With her characteristic nuance and care, Lore Ferguson Wilbert dives into this topic fraught with so much controversy and concern in her new book, Handle With Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life and Ministry. Exploring what touch looks like in the context of different relationships, Lore encourages us to reframe how we think about touch and see it for what it can be — a beautiful, powerful gift and ministry tool to ourselves and others.

For pretty much the entirety of January 2020, I really didn’t feel like myself. I was crying every few days. I was having a hard time sleeping. Everything in my life felt boring, mundane, and generally unsatisfying.

Basically, I was stuck.

Here are three guardrails to help you show up on social media in the healthiest way possible.

It may be finding joy in life’s minuscule, mundane moments. It may be up and moving your life halfway across the world. It may be parenting as best you can, through temper tantrums and toddlers taking their first steps. But don’t fall for the lure of Everyone Else’s Extraordinary.

Without further ado, here are my 3 sustainable steps – the same ones I tell those who ask me how I create long-haul habits – to cultivate discipline.

I've realized as I've gotten older that the more we choose things and people and situations that are who we are, the stronger we become. The more we build upon the pieces of ourselves and the more we discover our intricacies, the more we discover who we are and who others are.

It is not surprising that postpartum body acceptance is a major narrative in mental health following delivery. Here you’ll find the letter I wish someone had written to me after laboring my first, second, and third babies into the world.

We’ve all been there. That longing to be in and feel like we belong in a space. Sometimes it’s even worse, in that we don’t feel like we deserve to be there in the first place.

As studies have emerged about the power of yoga to heal trauma, we’re able to understand more about exactly why it is an effective treatment modality. Whether you suffer from panic attacks, mild anxiety, or are currently digging into the hard work of healing trauma, I think yoga is for you.

Hello, my name is the Queen of all emotions. 

I know them all – intimately, even. I’ll spell them out for you, follow the trail of breadcrumbs, and show you how I experience them within the span of half a day.

Self-discovery is a lifelong process and it’s not just going to happen overnight, but I’ve really been trying to start the journey! I think that if I’m going to spend the rest of my life with myself, I may as well develop and be happy with who I am.  

Discipline isn’t really a word we like to hear.

It might bring back terrible memories of time-outs from your parents or struggling through things you really don’t like doing. Discipline is rarely fun, and it definitely isn’t sexy, especially in the small things. 

While it is my job to impart wisdom and direction, whether in life or just how to organize a binder, I never realized I would be the one to do the learning. 

If you had ten minutes with your pregnant self, what would you tell her with the benefit of hindsight? What would you quietly whisper in her ear? Some helpful tidbits that would set her off in the right direction. Here's what I would say…

This morning, I told my mom that airports are good for two things: running and crying. 

“And getting to your destination,” she added. (My mom is always the one who brings me back to earth.) 

If you’re reading this and your heart is overcome because that desert place is a raw reality of where you’re walking today, then I’d like to encourage you with three simple but meaningful truths the desert imparted to me.

So what do you do when the prospect of love just seems like fools’ gold? What do you do when thirty-something married couples tell you “Twenty-seven is so young”? What happens when you feel foolish for hoping for love and immature for not being able to take the long-view of this whole thing?

We want the story where everything magically falls into place, where some effort is required but not too much, where the thing we’ve decided to do takes off immediately and we’ve suddenly jumped the gap from dream life to real life.

But here’s the rub: that isn’t how it usually works.

I discovered that mindfulness is so much more than downloading the best meditation apps, doing yoga every once in a while, and trying really hard to focus on your breathing for five minutes.

Worrying is a part of human nature. It’s a completely natural and normal thing to do. What’s NOT natural and normal is letting worry take over your life.