By Laura Roebuck

Welcome to ZIA. Come in and sit a spell. Come in and enjoy women of all ages and stages as we interact with the issues and ideas that shape who we are and who we want to become. Come in and make yourself at home.

ZIA is like my favorite banana bread. It starts with something that doesn’t look so good but turns out yummy in the end. ZIA begins with longing. I long to be a gracious and peaceful woman, but I am certainly not there yet. ZIA is a place where we wrestle with the everyday life issues in a way that engages the desire to live beyond ourselves. ZIA challenges us to start with where we are, add a little spice, mix it up a bit and celebrate the end result. To help you navigate ZIA a little more easily, allow me to introduce you to the five sections that make up our magazine.

Kindred
There is a little love seat in the breakfast nook of my kitchen. Many a friend has snuggled up on that couch and chatted with me as I baked banana bread. Deep in conversation, I rarely notice that it’s taking me twice as long as normal to make the bread.  I spend 10 minutes measuring the baking powder when we hit a particularly enthusiastic part of the conversation, or spill the vanilla as I gesture with my words. A time or two I’ve even left something out of the recipe in my blissful distraction! These most certainly are the cheeriest moments in my kitchen and, in my humble opinion, make for the best tasting bread.

Through years, miles and changing life stages, kindred spirits shape our life experiences. They offer a sounding board for our deepest thoughts and help carry the burdens of our hearts. Some are our roommates, some sisters, some become our husbands and some are our girlfriends for life. Kindred will challenge us to take the truth we know and put it into reality in these relationships.

Haven
I am always comparing recipes and experimenting with various methods of improving my baking.  Hospitality is the heart of my endeavors. I want my home to be a place that invites people to linger, slip off their shoes and enjoy a few moments of peace. Nothing says, “welcome to our home, I’m glad you’re here,” like the smell of fresh bread being pulled from the oven and the first bite into a perfectly balanced loaf with just the right mix of ripened bananas, sugar and walnuts. I love wrapping the bread neatly with a bow on top and taking it to the newest neighbor or a friend who just came home from the hospital. 

Haven is a place to explore the thousands of ways we can enrich our hospitality. Entertaining, decorating, cooking and celebrating are the joys and challenges of creating a haven. Whether your home is a studio apartment, your house of 30 years or a dorm room, you create haven right where you are.

Embrace
Almost as soon as the bread comes out of the oven, I can pretty much count on the fact that my husband or my brother will casually stroll through the kitchen, feigning interest in something they just had to ask me at that moment. Oh, is that banana bread? You don’t need someone to test that, do you? And so arises an opportunity to embrace family.

We may not get to choose our family, but every day we have the opportunity to choose what we will do with the family we have been given. To embrace them with grace and love is a daily decision to willingly hand over the first slice of fresh banana bread, or whatever you have to offer from your heart and home. In my home, this is why I always make two loaves at a time.

Glow
For three years I watched college students come in and out of my kitchen, enjoying variations of banana bread and muffins. As director of a female residence hall, I had a unique opportunity to observe women. This is where I learned about beauty. Not the kind of beauty you can buy at the mall or see in a magazine, but the kind you see in a group of giddy young women gathered around my table sharing some warm banana bread. The laughter and joy shared in that kitchen will forever define beauty in my mind, the kind of beauty that is marked by a life of passion, vulnerability and willingness to grow.

There are moments when I grasp the freedom of understanding true beauty. We live in a culture that has much to tell us about what adds value to a woman, and often the freedom of understanding true beauty is difficult to find. ZIA will explore what it means to truly glow: beauty that is neither restrictive nor oppressive, but assured, peaceful and free.

Legacy
My mother makes bread nearly every week. Baking is her legacy. Much of what I know about baking, I learned wrapped around her apron strings. In the cookbook she gave me for my wedding, the page with the most splatters on it is the page written in her familiar handwriting, “Banana Muffins.” It has her little comments on it like, “sometimes I use whole wheat flour here.” She is a legacy in the kitchen, but not only there. She cares for more elderly women than she has time for, reads to elementary school students every week, and for the life of me, I can’t remember Daddy ever being out of clean socks. The woman is a legacy in her home and community.

Every woman’s legacy is unique. It is something that we define every day in our decisions about how to spend our time, where to serve other people and how we execute our professions. Being a wise steward of the talents and gifts that we each possess creates this legacy. Thankfully we have others to guide, challenge, and walk alongside us as we forge this legacy.

I invite you into the ZIA family. It won’t always be a comfortable place, but it will be a place where we engage our minds and our hearts in becoming women of grace and truth. Think. Love. Shine. Bake banana bread.

Laura Roebuck makes her home in Orange County, California with her husband, Jacob, and anyone else who happens to be enjoying her banana bread at the moment.