A friend shared with me this quote from “New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional” by Paul David Tripp: “Most of what we call fellowship never really rises to the level of the humble self-disclosure and mutual ministry that make fellowship actually redemptively worthwhile.” Recently at the Mothers Ministry, we discussed meaningful friendships and building our village: a fellowship of moms, and women, rooted in Scripture.

I sat down to write this post no fewer than four times, and each time I came up short. The myriad of lies we believe as moms, as women, as sisters, as children, as friends, all ran through my mind. Some of them were so beautifully articulated already in this collaborative series by my friends Mikenna, Amanda, Lily, and Katie.

My Journey with Recurrent Mastitis

I’ve had infectious mastitis requiring various antibiotics at least ten times. (I’m not exaggerating). Being a self-professed “expert” in breastfeeding, and having breastfed for a consecutive 47 months at the time of this post (no, that is not a typo), this was insanely frustrating.

I had seen a breastfeeding medicine specialist at the hospital twice, I had 4 milk cultures taken, 2 breast ultrasounds, and it seemed no one could figure out why I kept getting mastitis. I was getting pretty good at knowing when it was coming on, but at least once a month for 9 straight months I was on antibiotics. If there’s anything out there about preventing clogs while breastfeeding, I’d read it or tried it.

So the other day on my blog’s Facebook page I shared an article from ScaryMommy on MLMs and those annoying private messages I get on an all-too-regular basis. I think a lot of ScaryMommy posts are funny, and I know a lot of the posts are done the way they are for the laughs. And well, it works on me.