Ok, I know. Blogs are so 2000. But I am not about making videos of myself. I don’t really even like to facetime or video chat. Words are my thing, and even though they are sadly becoming an outdated medium, they are still my medium of choice.

I’m a little old school. I still prefer a paper book to an e-reader. Though I have an e-reader because it’s way more convenient for travel. I still have a paper planner too…. though I keep track of some things in my phone. I think I’m just a stereotypical x-ennial, not really a millenial, not a generation x-er either. I’m happily right there in the middle of progressive and nostalgic.

Call it what you will, it feels like balance to me.

Balance is something that tends to allude me. As a full time therapist, full time wife, full time mommy to a toddler, supervisor, friend, daughter….I live out a lot of pieces of myself and still have to maintain some piece that is just me. It feels like something I am always working toward and never quite getting.

I think it’s because in my head, all these are different pieces of me, when in reality I AM all these pieces. It may sound the same, but the latter is a more integrative identity, where I am all these pieces instead of having to make space for all these pieces to be part of me.

Tomato, to-mah-to….

The same semantic difference also applies to how I look at therapy, and really, the world. We are shaped by the things that happen to us, but our identity is the sum of all the things and how we decide they fit into our story. We get to assign meaning to the experiences we have. We just don’t usually know, or feel capable of, that power when the experiences we are going through are traumatic or hard.

I have an intensive therapy practice called “Out of the Ashes,” and it’s name comes from my favorite way to describe redemption…. the best part of our identity.

Isaiah 61:3 “…to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair”.

There is a lot of debate about whether mental health and faith belong together. There’s disagreement from both sides – the therapists and from the churches. I find myself in the middle, yet again, unable to see how they could not flow out of each other.

But that’s my lens and that’s a story for another day.

The question I am asked most often, as a clinician and as a Christian, is some version of “why do bad things happen?” “If God were real, if He were good, why would he let X, Y, Z happen?”

I don’t even pretend to know all the answers to that question. As a therapist, I hear and see the very worst every day. I know that evil is real. And…… I also get to see healing, redemption and things learned that never would have been if that bad thing hadn’t happened. Does this mean the trauma is worth it? No, I don’t really think so.

What I think it does mean, is that purpose can be brought out of destruction. Hope can be sifted out of the darkness. Beauty can rise up out of ashes…. and beauty can rise up because of the ashes.

Ashes in Biblical times were symbols of mourning, sorrow or regret. People would wear sackcloth and cover themselves in ashes or sit in ashes. Today, I see ashes as those hard, bad, gut wrenching times that bring us to our lowest or most painful place. As a trauma therapist, I’d call those times of trauma.

The world if full of ash. So. Much. Ash.

And God is bigger.

His power is shown when beauty is made from ashes. The absence of bad things, never has and never will be the proof positive of an Almighty Creator. How much more powerful is it to take these bad things and create something beautiful out of it? It is the miracle born of tragedy that seems the most revealing of God’s power, grace and love, to me.

He has always been a God of process. There’s a focus today in some church on instantaneous healing, that the bigger the faith and the bigger the God, the bigger and quicker the miracle. God is big either way, but sometimes the only way we humans can learn what we need to is through a process.

So, it’s all real and it’s all part of who we are. Our identity, rooted in Christ, flows out of it all. I am a mom, and I am a therapist. And when they are in balance, being a mom makes me a better therapist and being a therapist makes me a better mom…. because I am fully embracing all the parts of ME. My life has had some ash and it has had some beauty and I can embrace all of it as part of my story. I lean on my faith and I have awareness of my mental health. They are different, but flow in and out of each other.

Who we are is not based on one hat we wear, one experience we lived, one thing we have been told or one single relationship we invest in. Who we are is all those things, and most importantly, the beauty that we choose to glean from it.

This blog will venture into the different pieces of me: Mom, Wife, Therapist, Christian, coffee….. some things I know something about…. others I know nothing and will just process out my lostness, ha.

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s the importance of community and healthy conversation. Because we saw what happens when neither exist. I hope this will be safe place of laughter, tears, hard questions and the silliness that exists when there is a toddler present, ha. Reach out with your comments or things you want discussed.

Welcome!