The Whole Kristen ca-Doodle

I love personality quizzes.   I recently became intrigued by the  Enneagram types , have been known to investigate my  Meyer-Briggs type , and even found out my  Hogwarts house .  You might think they are bologna or worthless, and you might be right.  But, I think they are insightful, reflective, thought-provoking, convicting, and frankly, fun.   I also love spiritual gift inventories, which I participated in during an adult study at church once upon a time, and in another study, some time later, I participated in a study about defining my faith.  Those things are life-changing, eye-opening, and somehow super comforting.  To be sitting in a place where you are really understanding what and why you believe what you do is incredibly peaceful, even when some of your answers are I don't know .  Furthermore, it allows you to more easily identify when or why those beliefs change.  I recommend taking that journey if you are ...

O Holy God, Our Creator and Sustainer, I ask you today to draw near to our community and hold us in your hand, tuck us under your wing, as our children go back to school. I pray that our children are encouraged, brave, bold, and compassionate. I pray that their school communities lift them up so high that can easily rise above the culture of bullying that has invaded our world. And, God, I pray for their safety, I pray that the violence that has permeated even our most innocent institutions will stop, not just here, but everywhere. I ask that you grant them a peaceful place of learning, where they are able to free their young minds from worry and fill those minds with learning. I ask for flexibility and understanding in their spaces of learning, and I pray that our children and their teachers know, truly know, that their worth is indeed not measured by any test score, and are heartened to strive for their best, without fear of comparison. God, especially hold new students and...

I Love My Body But I haven't always.  Beginning in 4th or 5th grade I remember being conscious of the size and shape of my body and convinced of its "unrightness."  Not a word; it is now; change approved.   Looking back of course, I can appreciate its beauty, my beauty, but back then, I just knew it didn't measure up (or down, as the case may be) to what I saw in magazines, on TV, or in movies.  I knew I wasn't pretty like my sister.  I knew, I knew, it wouldn't matter how smart or funny or all around rad I was, because I wasn't pretty enough, skinny enough, curvy enough, flawless enough.  Thanks, society, for that.   Coupled with a struggle with depression, my insecurities turned really quickly into body image issues, and when I was in high school, I became bulimic.  I learned all the tricks of the trade, I kid you not, from teen magazine articles that were supposed to be cautionary tales about eating disorders.  Instead, they bec...

Dear daughters, You are so incredibly loved, from your precious, sweet-smelling heads down to your less that sweet-smelling toes.  You two are absolutely my dream come true. But, here's the thing, sometime when you dream, you forget about the scary parts.  And, parenting has lots of scary parts.  Intermingled with the joy-filled, gut-busting laughing, tickly, snuggly parts, and the mom-look, stern-voiced, chore-enforcing parts, and the boo-boo soothing, lap-making, tear-wiping, comforting parts, and all the other delicious morsels that make up family life, are the parts that make parents (and guardians) scared and nervous. Because all we want is to experience you experiencing joy.  And we are scared because we know the reality is that life isn't all joy.  That it is up and down, and back and forth, and round and round.  We know that life is beautiful, but that it is also hard.  And the scariest thing is that we can't make it any easier for y...

“At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before.”  ―  Warsan Shire I was a member of one church my whole life.  Home and that church are where I learned about the incredible, overwhelming love of the Divine and about a man who was of God and who was God, (say what?) who showed us what it was like to love like the Divine.  (P.S.  I am talking about that radical dude, Jesus.)  Knowing that love, has literally saved my life (another story for another day), and knowing Jesus, has influenced my perspective on pretty much everything.  I will always and forever be grateful for that church and the people in it. Fast forward to the present, almost mid-way through my 4th decade here, that church didn't fit anymore.  I still loved the people, and God and Jesus, of course, buuuuuut, it stopped feeling like home.  Now, that was an incredible bummer because all my BIG LIFE things happened...