You Are Here

I had an interesting conversation this morning about how churches often scramble to get as many people as possible through their doors but often fail to do the even-harder work of helping those people get as whole (and holy) as possible. My friend said, "Yeah, it's like getting people to clamor through the gates at Disneyland only to find there's no map to the good stuff inside."

The comment struck me. In a separate conversation yesterday with a newly single mom, I asked how she was holding up, how her kids were handling visitation, whether the exchanges with her former spouse were livable. She sighed and said, "It's so good to finally be able to speak about these things." She'd been on the side of the road too long, and I got the feeling she was searching for her map, as we all do, after finding our worlds turned upside down for one reason or the other.

In times of confusion, crisis, introspection, grief, even joy, it seems we need to anchor ourselves in relation to the landmarks around us: God, friends, family, work, kids, hobbies...whatever it is that keeps our footing sure. Each of our maps vary, as each of our landmarks are deeply personal. But all of them have the spot with the X that says YOU ARE HERE.

More than anything, I want Eve's Daughters to be the X on the map--where a woman can know without a shadow of a doubt that they can learn to do the single mother gig with strength, grace, humor and health. I don't want to simply build our numbers, having women streaming through our doors, without a map to what's inside. But the irony is that these maps can't show a list of directions to follow; rather, they become apparent over time, footprint after footprint, conversation after conversation, friendship after friendship. We invite you to explore being "Here" with us.