Tag: prayer

What does Fear have to do with Being Loved First?

by ErinLeave a Comment on What does Fear have to do with Being Loved First?

It’s been an interesting morning. The layers and the context are drags in the mud, so will spare you. But here I am now with my “All Time Favorite Songs” playing in the background, in front of a window, wearing my new earrings from Old San Juan that are bright poppy reddish pink and match the friendship bracelet necklace I made in St. Croix. I mean… to complain about the layers and the muddy context would be to take away from the very real fact that I have no real problem right here and right now.

An Art Fair to be present at this weekend? Yes.

A prenatal training to be present for this weekend? Yes.

Three yoga and restorative yoga classes to intelligently prepare for in the next three days? Yes.

And whether it is the mission to support women out of my yoga clubhouse and studio community or my priority to feed my spirit so that my words can be fully owned by God that is causing my present moment to be so super charged, I can’t help but release the very real to do list for full present moment alignment.

I have marketing work and sales work and this constant (fear?) stress that if only I tried a little harder, focused a little more – this time around would be less experimental and more impactful. I don’t feel as prepared for the Art Fair as I thought I might be. There are some loose threads around the prenatal training that I thought I would have more tightly woven together.

But I also have this very real trust that things are always as they should be. That if I am focused on how I feel and what my body needs that the natural care for others, my family, my presence all will align correctly.

In the background of this processing is a trunk full of all of my notebooks. This trunk has been organized in two notable times. One was my “bachelorette party”… The weekend before I left for the Pacific Northwest to marry David, I spent with with all the notebooks out on the table – going through the chapters, looking back on my story, putting them in order, ripping out the loose stuff, keeping the good stuff. I spent that weekend with coffee and my past and my thoughts. It was a different kind of hangover than other brides to be might have – it was a 2020 solo rerun and it was awesome.

The second time I went through the notebooks was a bit more recent. In an rare wind I caught before Christmas time in 2025. I started pulling together all the everything in the house and took over the basement. All the poetry in one corner… All the fiction in another… the planners that have the kind of life artifact scribbles “planes hit the twin towers today”… that just hold *history* in a stack of their own.

So now, as I prepare for a chapter of a new found dedication to my mental health and that dedication supporting me telling my story, it’s time to take another look through the trunk (especially as it has gotten just a little overflowing with things…)

BUT HOW.

I decided to close my eyes and pick three things and one of those things was my Grandma’s Devotional Book… today’s verse was 1 John 4:18 and I found something particularly helpful to today.

““In love there can be no fear – but fear is driven out by perfect love: because to fear is to expect punishment – so anyone is afraid is imperfect in love. We are to love, because we are loved by God first.”

I am finding myself playing with the idea that if perfect love drives out fear, and fear expects punishment – then anytime we start anticipating being left or being hurt or doing something wrong and having to deal with a consequence we don’t want, that we are forgetting we were loved by God first.

That in all of the things I have to do for the business and for the home, that all of the things on my heart and mind for my relationships – that the pressure I start to feel is because of an expectation I believe is on me that I must meet (or what?!) or because of a consequence I want to avoid (is it even real?) but that the mode of operation that I have always found to work: how do I feel / what does my body need / align from there – is really a quality idea because it is rooted in the fact I am loved by God first.

Understanding my body as sacred technology, that the emotions and energy I have can be cleared / charged / balanced – and that from this place, I can access creativity and access connection, to do my best work (come what may)… is to understand I am here because I am loved and because I am love and from that place, I can love.

Noticing Fear as an Invitation to Love

Noticing fear of consequence, of failing, of expectation is to be invited into the love that is your birthright.

It is quite powerful of a realization, ya know. And so … from this point … I think it is time for another coffee (more on my coffee regimine sometime) and some direct sunlight.

A week ago, I taught this amazing packed class at a studio in St. Croix, U.S.V.I – in the middle of class, music from two very loud speakers started blasting directly towards the studio, causing me to *lock in* in a whole new way. Cadence to match rhythm. Trusting the process. Trusting the energy. Feeling my feeling, asking my body what it would want. Teaching from that place. It’s an important process.

No Wrong Way to Pray

by ErinLeave a Comment on No Wrong Way to Pray

I think, in a lot of ways, the act of sitting down and writing a blog post on Frozen Spaghetti is more or less how I pray.

I am not really here to teach you anything or be profound in any certain way – it’s just…. I am a writer and a poet and I love dictionaries and Bibles and hot tubs and roadtrips. I love packing cooler bags perfectly. I understand the spiritual science of numbers and am obsessed, for lack of a better word, of that deep internal shifting that happens when you practice stillness.

And I think that because I love and am those things… sometimes it helps you out. God helps you out through me somehow, amazingly. Like – what a gift to my life that my honesty in my words somehow is a gift to others.

I love talking about the elements and relational math, too. Last night, my husband and I were talking and he asked me if I like understanding people individually or understanding people as a whole. I didn’t think about it long, but my immediate reaction was…. both?

Because, to understand the individual (has a body, is alive, has a mind, has intuition, is divine) is to understand the collective – to understand the collective (that all individuals have those 5 aforementioned layers) is to immediately understand the individual.

This year, I turn half way to 90. And I have a lot to share already at this part of my life. Things I really know help shift perspective or at least give people a glimmer experience that reminds them (on some level) that they are able to be known or maybe even known.

The idea of being known is really on my mind a lot these days. As I dug deep into some content on my last trip to St. Croix and you see, this content I have been studying for literally decades and in digging deeper, I was met with something new. New ideas that really shaped my spiritual understanding and my ability to be present. (Side note – how quickly this spiritual understanding can be overridden by the broken human need to defend, explain, justify, etc)

The experience I had in St. Croix taught me that the Spirit (God – connected everything – universal Peace) can only be all the way known in its mystery that you can’t know everything. Or something like that.

As I sit here at my writing station – binder full of restorative yoga sequences and their elemental vernacular – mug of coffee on the south facing window sill – cut glass crystal bowl of 3 x 5 cards and dry erase markers for the whiteboard hanging below my vision board – I realize in my worry about what to write and where and to whom and to what end is best put into a present moment processing here on my age old blog. This blog I have had since I was gosh – 28??? Holy smokes! So long ago. So many posts put on draft mode to be re-read and re-published (at some point, at it to the list) with intention.

But it brings me back to the title of this post – that there is no wrong way to pray – and whether it is the shower you take or the propping up of the feet or the song you play when you prep vegetables or whatever, right? Like – anything can be understood as your way of interacting and requesting of the divine. So…. what are you asking for? What are you inviting? What are you recognizing?

For me – I am asking for clarity this year. I am inviting in an editor or lit agent or something somebody to help me corral all of this thought (the notebooks!) that are changing people’s lives. Like I am no longer wondering if this work is meaningful – it is meaningful – it is strengthening and encouraging and is coming from God. Like…. none of this is mine. I get that. I am also inviting in the ancestors whose healing work continues through mine. And the ancestors who got the baton to the next generation in my blood. My Swedish line like… let’s go. Aren’t you geniuses? lol

Don’t you know how to make households with little tiny things? (Ikea joke in case you didn’t get it)

Anyway – and I am recognizing that everything in my life at this half way to 90 point is in my life. It’s meant to build on. I don’t think I am in a cutting out or shifting around phase I know I am not in a place of “I better get my shit together” (although, that thought comes).

I think (and I believe this for others, you – probably, if we were to talk) that the most important thing we can do is give credit to all of our days. David (husband) and I were also talking about the inclination to replay the past and account for the timeline and is that really necessary over claiming the present? A “here’s where I am now and what I value and so hereby are my decisions going forward” kind of thing.

Like choosing Frozen Spaghetti today as my first stop in my writing time as an active way of praying as a meaningful place in my life. It’s like using that thing in the basement you have been storing. Writing on this old blog is in a way no longer being a digital hoarder.

On that note, feels like the skids are greased (is that the saying?) and the writing can commence in the book that I am committed to. Today, I take a note from St. Theresa of Avila’s playbook and humbly state in the work where I am starting and decide who it is for.

From Thursday’s personal retreat… nothing like a Bible hot tub fresh pen notebook combination.

A Reflection on Motherhood – February 2024

by Erin1 Comment on A Reflection on Motherhood – February 2024

As my life continues to grow and change, Frozen Spaghetti continues to be the place for these moments of introspection, the words for the things that connect me to those around me, to the themes in my life… to God.

These connections are made possible by realities like how, as a mom, you make your kids cry sometimes – sometimes even on birthday weekends.

When you are doing the right thing for them and they don’t love that? That is tough. And though one of the worst things is disappointing your kid because of your stance of “no, this really isn’t right” or “no, this really isn’t time” or “no, we really are not ready”… what is worse is kicking yourself because you didn’t trust your gut.

A sincere nod to trusting yourself.

Zooming out – there is a lot going on in my life and the lives of my children & husband. I don’t feel burdened, but I do feel taxed. Like that slow burn of transformation is definitely happening. I have come to learn there are different qualities of change. Change is a spectrum. What’s wild about the change happening in my world is it is the change of “up in the air, this is going to settle”. Which is different than, say, the change of “something has to give, the bottom is falling out”. There are different qualities.

While timing and ideas evolving vary, the one thing I have really learned lately is the importance of orientation. When things are shifting, your north can still be north. I have been thoughtful of this a lot lately as I, personally, have oriented myself in the world as “yoga studio owner”. Do I know what this is going to look like? No. Do I know what I am going to learn this means for me in terms of hard work? No.

Do I have ideas on these answers? Yes. I have some pretty good ideas. And they align with my true north.

I have been paying attention to the earliest things I do every day. I spend time sitting energetically with the day, with my life and feeling it.

And this is where the spiritual part of this whole piece kicks in…

<pause here or go get a coffee / tea / water and settle in, because this is the learning. soli deo gloria>

On Friday night, February 16th, Ellen (my 18 y/o daughter) was driving home for the weekend to not only surprise her sister for her birthday but to also get a hug and some home after being terrifyingly close to the shooting in Kansas City, where she was celebrating the Chiefs’ Super Bowl win with the masses. She heard the gunfire live and it was ricocheting, hourly / before bed, in her mind & body. <inhale. sigh>

In the midwest, there was a freak snowstorm on Friday afternoon. Before I had a chance to tell her I didn’t think the roads would be clear, she had already headed east to Saint Louis and, low and behold, about 6:30pm, she showed up on the map about an hour and a half out from home at a dead stop. The interstate had been shut down due to a massive pile up and people ended up being stuck… for 10 hours. (Here’s the story.)

Ellen, fortunately, had gotten off the highway to wait it out at a gas station. We had been on the phone on and off, trying to strategize & understand the extent of the shut down when it was 12:30a and time for us both to try and get some rest. She rolled through where she had her money & keys, how she had prepared her body for warmth, confirmed she locked the doors and asked me if there was anything else she should do before trying to close her eyes in a parking lot at a gas station in the middle of the night. Sounded like she checked the boxes. I told her I loved her and we got off the phone.

At that point, I laid in bed and wondered, “how do I still care for this situation?”

Well… through prayer.

But what do I pray for? For her to be safe? Safe from what? Thinking through that list sounded like a great way to keep me up all night.

Do I pray for her to discover something about herself? This was clearly a challenging night. Not in a “dark night of the soul” kind of way but definitely a dark night. And as I start to explore what could possibly the lesson, I know to back out. Her faith. Her spirituality. Her relationship with God. Her understanding of divine timing. Her attunement to the energy of her life & whether or not it reflects ultimately what she wants is really none of my business. :) <insert my love for this verse>

Even if we have known somebody their whole life, like a mother knows a child, the child has their own individual life, their own conscious awareness, their own journey that they have to figure out. To think that you have any real ability to navigate that network beyond maybe a thread of understanding is not only insane but a total waste of time.

And even if you could snap your fingers and have a really good, deep reading of where they are in life – even if things seem obvious – you have to remember that in a human’s life, inner knowing & wisdom is subtle. It is subtle beyond language, beyond left brain analysis. So subtle that the only way for the wisdom of the child’s life to be accessed is through the child’s body & breath itself. And those are their own.

So there I was, in bed, with this remembering that her body & breath are the pathway to her wisdom leading me to the answer to the question of how to care for the situation was, in fact, through my own body & breath.

I pictured her and performed a body scan. I scanned her from the soles of feet to the crown of her head. From the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. I went left and right, right to left. Inside her body. Outside of her body. There were no words. It wasn’t about protection or the “blood of Jesus”. It was about feeling and, if anything, it was also about clearing. If I have any power here as her mother, it is to clean her. :) So I imagined cutting cords and clearing off from her body anything that could be holding her back. Holding her in restriction. Holding her in a shape she is ready to shift out of. This is a highly energetic form of prayer. And as I boldly approached the throne in this way, I started hearing song lyrics: “The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning” over and over and over.

And there it was: the reality. She was sitting there in a parking lot. Though alongside hundreds of people. She is alone. She is tired. Stuck. In the night. It probably feels like it is never going to end. But there is going to be a dawning. There is going to be a moment that the sky starts to get lighter and the sun is going to start rising up, brighter, and soon it will be morning. Things don’t stay the way they are forever.

We are always somewhere on the spectrum of change.

There were some other miraculous things about that experience. The fact that she was able to sleep the next day when she finally arrived home after fearing nightmares after the shooting, was – in and of itself – a blessing. The way particular people showed up brought me to tears. But it was how that experience prepared me for Monday that really brought the whole thing together.

See, on Monday, my other daughter – Lucy – had a true dark night of the soul. Not a dark night, like Ellen. Rather, she was dealing with the reckoning of not having done some things and it was now the moment of truth. She was at the “and now it is too late” and there are options no longer available. As the mother, I was the bearer of that news, disappointing her because I was trusting my inner knowing.

She was tired. She was sad. She felt hard on herself. She felt critical. And she fell apart. She wrestled. She called me from the kitchen, “mom I need you to come to the kitchen right now”. She was in bits and pieces. I saw it was not the normal “I’m tired and still have homework” but a sincere need to sleep and wait out the sun. She said she felt alone.

So here’s what is fascinating.

Ellen, on Friday night, was actually alone. On a dark night. And I was able to be with her…. energetically be with her.

Lucy, on Monday night. On a dark night of the soul. I was able to physically hold her. Sleep by her side. Put a hand on her.

The energy of holding, in both situations, was the same.

I can’t help but further trust that when I am physically gone from this earth, that this holding will be the same. It has to be the same. Because it is the same now. I think this is why there is meant to be no fear in death. Because this idea makes it no longer about having faith that you have chosen the right belief or having faith that you are doing things that are somehow serving some ladder of fortitude upward towards heaven. It is not about having decided or having done anything.

Rather, it allows life to become living through the reality of the nature of consciousness and one’s own awareness of the infinite peace within us.

The envelope of skin, yes, holds us; but the actual way that we are is boundless.

I imagine fathers feel something similar. Yet, it seems to me that, as women – as portals for souls coming through us – that there is a potency and an availability to pray for your child through what in yoga we would call the bliss body, the most subtle layer of our existence.

There is a lot of power in this, for me. A strong sense of knowing. A deep sense of peace.

May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be well. ✌🏽erin