Sunset on a mountain lake at a campsite, virtually by ourselves? Fried potatoes and green beans and ham for dinner? Waking up to the glowing sunrise, beckoning us into another day of adventure? Let’s goooo!

A FULL day of hiking (24,000 steps) up to see glacier views perfectly reflected in the water, then through rainforests where surely the Elves lived? Hiking in freezing glacier waters through an old mining water tunnel from 1890, with glowworms tucked into the mountain walls? Trail after trail with water flowing and moving and pulsing through the landscape? You bet!

A day chatting and dreaming and giggling and staring up in awe at this picturesque landscape? My dream!

Another tucked away campsite, with tomato soup and grilled cheese for dinner? Game on!

Our first hot shower since leaving Texas? Ummmm, yes please!

Road-trips and camping require flexibility. Thankfully, Chris and I are a dynamic duo, boasting the superpower of being adaptable.

It was rainy and cold yesterday and today, making us flex our flex muscles. While looking for campsites, we decided our best bet was a not-so pretty campsite, but one with a shelter area for us to cook dinner, keeping us out of the downpour. Our tummies were full, bed made, and we were cuddled up by 6:30, sleeping till 5:00 am! We consider ourselves to be fully acclimated to New Zealand time now!

We hiked several trails in the rain today. Why buy raincoats and waterpoof hiking boots if we’re not going to use them, right?! Since we were up so early, we were on our first trail by 7:00 am! As only New Zealand can do, there is no way a rainstorm can spoil the views of this gorgeous land. The rain simply made it glow all the more! We kept expecting Frodo, Aragon, or Legolas to peek their heads out of the forests on our hikes!

Stayed tuned for our next adventure: it should be a good one!

The kea is New Zealand’s feisty parrot. It is famous for being inquisitive, intelligent, bold. The kea is a very playful, curious, and brave bird. The world’s only alpine parrot, it is known as the 'Clown of the Alps' to South Islanders. They say this bird is actually incredibly smart, but can sometimes even be quite naughty.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is our home for the next 12 days. . .

. . . painted from bumper to bumper in keas.

I mean, what are the chance WE would get the keas? The van rented before us was painted with pigs all over it; the van after was a mural of purple dragons. Please join with me as I kick my head back to chuckle for a moment about this! Can we all agree our God cares deeply about the details of our lives AND has an uncanny sense of humor?

Our South Island adventure is in full swing and we have committed to do our very bestest to uphold the reputation of the kea. We’ve had a rainy start to our journey, making us bundle up early in this chariot of adventure and head to bed at 6:30 pm New Zealand time.

We are a couple of tired birds tonight!

We’re off.

New Zealand, here we come!

Have we always traveled like this. Nope. There were many years our income, life-stage, and schedules would not allow this type of travel. Will we always be able to travel like this? Nope. We know we are in a short season where we can squeeze out longer trips; we are fully aware it won’t always be like this.

But have I always LOVED exploring and peeking around the next bend? YEP! I have always made concerted efforts to be in nature and play as much as I could. For many years, that meant loading high chairs, baby food, and pack-n-plays to set up in a tent. Sometimes it was nothing more that a weekend to visit my parents in Arneckeville and enjoying some country sunsets. Other seasons, it was transforming a simple trip to see Chris’ family into a Colorado vacation. Geesh, sometimes it was nothing more than camping in the backyard. If there’s a will, there’s a way.

Join me as we ruthlessly pursue delight in a world set to recklessly pursue misery. How about we all unite together on Team Delight and set our course for the beautiful, unknown path of joy?

Now boarding Flight “Let’s Go”!

I was on a hike a couple of years ago, listening to a podcast with a neuroscientist. At the end of the interview, the host asked the guest a final question to summarize the interview. The question went something like this, “What is one thing our listeners can do to keep their brains healthy and active over their life span.”

I can picture exactly where I was standing on the trail, the moment deeply marked by the simplicity and beauty of his words. The answer sent a jolt of energy rocketing down my spine, creating an electric feeling of YES, YES, YES, pulsating throughout my entire body.

His answer:

“Be in healthy relationships. Stay in healthy relationships.”

YES! YES! YES!

That’s the work I have committed my life to. I sit with people all day long, not to simply work through depression and anxiety, etc. I sit with people, listening to their sacred stories as they work to navigate the hurts and healings that come in and through relationships. They’re working for healthy relationships.

But I don’t just do relational work as a career. It’s the work of my life, too. Heck, it’s the work of all of our lives! To BE in healthy relationships and STAY in healthy relationships!

….and….speaking of staying….

I’ve been friends with this crazy crew of Aggie girls for over 35 years. We don’t all get together as often as we’d like, but when we do, watch out world! We are like Olympian conversational masters, listening and asking, asking and listening, with lots of laughter dumped in for good measure. We could win gold medals for deep conversations, if there were such a thing! We had a whirlwind 24 hours together last weekend and my heart continues to linger in the gratefulness of it all. I am so thankful for my friendship with these amazing women.

So how about we all commit to keeping our brains healthy and keep working at this relational thing, together?

One of the hardest things we can ever do it walk right back up to face what we fear. Head on.

I promise I will tell the full ocean storm story another time.

This picture depicts the moment I had to walk right back onto a boat I feared might have been the end for me.

When we have endured an overwhelming difficulty, or a tragic loss, or a frustrating setback, everything in our neurobiology screams at us, “DON’T DO IT!!! DON’T TAKE THE RISK! YOU WILL DIE IF YOU DO!”

You know the kind of moments I’m talking about…

• Stepping into the church building after your crippling season of doubt and hurt.

• Typing out a password on the dating app after a paltry desert hike through loneliness.

• Sitting in the dentist chair after that terrifying drilling sound three years ago..

• Opening your teenager’s door to apologize for overreacting.

The picture of me walking through the shallow water shows a moment in our recent wild camping trip to Costa Rica. We were on our way to a hike in one of the most bid-diverse ecosystems in the world, Corcovado National Park, when we encountered a relentless Pacific ocean storm. We were pummeled by waves and rain. After the harrowing nightmare, we arrived safely on the peninsula, completed our hike, but then we had to return to our original destination the same way we had come.

I had to get back on the boat.

Oh, I didn’t want to. My anxiety was high My fear was present. The dread was palpable.

Growth requires discomfort. It requires us to face our fear. The more fear dominates, the more territory it takes over. So the decision ultimately ends up being this: how much room will we allow fear to occupy. Fear is normal, it is natural. It has it’s place. However, in order to grow, we have to enter the dreaded territory of fear and say to it, “You are NOT as scary as you seem! You are not as REAL as you taunt me to believe.”

No matter what storm you are facing or what dread you are fearing, slow down and remind yourself you have what you need to face it. Facing it is absolutely the bravest thing you can do.

Hey there Soul Adventurer, walk back toward it. Pack up that fear and bring it with you. I’ve done it and I know you can do it as well.

There are thousands of ways to be brave. Wild camping in Costa Rica is only one very tiny way. (And maybe not even one of the wiser ways.)

It’s brave to move, to job hunt, to parent. It’s brave to crawl out of bed when you’re depressed to take a 5 minute walk. It’s brave to care for aging parents or to grieve your infertility.

It’s hard, but right, to talk to your boss about a hard issue. It takes guts to download a dating app or to delete one. It’s brave to foster. To adopt. Or to support those who do. It’s brave to grieve the loss of the dream you cared about.

It’s brave to love a pet or make a friend. It’s brave to take a deep breath when that stupid anxiety shows up (again). It’s brave to call a friend to say you miss them or stay up late to talk to your teenager. It’s brave to forgive or learn something new.

It takes bravery to stay calm with a tantrum-ing toddler. It’s brave to plan a trip with a friend or to be kind when you are angry. It’s courageous to get mammograms or a colonoscopy. It’s brave to bury someone you love.

It’s challenging to retire and start a new way of life. It takes courage to open a Bible that can be hard to understand. It’s brave to find your voice and say “no more” to a toxic relationship. It’s bold to go back to school in your 40’s or 50’s (or heck, 60’s!).

It’s brave to watch your kid pick up a basketball or baseball, earn a karate belt or blow a trumpet. It’s courageous to belly laugh with friends. It’s brave to stop comparing yourself to others, deciding to fully live YOUR beautiful life.

It takes bravery to be a step-parent. It’s brave to trust God. It can be brave to doubt. It’s courageous to ask for help. It takes boldness to completely change careers. It’s brave to feel the lonely feeling while reminding yourself you are not alone. It’s courageous to love the marginalized. It’s brave to garden.

It’s brave to get married or to be single, to face being widowed or divorced. It all can be hard, in different ways.

It’s brave to drive to chemo. It’s brave to face your past. It’s brave to babysit a grandchild or to show up for a recovery program. It’s brave to fail, again. It’s also brave to start again.

It’s brave to be alive AND live the life you’ve been given, the one right in front of you.

You are braver than you know.

God built the natural world to both give and receive. The earth receives rain and then bears fruit from that which the rain provides. God made our individual worlds to operate the same way. The natural world puts no judgments on receiving. Neither should we.

We judge ourselves as being weak or needy when we are in seasons of receiving, as if the sum total of who we are is about pouring out. We live in a culture incessantly screaming at us to be productive and get things done, as if that is the highest priority. But the spiritual, emotional, relational, physical worlds do not operate on a GIVE ONLY paradigm.

We must create and hold space for time, processing, reflection, sustenance.

I have been in a long season of receiving. And it has been hard. I’m not writing today to get popular or to become the next greatest show on earth. I’m writing because I finally feel like my time of receiving has turned the corner into a time of giving. I’m understanding the richness of giving away, sharing my honest struggles, and taking risks. I know I’m not done receiving. But I have learned what a beautiful teacher she can be and I’m learning to embrace her rather than judge her.

Listen to what Peter Scaazzero says. “Work FOR God that is not nourished by a deep interior life WITH God will eventually be contaminated. We cannot give what we do not possess. Doing for God in a way that is proportionate to our being with God is the only pathway to a pure heart and seeing God {Matt. 5:8}.”

Our family arrived battered and bruised when our moving trucks pulled in to Huntsville 9 years ago. We were working through a devastating job change, a house move, new community, new church, new jobs, scattered kids - none of which were on our “plan.” I had never felt so lost. Our teenage sons were struggling; I was grieving the first stage of empty-nesting. My new fledging career felt more like a firecracker dud than the fireworks display I expected after graduating with my masters. I wanted my old life back. It felt like I could reach out and touch it, but when I did, it was a mirage that disappeared on the horizon. I felt betrayed, confused, alone, cynical, angry, afraid.

I was in no place to give. I realize now it was my season to receive. Oh, but I TRIED giving!! I tried to teach college girls like I had done for years at our former church. I stood in front of them so disconnected from myself. I tried several other “things”. I signed up to do stuff out of guilt. Don’t hear me say people were pushing me to do things or were guilting me to say yes. We have been embraced by wonderful people since our move. It was ME trying to push myself too quickly to DO. To work. To perform. To be Christine again: the funny one, the surrounded by friends one, the busy one, the parenting 3 little Hoover kids one, cooking meals for college kids one, Bible teacher one, getting coffee at Stabucks with a friend one. But I couldn’t find her.

I needed to grieve, recover, be angry, experience the full weight of my losses, tend to my soul. And crazy enough, my new career as a therapist gave me the opportunity to do my own soul work. My courageous clients entered their stories of hurt with tenacity. Walking with them into their sacred spaces invited me to enter into my own story of loss, away from my therapy office. I could NOT take them places I did not have the courage to enter for myself. It was life-giving and it was the beginning of my long journey back. I went to counseling. I hashed out my anger, betrayal, hurt. Sometimes I even “went fetal” on my living room couch and I curled up with my soft blanket as I wept. I had to feel my loss, enter into the death, so that resurrection could come. And it does. It will.

I know many of you are hurting deeply right now. Deep wounds like cancer, divorce, death, children who are far from you, life transitions, betrayal, singleness, anxiety, depression. There is no perfect timetable telling us when our seasons of giving and receiving start and stop. But what if this wound is inviting you to tend more deeply to your soul? Take times of silence, solitude, time to reflect on your life.

Do you need to quit performing and receive right now? Or maybe you need to be brave and start giving again. You can know that God is asking you to soak up His unconditional love and that is the most important adventure of all. ♥

Nine years after a deep hurt sure seems like a long time, doesn’t it? But it took me grieving the loss of many things in my life and in the rebuilding process, I have finally come up from the ashes with more freedom and with new courage. I had to learn to enter that dark hole of pain and betrayal so I could go with others into that cavern and hold space for them to explore their own hurt and loss. I see now that it HAD to happen this way. I could not have said that 9 years ago. But before my own loss experience, I’m sure I would have just quoted scripture at people, secretly judged them for being overly-sensitive, or simply told them I would pray for them. Gosh, that makes me flinch thinking about it.

I didn’t just “wake up” and feel better one day. It has been many wake ups and lots of processing. But I’m realizing something new this morning about the “why now?” question of feeling healthier, both spiritually and emotionally.

For most of my life, I have been secretly afraid of these evil twins: 1) the need to be liked or 2) being completely ignored. Those are some scary twins, right??!!

So how do those evil twins keep us paralyzed? On one hand, needing to be liked is terrifying because we are then imprisoned to KEEPING people liking us. (Now that, honestly, sounds exhausting.) On the other hand, being ignored or not seen would stir up that fear we have of being insignificant or unimportant. Do you see the enslavement of both sides?? The tragedy??

Either way, those siblings have silenced me by causing me to care too much about other people’s response to me. But now, instead of them silencing me, I am silencing THEM by walking in faithfulness and “reclaiming my birthright giftedness” as Palmer Parker calls it. I LOVE THAT IDEA of birthright giftedness. The truth of embracing who God made you to be and walking in it; knowing your true God-woven-self and liking who you are INSTEAD of despising who you are.

In your place of self-condemnation, disgust with yourself, or falsely imposed guilt of who you think others say you should be, how much of your unique gifting is held back from being offered to your little slice of this world?

Don’t get me wrong. I still care waaaay to much about what you think of me right now. But I’m a little bit closer to caring more about what my Heavenly Father thinks of me, which I know for sure is not based on my performance. And I care about relating in freedom to others. We are in bondage when we let false guilt, or “I don’t want them to think __________ about me”, or when we try to please everyone all the time. We lose ourselves and forfeit that beautiful birthright in which we have been entrusted.

How about you silence those twins today, too? ♥

This old snapshot of Chris and me has always cracked me up AND amazed me! I promise you this: the ONLY part of this photo that was planned was the jumping off the deck part. Seriously. The rest, the freakishly matched hands and perfectly mimicked angles: TOTAL ACCIDENT! I still look at it, 8 years later with giggles and awe! We couldn’t have been that in-sync if we had tried. It was an accident. A fun one for sure, but it was unintentional. 

 {Prepare yourself for a VERY cheesy transition line.} 

Having soul companions is NOT an accident that we simply jump into and end up with perfect synchrony and connection. It takes time, work, and intentionality. It may be a cliche transition, but it is a truth that we can’t ignore! 

We often “have people” but still feel alone and isolated. We watch our friends gather with other friends on social media, or we feel like everyone else has go-to people, or we simply feel left out sometimes. Our brain was not wired to process all the relational information social media provides us: who did what with who and who all went where with who. Our brain is still wired for the old-school way of relating: face to face, person to person. It is a part of our design; God wired us to be in REAL community with Him and others, not to scroll through what community looks like via a set of pictures and a cute caption and call THAT friendship. Nothing wrong with scrolling. We all do. Ha ha - I’m writing ON social media. It simply cannot replace sitting around a meal or grabbing coffee, or laughing with flesh and blood people.

But it does take time. It takes open-ended conversations, vulnerability, and intentionality. We cannot stand on the sidelines and expect to have meaningful relationships. They take YOU doing some inviting. YOU turning the conversation to more soul-level conversations. It seems we want to jump off the deck and end up with a picture-perfect relationship.

Soul Adventurer, if this strikes a cord in you, spend some alone time with God and begin by relating to Him. Tell him how you are feeling and what your soul longs for. Then, take one tiny step. Reach out to someone. Seek to know their world. Be present. Listen. Pursue. Don’t expect it to be perfect, but at least jump off the deck.