As my boy and girl race to the finish line of another school year, the fact that I have not visited my blog since they started back to school last September keeps coming to my attention. I guess I’ve been too busy stirring to string together words. Following a pretty harrowing summer last year, I spent a delicious couple of weeks just gulping in the silence around me. Finding relief in this stillness, I gave thanks that my boy and girl appeared to be successfully transitioning to the new school year and then proceeded to tackle the next set of goals on my to-do list.
From secretly devouring every last page of mixed-media art journals at B&N to signing-up for just about any art class that I could find and then going-on to create and sell my own art, I’ve done a LOT of learning and stretching over the past 5-6 years. So grateful for the life that was breathed back into my soul through this process, I felt a deep yearning to give back to other women who might be in need of restoration, too. That said, this Spring, I found myself on an airplane, flying across the country to Brave River Ranch in Idaho in order to become certified to teach a course called Soul Restoration. A course that combines art and soul work into one beautiful, life-changing curriculum.
It seems, in my journey to become whole again, that I’ve needed to gather a good measure of necessary ingredients: intense parenting lessons, self-awareness, forgiveness, art-making skills, courage, and acceptance, just to name a few. While I’ve spent a good amount of time gathering and honing these things individually, it is now time to begin stirring it all together. In her best-selling book, The Best Yes, Lisa Terkeurst describes the idea of plopping all the ingredients of an amazing cake recipe into a bowl and refusing to stir it:
There would be shiny yellow yolks on top of crisp white flour with a dab or two of brown from the vanilla. Little mounds of sugar would sit off to the side of the bowl along with the baking soda. The milk splashed on top would sink into the flour bottom. I would have a bowl full of potential that will never be if I don’t stir before baking. I’m not exactly sure what might happen if I just dumped this all into a pan and popped it into the oven, unstirred, but I know it wouldn’t come out right. (p.227)
This stirring process? This is where I am right now in my life. I could choose to dump all my wisdom into a pan and pop it into the oven, as is; however, I’m more likely to end-up with a whole, edible cake if I take the time to stir the experiences and the lessons that I’ve been learning together before moving-on to the next step. Stirring takes patience and effort. I think I’m done only to find a patch of flour unearthed at the bottom of the mixing-bowl. I alternate slow, laborious strokes with quick anticipation, sprinkling-in a handful of chocolate chips for extra-goodness. How is my cake going to turn-out? Will it fall in the middle? I am offered no guarantees that this cake will come-out looking or tasting good at all. What I have learned, though, is that I have to trust the process. And even if this particular cake doesn’t turn-out as I expect, I’ll likely gain whatever wisdom that I need to learn from the process and apply it to my next baking session. This baking thing is not for the faint of heart. It is a lifelong process.
The Blue Mug 
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