Endorsements
Shannons book is a witty, clear, and holy invitation to rewild historical views of motherhood. Her words poignantly reimagine a God who is both divine and motherly. It is a must-read for those who desire a spiritual awakening in their calling of Christian motherhood.
Christy Bauman , author of Theology of the Womb
Evans takes us through the beauties, joys, depths, and pains of womanhood in this gorgeous and deeply personal reflection. Rewilding Motherhood is an invitation to take an inward journey into ourselves as women and mothers. Borrowing words out of her book, this is a permission slip that doubles as a ticket to a more awakened spiritual life. With thoughtful, beautiful, and poetic prose, Evans points us toward a wilder, more liberative God, which in turn frees us to explore the divine feminine within us and the sacred mystery within our children.
Kat Armas , host of The Protagonistas podcast; author of Abuelita Faith
Evanss inclusive, communal perspective on motherhood is an invitation to shuck off cultural constraints and explore the women weve been all along. Weaving the sacred with the ordinary, Evans is our sister-guide for this journey of discovery. We are free to reconsider. Free to be mad. Free to embrace. Free to pray. Free to love from a place of wholeness. Rewilding Motherhood is the anthem weve long needed; this is a must-read for all who mother.
Shannan Martin , author of The Ministry of Ordinary Places and Falling Free
Rewilding Motherhood is the permission to explore what motherhood means outside of the traditional beliefs many of us believed were set in stone.
Tiffany Bluhm , author of Prey Tell: Why We Silence Women Who Tell the Truth and How Everyone Can Speak Up
Evanss prose leaves me breathless, like Im standing above a rocky beach being buffeted by a storming ocean, soaking in the raw majesty and power. She shows her reader the cracks in our present reality, places where the Spirit breaks through. If youre feeling disconnected or disheartened by the waves of parenthood beating against the rocks of your soul, this book is for you.
Amanda Martinez Beck , author of Lovely: How I Learned to Embrace the Body God Gave Me
Rewilding Motherhood offers balm for mind, body, and soul, giving you permission to nourish your spiritual life as you care for your children. Gentle and strong, curious and encouraging, Shannon is a wise guide through the wild terrain of parentings joys and struggles. Her words invite you to dig deeper, dream bigger, and search wider for the truths you have been seeking about God, your own life, and this sacred calling.
Laura Kelly Fanucci , author of Everyday Sacrament: The Messy Grace of Parenting
This soulful book is a strong, gentle embrace, welcoming us into an expansive exploration of the sacred spaces of motherhood. These reflections invite us to consider both our inner worlds and our larger communities, empowering all who possess a mothering spirit to have the unencumbered self-compassion to show up in our own hearts, minds, bodies, and souls, just as we show up for others.
Kayla Craig , author of To Light Their Way: A Collection of Prayers and Liturgies for Parents ; cofounder of Upside Down Podcast
Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
2021 by Shannon K. Evans
Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www .br azospress .co m
Ebook edition created 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-3230-1
The author is represented by WordServe Literary Group, www.wordserveliterary.com.
Scripture quotations are from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Dedication
For Irene, Nell, and Kay,
in honor of their motherhood
Contents
Endorsements
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
Part One: Growing Inward
1. Forging Identity: Self-Actualization beyond the Roles We Serve
2. Maintaining Boundaries: Generosity toward Self and Others
3. Holding Tension: The Sacred Work of Integration
4. Reclaiming Solitude: Transforming Loneliness into an Inner Well
5. Following Anger: The Redemptive Power of Outrage
6. Staying Curious: Fearless Nurture of Our Spiritual Selves
7. Cultivating Patience: Holy Resistance in an Age of Rush
8. Heeding Intuition: Divine Movement through Feminine Wisdom
9. Embodying Hospitality: Fertility That Embraces the Whole World
10. Becoming Gentle: Tenderness in Exchange for Criticism
11. Releasing Control: Permission to Stop Playing God
12. Valuing Work: Spiritual Teachings of Household Labor
13. Living Incarnation: Finding God in Our Bodies, Home, and Earth
14. Reimagining God: Making Space for a Divine Motherhood
Benediction
Acknowledgments
Notes
Back Cover
Introduction
Not long ago I had a dream in which my neighbor, who is both a fiber artist and a mother of two, was pressing fabric into a basin of shallow waterostensibly dying the fabric, perhaps, but I cant be sure. She was making art, one way or another, and she kept finding larger and larger containers to serve her purpose. Without frustration, without disappointment, she happily and with curiosity moved from vessel to vessel, seeking something vast enough to contain the wilds of her creativity.
When the basin failed to satisfy, she moved to a washtub; when the washtub did not suffice, she swapped it out for a kiddie pool; when the kiddie pool proved inadequate, she drained an Olympic-size pool in her front yard, stories and stories deep, astonishingly deepwe marveled together at how we hadnt known how fathomless the water had been all along. She covered the bottom with a shallow film of water and meticulously laid out the fabric inside, careful hands pressing out the creases. The result satisfied her, and she left the work to soak.
But a drained concrete pool of treacherous depths is not a safe thing to have sitting barrier-free in a little Midwestern neighborhood. In the dream I saw two of my own children heading over to play and I ran after them, knowing the danger they were in. The ground was covered with hornets that I stepped on as I rescued my little ones, muttering prayers of thanksgiving under my breath for their safety as I guided them home across the street, leaving my neighbor, her art, and a perilous cavern of imagination behind.
I awoke from this dream with pieces of it implanted in my bones. Weeks have since yawned by, but I cannot shake the knowledge that there was something archetypal at play in the image of my neighbors labor. In dream language water represents the unconscious, and the act of exploring bigger and bigger containers for that inner world strikes me with incredible resonanceand not just for my own sake, but for the sake of mothers everywhere.
Because, if you think about it, this is what we do; we play at the edges of our unconscious, we explore the boundaries of our creative spirituality and suspect they go deeper than we can imagine. We long to give ourselves over to the mysteries of this inner life, and yet, we have responsibilities. We cannot neglect the physical and emotional needs of our children. We must be available to them, must protect them from all forms of danger. We can lose ourselves in the depths of our inner life, but only for so long before we must rein ourselves in once more. We make dinner. We do laundry. We tend to those in our care. We console ourselves that there will be a day when we can be baptized in the waters of Mystery, but today is not that day. Today we have children to dress and floors to sweep and eggs to scramble. The dream of the self that is spiritually alivesoulfully, creatively, holistically aliveis just that: a dream. We might touch it for a moment, but it is never ours to keep.