An interview with Lauren Stahler of Light and Cedar Photography

Featuring photography by Light and Cedar Photography

“Be still and know that I am God.” – Psalm 46:10

I think sometimes we get caught up. Caught up running around, being busy, getting lost in the day-to-day events and moments of our lives. Caught up in what needs to be done, what’s on the agenda for next week, how many hours we have to work to pay that medical bill down (shout out to those that truly get that one), and just detached from the eternal beauty that exists in knowing Jesus. In fully giving our day to Him, and watching how the Holy Spirit moves when we are quiet. I’m guilty of this, and I know many of you are too. I think sometimes we think if we “run our race” at warp speed, somehow God is going to do more and come quick in our lives. But you see, the majesty of God is just the opposite. It’s too powerful to be witnessed in the blink of an eye. If we are waiting for God to show up and to speak to us, it would be a good idea to stop. Breathe. And just be quiet…

God knows exactly how to speak to us to, giving us the right people at the right time to share in His word and His love. As I was planning out articles for the blog, this topic and a specific human came to mind. I didn’t know why just yet, but I knew God knows more than me. I knew He knew her heart and what she had to say. And that the world, or our little part of it, needed to hear it. I met this lovely girl when I was 12 years old. Entering a world of middle school where I was scared. All the girls were prettier than all the other girls (yeah, that still makes no sense, but we believed those lies). Boys were mean (and girls were, too). I knew Jesus loved me and I would make friends, but this was the first time I would be with people I didn’t know since birth.

I wanted to know all the people I could so I could share my heart and share the gospel. I never got the chance to be friends with her, maybe because we didn’t have the same classes or we didn’t have the same lunch time, or God just knew we’d someday meet again. But here we are, 18 years later, and we have lovingly shared with each other how grateful we are to now be in each other’s lives. I have watched and supported her life from afar, as she has watched and supported mine (she no longer lives in FL so we have a long-distance friendship) and I can tell you this incredible woman is a fierce, loving, thoughtful, strong and Godly human being. She is #wifegoals and #momgoals, y’all. Her name is Lauren Stahler and I’m blessed to share our chat on how God is working in her life and how she has learned to harness the beauty of the stillness and find joy in each and every simplicity.

Spending Quiet Time with God

Kristina: “When do you get to spend your quiet time with God?”

Lauren: “As a recovering sleep addict, motherhood has challenged me like no other. Because motherhood is synonymous with a lot of things, but sleep, unfortunately, is not really one of them. So when I first began to carve out time to spend alone with God I tried to do this wherever I could fit it in. And this was ok for a while. God didn’t knock me for fitting Him in, He saw where I was in those early days of babies and bleary eyed-ness.”

“God didn’t knock me for fitting Him in, He saw where I was.” – Stahler

“But the thing was, I wasn’t fully taking advantage of the miraculous gifts of sitting still in His presence. I was checking the box but it was like going through the drive thru instead of sitting down to eat a nutrient dense meal. It kept me going but that way of doing quiet time was not going to sustain me in the long-term. Realizing this, I changed my ways and started pulling my tired self out of my bed before the children woke up. Most days, before the sun. Before my sweet babies needed something from me. Before they became disgruntled with one another. Before they demanded to be fed or changed or held. The change was hard to implement at first, the choosing to be awake instead of asleep, when all I thought I desperately wanted was to sleep for a few months (or years) to make up for all the lost REM cycles but it actually revolutionized my days.”

“I was more present, more intentional, patient, understanding, gentle, content. I was a better mother and wife and woman for starting my days alone with my God. I now crave the quiet the early morning provides. And God lavishes me with his peace and strength and presence with every single rising of the sun. All of this to say, quiet time with God still happens throughout my day. Even when it’s not quiet. When I am singing with my kids in the car, while I am making lunch or cleaning dishes for the umpteenth time, while I fold laundry, while I settle disputes amongst the little people I birthed, when I am comforting unhurt heart or knee. All of these ordinary moments can be reflected on with gratitude and appreciation. Because as much as God is in the serene, extraordinary moments, he is also in all the simple details of my day-to-day.”

AMEN SISTER.

I challenge us all to not just find time for Jesus, but to make time for Him. Because although He will never fault us for fitting Him in, we are abundantly more blessed in spirit when we dedicate time with our Maker. 

Making Time for Yourself, Too

Kristina: “How do you spend your down time these days; what do you do to stay “unbusy“?”

Lauren: “As a mother to an 8, 5, and 3-year-old my day looks drastically different from the days when I was a mother to a 5-year-old, 2-year-old, and an infant baby. These days have brought new challenges but they have also brought just the slightest bit of flexibility and personal space. Emphasis on slight. I carve out time to work out (something that rarely happened for the first 7 years of my motherhood) every day and in the evenings my husband and I read in bed together. This year we pretty much gave up watching tv before bed and it has been the greatest thing ever. Not only do we sleep better but we also feel more connected to each other. I now get in a shower every day too (and all the mamas use all the praise hands emojis) and take time every morning to make sure I am dressed and somewhat put together which I have found has made all the difference in my productivity and motivation. I just can’t get things done in my pajamas anymore.”

Disconnecting from a busy world and spending time taking care of ourselves, mentally and physically, is more beneficial than draining your giving cup dry.

Kristina: “How do you “stop and smell the roses” in your life?”

Lauren: “That for sure would look like putting down my phone, my camera, my long list of to-dos and to simply just be with my family. One of my all time favorite movies, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, perfectly captures my heart for being in a moment when Walter’s friend who is a world renown photographer sees a snow leopard which he has been trying to capture a photo of for years.

Walter says to him, “When are you going to take it?”

And he replies, “Sometimes I don’t. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don’t like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.”

Walter asks him, “ Stay in it?”

And he replies, “Yeah. Right there. Right here.””

Stopping to admire God’s majesty all around us, is far more beautiful than we could ever capture. So let’s all take a minute to just “stay in it”. 

Life as a Wife and Mother

Kristina: “How has being a wife impacted your relationship with Christ?”

Lauren: “My marriage is the one thing in this world that has impacted my relationship with Christ more strongly than my children. Marriage is hard and holy work. Heck, it is nearly impossible and I don’t know how we would have ever gotten this far on our own. My relationship with my husband is the most complicated, deep, and real bond that I have ever experienced. For every loss and heartache we have carried together, God has brought more joy and beauty out of the ashes. God has taught us to choose the other person over and over again. To lay down our lives for each other, every moment of every day. And when we fail to do so, to give grace and mercy freely.

During our hard seasons together, I learned how essential prayer was for my life. How desperately flawed and needy I am as an individual and how impossible it was for any man, even my husband to fulfill all of my needs. God has used this sacred covenant to refine me, and to strengthen my personal relationship with Jesus. When we were walking through a particularly dark season, and we were left feeling hopeless day after day; I remember talking to my mother in law, and I was expressing how hard it was to be married to a sinner (hahahaha) and she laughed and then got serious with me, and basically told me that I was trying way too hard to control my marriage and “fix” it when I would never be able to accomplish that. It was too heavy a burden for any one person to carry. Instead she encouraged me to hand it over to Jesus. A simple concept but a really difficult one to actually follow through on.

So day after day when I would feel hurt or angry or resentful, I quiet myself and pray, “God, I can not fix this but you can.” I must have prayed that prayer a hundred million times. And very slowly, the fog began to lift away from us. My relationship with Christ had never been deeper or more tangible and I owe it all to that very cute and super imperfect man I am married to.”

I TOLD YOU GUYS, #WIFEGOALS.

“God has used this sacred covenant to refine me”. – Stahler

Kristina: “What about as a mother?”

Lauren: “My children not only impact my relationship with Christ, they are the very reason I have a relationship with Him in the first place. I am nearly certain that God gave me the gift of my 3 children not only because He saw it fit for me to become their mother but also because He knew what it would take to bring me to the end of myself. And it was them. It has been the most sanctifying and humbling process. I am constantly reminded of God’s love for me when I stare into their faces, or listen to their little voices. They are the gift I do not deserve and the challenge I need every single day to remind me to surrender my life to Jesus. For a long time I battled the stronghold of fear. Mostly fear over my children. Something tragic happening to them, a disease or an accident. My mind would carry me to the scariest, darkest, most hopeless places and I was paralyzed by it. What if God took them from me? What if He chose not to heal them of this virus? What ifs consumed me. One of the most transitional moments of my life was when I not only realized but knew on a very deep spiritual level, that God loved my children immensely more than I did. And that even if I woke up tomorrow without them, that He was still good. They were the hardest things to completely relinquish out of my white knuckled hands. But if I could trust God with them, then He knew I would be able to trust Him with anything.”

I’M NOT CRYING, YOU’RE CRYING. OK, ACTUALLY I AM CRYING. A LOT.
Is she not the most inspiring?

To all the mothers, and future mothers, and mothers yet-to-be who so desparately want to be mothers: Surrendering your children will be the single hardest thing you have ever done, but when you give up a piece of your heart that is walking around outside of your body to the Lord and trust Him with their lives, you will be able to surrender any stronghold to HIm.

Advice for Readers

Kristina: “What would you tell someone who is having difficulty slowing down or finding goodness in the everyday?”

Lauren: “Once when I was struggling to see the beauty around me and carried a general lack of contentment, I reached out to trusted friend and mentor and she told me something that I will forever have etched somewhere deep down in my soul. She said, “You are struggling to see the beauty of your life because you aren’t looking from the perspective of gratitude.” Well, dang I thought. There was no rebuttal, in fact I am almost certain that I chuckled out of sheer embarrassment. So now I check myself when those creeping feelings of discontentment pop up uninvited. “What vantage point am I choosing to view my life from?” And when I need an extra kick in the butt, I stop what I am doing and I write down 10 things that I can see right where I am that have God’s fingerprints all over them. Beautiful things come from God and those are the ones I choose to meditate on, even when I can feel the grumbling in the ugly parts of my heart.”

“Beautiful things come from God and those are the ones I choose to meditate on, even when I can feel the grumbling in the ugly parts of my heart.” – Stahler

So, how do we put this into practice?

1. MAKE dedicated time to be in the Word and spend with God.
   
2. TAKE time to spend alone, taking care of yourself, body and soul, and your relationships.
4. UNDERSTAND your role as a wife, mother, or single woman and how it changes the core of your spiritual DNA to be more like Christ.
6. STAY in the moment, and immerse yourself in the beauty around you.
8. GAIN perspective in how you are viewing your circumstance (love her idea of writing 10 things in your life with God’s fingerprints on them!).

Lauren: “Simplicity in motherhood has been a long sought after goal of mine for the past 8 years and when I really think about it I laugh. I laugh hard. Because in so many ways, the two put together seem like a very clear oxymoron. There is nothing “simple” about raising actual real life humans. In fact, I daresay that there isn’t anything more complicated than the art of parenting and yet I know, in my heart of hearts, that simplicity exists in motherhood. Just like how God’s love is simple and complex all in the very same breath.

Complexity and simplicity can in fact, co-exist in love. I know this because I live it every single day.”

“The Lord preserves the simple; when I was brought low, he saved me.” – Psalm 116:6