writing trip is also the thing that often proves to be one of the most difficult. To experience full investment in the moment… to analyze, and turn it around into a coherent and thoughtful post that invites people along (all within about 15 hours) is a stretching, but rewarding process.

Oftentimes in foreign travel, people return home and process for weeks and months to come, but on a writing trip, it is really different because we have to process at least a couple of solid nuggets every single day. We have to learn to extract the lessons and key thoughts, pray and study into them, and regurgitate the takeaways almost immediately.

It is super challenging, but also extremely rewarding to see God continue to give pieces of himself in this way every day.

I’ve been thinking, that I’d like to be more intentional about doing the same thing at home.

One of my BlogHope teammates said the other day that she wasn’t sure she would have time for the same type of thinking every day at home, and I found myself pondering more on the idea of daily nuggets.

For us in Africa, we were removed from household chores, carpools, work, friends, and family, so it’s easier to clear away the clutter to see into the lessons.

But, how much greater would it be for us to learn to seek those nuggets of growth in daily life? When monotonous repetition takes over and piles of laundry are endless, to train my mind to look for the takeaways of my day…to cultivate a mindset of noticing all of the individual moments and lessons, that combined, form a whole day.

I wonder how much more growth I can experience in not just my writing, but in my daily living, when I spend time thinking into the learning moments…the wrecking moments…the profound moments…and the repetitive moments of my life?

Re-entry can be hard, but I find myself wondering if what we miss so much when we come home is really about a loss of life-changing experience, or about the loss of time we spend engaging in our own heart’s learning process?

I wrote the following before we left Africa.  Internet was spotty when we got back to the Sole Hope House from the Nile River Camp so I ran out of time to post, but I wanted to leave Uganda with these parting thoughts… to leave you with these thoughts…

I’m beyond grateful that you have journeyed with my the past couple of weeks as the eyes of my heart have been opened to see God in a new way.

I’m sitting at a picnic table right now, looking out over the Nile River. Thinking on this time we’ve had and what I’m taking home with me…on what I want to leave you with as I leave this place.

Uganda has wormed its way into my being.

There is also a real possibility that after rope-swinging into the Nile River yesterday, actual worms could have worked their way into my body as well.

The price of adventure I suppose… the price of living with no regrets.

I am different because of my time here.

Of all the hardship that I have seen here…of the tears I’ve shed, and difficultly I’ve swallowed, I need you to know that is not all that I leave knowing of this incredible place.

I leave Uganda with a heart full of hope.

I know the beauty of a land and the beauty of a people that has imprinted my soul.

I am marked by the contagious joy of Betty, Joyce, and Diana who work in the Sole Hope Guest House cooking, cleaning, and tending to the people staying.

I am touched by the kindness of Paul, who serves Sole Hope in Jinja during the week and returns to his family in Kampala on the weekends.

I’m moved by the generosity of Dickson, who at 24 years old and single, has taken in 5 orphans and pays for their school, teaches them how to paint, and gives them hope for a brighter future.

I find myself in awe of Teddy and Lillian who put their nursing skills to work removing jigger after jigger from the tiny feet of the children here… loving and mothering so many who have no mother of their own.

I’m heartbroken for cheerful 12 year-old Dan who was abandoned by his family just 3 weeks ago at the Sole Hope house. Sweet Dan, who stood in court just this week to witness the testimony of his father as he said “I don’t want Dan anymore.”  Grateful for Dan…who’s joy is contagious despite the hardship of his young life.

I’m energized by Noonday artisan, Jalia who came to visit us, who’s passion for empowering Ugandan women to feel belonging and responsibility opens doors for real social change.

I’m humbled by the servant hearts of Sole Hope founder Asher Collie and her husband Dru, and of Elisabeth Michal, who left the comforts of long hot showers and personal security in the US to love well the people in front of them here in Uganda. To bend low and raise high the name of our generous Jesus.

I’m in awe of our creative God who varies landscapes across the globe. Our God, who enriches the soil of a land so that it burns with colors of red dirt and lush greenery. Who populates one impoverished country with over 40% of the variety of birds of an entire continent because he oozes with generosity and blessing.

I’m in awe of the kindness of our God to love his people no matter the circumstances. Who burdens hearts with the care of his children across oceans and borders. Who appoints his beloved to humility of service in foot washing and insect removal. Our God who shows off in the smiles of healed children and restored hope.

I am in awe of my God in Africa… and my heart will bring home the new knowledge of Him that has been revealed to me here. He is no different, but He has allowed me to experience other parts of his character that enrich my faith, and encourage my heart in greater understanding of His goodness.

I am ready to see my family.  I’m ready to return to my familiar… but I leave knowing that even the familiar will look different because of what the Lord has done in my heart in Africa. The more that I see in this world, the more that I long to walk this life wide-eyed in awe of my Jesus.

And behold, there were two blind men sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” The crowd rebuked them, telling them to be silent, but they cried out all the more, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” And stopping, Jesus called them and said, “What do you want me to do for you?” They said to him, “Lord, let our eyes be opened.” And Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him. – Matthew 20:30–34