It was our final night of the trip in a national park. (We would still have our travel home ahead, but this was the last night at one of the “big” stops.) I was doing all my regular campsite evening routines (putting away extra things in the bear box, boiling water to wash our faces and wash dishes, making the coffee for the next morning) when the unsolicited tears began. God had designed a nighttime display of pure beauty on this final evening. It was a cool, quiet night. A brilliant round moon silhouetted the Rocky Mountains, the dark blanketed sky was littered with stars. It was holy. Breathtaking. It felt like an incredibly divine, personal gift to us.

A sacred benediction.

The more I focused on the reality of these being the final routines of our final night, the heavier the tears fell. The more I grasped the perfect timing of this glorious nighttime display, the wetter my face became.

I have had surprising tears on this adventure: when we crossed the California state line, when I saw Half Dome at sunset, when the blue sky suddenly appeared, revealing the Grand Tetons. I have felt God’s lavish love for me in many small ways. But on this night, the tears were spilling over from a bucket drawn from a deeper well. When Chris realized I was crying, he walked over and I collapsed into his arms, sobbing. We embraced under the dark sky. We stood there, holding the month of memories, the experiences, the moment. I pulled myself together a bit and we sat on the picnic table, looking up at the sky in complete silence, tears continuing to fall.

As a therapist, I gently invite my clients to learn to be curious about what they feel and begin to name their emotions. Naming gives us understanding. Curiosity keeps us out of judgement and criticism of what we feel. I began to try to verbalize and practice curiosity in that moment. There was not ONE source for the emotion. It was a complex melting pot. I felt gratitude. Joy. Sadness. Awe. Delight. Love. And some uncertainty. The uncertainty seemed to be adding a messy piece to the puzzle, requiring me to lean in with a bit of patient curiosity.

The uncertainty I was feeling comes from some silly pressure I put on myself to come back with big revelations or clear answers about “stuff” in my life. I have been wrestling for a long time with my specific place/role in ministry and church life, along with a few foggy career aspirations. I have been caught in a philosophical/theological dilemma in my mind for the past several years and it has intensified recently. I feel caught, often held back because of it. I wanted God to “tell me exactly what to do” when I get back after the trip. But the Jesus I’ve grown to love doesn’t work in such tidy ways. He doesn’t always give us clear answers. This is why Hebrews tells us He is pleased with our faith. We have to stop acting like we can know exactly what God is telling us “to do” and make room for uncertainty. And wonder. And mystery.

On one of our hikes as Chris and I were teasing out my philosophical dilemma, I looked up at a brilliant display of beauty, and it hit me! GOD IS NOT STUCK in my dilemma! He is not caught in my either/or. He is not confused. So, if I live in His love and in His delight, I am free from this dilemma because He is free! He is not bound. I am not bound. This does not give me specific answers, but it takes away my fear of getting it wrong and sets me free to live in delight and wonder.

Back to the picnic table.

Back to our sacred benediction.

As I sat there, feeling this crazy cocktail of emotion, the beauty reminded me of the grandness of God. It reminded me that God is not stuck. I felt held. I felt uncertain, yet unafraid. And I felt gratitude in a way I had never before experienced. The well my emotional bucket had dipped down into was the infinite well of the love of God. It is the deepest of wells. It is wider. It is higher. It is longer. No one who cranks down their bucket into this well will come up empty. NO ONE. And one small splash of that water can set us all alive. And set us free.

You are free, dear one.

Dip your bucket into that well and you will find how beloved and loved you are.

Below are some book, video, and podcast recommendations. I will keep adding them as we continue to move through COVID-19. My blog post with my COVID- specific videos and resources can be found on the Blog/Resources page.

Anxiety and Depression

The Anxiety Cure

Dr. Caroline Leaf

The Dance of Fear

Try Softer

The Upward Spiral

Trauma

Waking the Tiger

The Body Keeps the Score

Suffering and the Heart of God

EMDR Therapy

relationships

The Dance of Connection

Boundaries

Brene Brown speaking on The Power of Vulnerability and Listening to Shame

Allender Center Podcast

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Emotionally Healthy Relationships

Dialectical Behavioral Workbook

In February, I had the absolute honor to sit with a dear friend, Amy McGee, to record a podcast on the topic of anxiety and stress for floral designers. This was a “pre-COVID-19” conversation, which of course means it feels like it was recorded YEARS ago! But it is astounding how our conversation seems even more applicable now that it did when we recorded in February.

It is hard to describe Amy McGee with one simple phrase; she defies a simplistic introduction. She is a respected and highly influential blogger in the floral industry, a fierce advocate (Pay it Forward), a nurturing soul, a vision-caster, a floral designer, host of a floral industry podcast, creative entrepreneur, a radical and inclusive lover of all people. She is all those things, plus I have the privilege off calling her a dear friend. My kids and Amy’s kids (well, they are all adults now!) grew up together and our hubbies are the best of friends. In a season of life when our family felt silenced and alone, Amy was our voice of truth. She moves into the lives of people with courage, beauty, and kindness.

Amy is a warm place to land when the world feels cold.

Find out more about Handling Anxiety

This conversation was recorded to address to issues of anxiety in the floral industry. Amy had some questions for me to help those in her field, but this 25 minute conversation is rich and applicable for ANYONE who has struggled with anxiety, no matter where you work or what your life looks like right now.

Click here to tune in to this life-giving conversation.

You can find more about Amy and her blog, Botanical Brouhaha, here.

BELOW ARE RESOURCES I DEVELOPED SPECIFICALLY FOR COPING AND DEALING WITH COVID-19.

I have linked the PDF of each resource, as well as the spontaneous (and unedited!) videos covering each topic.

• This sheet will help you work through the grief and loss of what was “normal” since the onset of the pandemic. The video explanation is here.

• Journal to the “future you” about what this experience has been like using the COVID-19 Time Capsule tool. Here is the link for that video on watching out for numbing behaviors as well as the need to reflect on what we may be learning during this time.

• We all have to change our expectations during this time. This sheet will walk you through how to lower expectations of what is “reasonable” during the pandemic.

• Social isolation, fear of illness, and economic uncertainties can take a toll on mental and emotional health. This tool is to help you maintain what I call Gritty Self-Care during the Coronavirus pandemic. Here is the link for the video for the above two resources.

• Two-part Zoom call by You Are Conference, talking through some of the ramifications of COVID-19. Part 1 and Part 2.

I hope you find these resources helpful! Let me know if you have any thoughts or feedback!

♥ Christine Hoover, MA, LPC, NCC

I had the privilege of being interviewed by Dr. Richard Rogers from University Heights Baptist Church recently, covering the topic of how COVID-19 is affecting family relationships and how the anxiety and uncertainity is affecting each of us.

The interview was edited to be a part of the Sunday morning live feed.

Our full interview is here.

Shutting your brain off can provide some rest in certain situations, but it’s just one of the seven forms of rest that help us to function as humans.

According to physician Saundra Dalton-Smith, M.D., author of Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Renew Your Sanity, humans need physical, mental, social, creative, emotional, spiritual, and sensory rest.

“Most people, when they think about rest, they have a very one-sided approach—they lounge around, don’t do anything, and think that’s what rest is,” Dalton-Smith tells Shine. “We try it, and then when we’re still rest-deprived we think it doesn’t work.” Molly Shea

Read more here about new ways to rest.

https://thepearlprojectcf.org/

Eye contact can be hard for children! And we often do this only when the chid is in trouble.

Build this skill by asking for eyes in a non-threatening and playful way. You should always try to get eye contact before you correct your child, but you should also ask for eyes in times of peace. Try this parenting challenge to create more connection in your parent-child relationship!

“The problem with an echo chamber is that we miss the opportunity to learn. I’m not suggesting that we abandon our values or opinions. What I’m saying is that opposing views can be surprisingly informative. And they can enrich our own understanding of issues that are important to us.” Roger Deane Duncan

Read more about how Escape the Bubble of only hearing from and leaning from people who agree with you.

Chris and I decided early on we were NOT going to sit around and dread the teen years while the kids were littles. We were careful to talk optimistically and hopefully about the years ahead. We worked to prioritize relationship over rules, fun over seriousness, connection over criticism. We had “family fun nights” during the elementary years, when we found playful and goofy ways to teach Scripture application and have times of family bonding.

Ice cream attack!

Yes, we squeezed toothpaste out of the tube, illustrating how our words cannot be put back in the tubes once they are spoken. (Eph. 4:29 “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs.”) We had surprise “ice cream attacks” when we would tuck the kids in bed, sneak back into their rooms, and pile them in the car to get ice cream in our pajamas. We had Barbarian Night, where we ate spaghetti with no knives, forks, or napkins. We all had full permission to plant our faces straight down into the spaghetti and make as big of a mess as we wanted. (Umm, I knew NOTHING of sensory issues back then. Poor Landon: the kid couldn’t even handle a sticker being placed on his skin as a toddler. He now tells me the meal was not only horrifying for him, but just on the brink of traumatizing.) Sorry Landon.🤷🏼‍♀️

We DO have a counseling budget for the kids.

Barbarian night at the Hoover house.

I designed and printed 100’s of after school charts with encouraging quotes, chores, and scripture memory verses. If one chore chart plan didn’t work, I would scramble to invent a new one. I had a faithful HPDeskJet 300 printer, a pirated copy of Microsoft Word, and a gigantic desktop computer. I would design a new chart with colorful clipart from my ClipArt CD collection. The charts featured handy-dandy shadow boxes for them to check off daily chores, homework, memory verses, and then there would some type of reminder for them to have a happy heart. {Yep, I flinched as I typed that. Enneagram 7 at work right there.} I have saved every last one of those silly charts. If you ever want to come over, we can sit and laugh together at my very heartfelt yet embarrassing collection of attempts to chart the little Hoovers into good behavior. I may need a glass of wine instead of cup of coffee for that tour de memory lane!

I remember hearing James Dobson from “Focus on the Family” say that the main goal for the teenage years should be to “get them through it.” As an over-zealous young mom, I thought that was such a low goal. I mean really? Just get them through? I can do way better than JUST get them through!

I will parent…

SUPER-Christian

SUPER-well behaved

SUPER-yes ma’am-ing

SUPER Bible-quoting

SUPER-responsible

SUPER-EXTRAORDINARY HUMANS.

I suppose you know what is coming next. Despite all of our zeal, and intentionality...

...all 3 of my sweet little Hoover babies, at some point in their pre-teen and teen years, turned into bratty, sullen, lying, grumpy, sneaky Hoover-beasts. I am not naming names, but with their permission, here is a short list:

Our little angels lied. They got busted sneaking on the roof of the church building, and yes, it just so-happened to be during a tense business meeting when their dad’s job was on the line. {Oh, the irony of timing.} They sent stupid text messages to people they shouldn’t have and found sneaky ways to use their cell phones when they were cellphone grounded for life. {If my book during the little years would have been, “Mommy, I Threw Your Bible in the Potty”, the teen book would have been, “Kids, I Threw your Cell Phones in the Toilet.”} One hid an empty Fire Ball whiskey bottle under the bed and a full Fire Ball bottle in the sock drawer. {Chris and I were pretty pumped with that discovery and we thanked said child for the booty!} They questioned and distanced themselves from their faith. Said embarrassing things about us on their Facebook statuses and blocked us from Twitter. One of them carefully removed his bedroom window screen to sneak around town and sneak back in. They gave us the most God-awful silent treatment on forced family bike rides. A couple of them dated people we didn’t like…

I think I’ll stop there.

Please know, this is not everyone’s story. This is our story. Some people have more turbulent years than others. Some have less. But in our story, the sad truth began to whack me upside the head like a shipment of hardback parenting books: the little beasts they turned into looked a whole lot like me and Chris. No matter what we do as parents, that apple, even with all of our noble parenting skilz, will not fall far from that STUPID tree.

Some of you have kids that did the exact opposite of you and that puzzles you to no end. Some of you ARE the kid and you are wondering why you did the dumb things you did. And some of you might be more put together than me, so when your child turned out like you, that is a pretty darn good thing.

But this was not something I particularly enjoyed seeing. I tend to be rebellious, stubborn, I doubt my faith more than I'd like to admit, I am a pretty good liar, I gossip when I know I should have shut my mouth. I still pile my clothes on the floor, church annoys the fire of out me a lot of the time, I have hundreds of brainstorms about my life purpose I never follow through on, I want to HULK out when systems seem oppressive or bathed in tradition for no reason. I’m stupid competitive. I hate people telling me what to do.

You see, Soul Adventurers, I wanted to chore-chart the ME of them, preach the ME out of them, memorize-Scripture the ME out of them. Turns out that their teenage years had way more to do with what God was teaching me about ME than what God was teaching them.

I had some of my own Soul Adventuring to do.

From my current vantage point, I see more of what He is up to in my life than I ever have. You see friends, that stuff I was trying to Jesus OUT OF them is something JESUS is actually using in me. I can certainly testify to the transforming power of His grace to convict me and change me. But I’m still ME. All the good and bad and messy that entails. I can see how He is using and still transforming my same-ol' rough-edged tendencies.

A couple of years ago, He used my rebellious spirit to help me secretly and subversively advocate in session to help an emotionally-abused woman to find her voice and lovingly stand against her husband’s arrogant demands for submission. He is allowing my college son to teach me to be a more gracious competitor by insisting I hug him after I’m pissed off for losing to him again in ping pong. {Legend has it, I may have actually thrown the paddle a time or two before he came in for the hug.} God is using my stubborn heart to tenaciously fight for a depressed, suicidal client to keep taking the next baby step. He is using my frustration with church to propel me to LOVE PEOPLE ANYWAY, no matter what I think about church, because relationships are always more important than church structure and politics. He is using my impulsivity to move me to take some risks without overthinking the what-ifs. He is using my tendency to want to gossip to instead untangle my thoughts through writing.

The truth is this: the immeasurable grace of God, through the boundless love of Christ, is still chasing me down. He is taking all of my embarrassing rough edges and turning them into something to spread the aroma of His fragrant love to people. Parenting in those years taught me first-hand about the log/speck thing that Jesus invites us to explore (Matt 7:3-5). I was obsessing over their speck and ignoring my own log. I wanted to control them as opposed to having the reckless love of God control me fully. No one, not even the really good kids, can make it though life without struggle, testing limits, hiding some things, challenging the status quo.

Our kids grew out of that teenager-beasty stage. I am so very proud of our kids. Not for just maturing out of a rough period or because of any perceived success in life or what they do. I am so proud of the love we have for each other. I am so proud that each of them have been able to hold space for Chris and me to vulnerably explain what we were up to then and what we have since learned. I’m proud that we can be different, we can disagree, we can say either YES or NO to each other. We are connected. But we are also separate people. They don't have to believe or think like me for me to love them. Oh, I want them to know of God's deep love from them, but we can talk openly about our questions concerning God, the crazy world we live in, church, and life without trying to convince each other of something. And I am proud of that. We take bike rides now that THEY initiate.

Soul Adventurers, I know your life story is very different from mine. It may be with or without a spouse, with or without kids, or any combination of those. And you have your share of pain. Don’t be fooled; those silly stories about our kids were extremely maddening and painful in the moment and they were not funny as they were happening. We had to grieve and hurt our way through it. But so can you. Jesus tells us the Father is always at work. And I believe it. He is holding on to you, so hold on through your disappointments, rejections, grief, life transitions, confusion. His love and grace are big enough for all of those rough edges that are exposed. And I’ve determined to show up with mine. And so can you, my Soul Adventuring friends.

Her fingers tell the whole story.

Proof of the permission to eat face first!