We Form by Degrees

I was talking to a dear friend of mine earlier this week who just finished her second half-marathon. I am so not a runner and can’t imagine doing something like that myself, but I absolutely admire and stand in awe of her for setting her mind and body to doing it and then accomplishing it. 

Because this was her second half-marathon, running has clearly been a part of her life for some time now.

I remember when she declared her goal to run a half-marathon the first time, and then I watched her join a formal running group and incorporate training runs into her weekly schedule. 

After her first half-marathon, she shared with me that she’s discovered running is most fun for her in the sweet spot of about 5-6 miles. She wasn’t sure she’d run a half-marathon again since she’d learned that about herself.

But then last fall, when she came to stay with me for a week, she’d recently made the decision to train for this second one.

I remember waking up one morning during her visit last fall to learn that she’d already gone for a 2-mile run in our neighborhood, having pulled up our address on Google Maps and mapped out what seemed like a good route for herself. And then I watched her sit at our farmtable in our front room that same morning and plan out her training schedule for the next few months, steadily marking an increase in mileage for each week that would get her up to the 13.1-mile race day.

When we spoke earlier this week about the race she’d completed over the weekend, it just struck me with so much force: 

“Katy,” I said. “It’s kind of amazing that you’ve become the kind of person who can run 13 miles in one go. All your training has led to you being someone who has that capacity now.”

She didn’t used to be the kind of person who could run 13.1 miles. But now she is. Her wise and intentional training led her there. 

It gets me thinking about spiritual formation. 

We are human beings designed for growth.

We grow in the womb, and then we proceed to continue growing outside the womb in so many different directions. In fact, it seems the nature of every living thing is bent toward growth. Animals do it, trees and plants do it, and sometimes I wonder if the growth element God seemed so keen on implanting in living things will continue somehow still in heaven.

And our growth always happens by degrees.

It’s so tempting to think of the ideal life of Christ — or even just our ideal notion of a Christian — and expect ourselves to be able to live like that once we have given our lives to Christ.

We forget, or perhaps do not even know, that life in Christ is about formation. We grow in Christlikeness over time. We grow deeper into our true selves over time. 

Growth always happens by degrees. 

In what places are you growing right now? What is it like for you to focus on this “next right degree” Christ is about forming in you, rather than an ideal, fully formed image of Christlike perfection?

The True Self, the False Self, and the Reality of Self

Sometimes I get tripped up when thinking about the true self and false self. Does that ever happen to you? 

It can happen like this. 

I’m aware of my true, created life in God, and when I’m living life from that place, everything within and around me becomes timeless. Everything holds a glow of beauty and perfection because God-in-everything becomes so evident in that place. Purity of heart, mind, body, and spirit abounds. 

Living in that place, I experience rest and hope and joy. I can breathe, and I can say with full conviction it is well with my soul.

But I don’t live from that posture of my true self all of my living, breathing moments. 

There’s also the false self.

This is the scrappy, stingy, worried, anxious, competitive, blaming, conniving self. It’s a distracted, consuming self. In its more tempered moments, it’s simply a shell of a real self. 

I don’t live all my living, breathing moments from this place, either. 

They’re both there.

I’m continually invited or compelled toward one or the other by forces outside myself and by habits built up within myself. On any given day, I’m an admixture of my true self and false self.

That admixture creates the reality of self. 

The reality of self is who I am in this very moment, living on this very earth, walking in this very moment deeper into my formation. 

Will I be formed more fully into my true self?

Will I be de-formed by my false self?

These are the living, breathing questions faced by the reality of self each day.

And this place of still forming — of reflecting on the reality of our formation in still moments and of acknowledging that we are forming, still, each day that we live — is one place those questions meet with our appraisal.

The True Self as Particular and Universal

I don’t know about you, but I’m finding our recent discussions about the true self so interesting and exciting. 

On our last post — which invited us to look at the moments we find ourselves restfully invigorated (if I might coin that phrase) and consider the question “What is it about that rest?” so we might gain greater insight into our true selves — a couple more thoughtful and insightful comments were left by our readers in response. 

Rebecca said: 

For me, it isn’t so much the actual activity, but Posture of my heart. For instance, I can come to the activity of bathing the children and putting them to bed with a grumbling, frustrated heart that is thinking about the DUTY and TASK ahead. When I do that, I find myself exhausted and joyless… Looking forward to just being done! But, when I come to it filled with gratitude for four healthy children, for being able stay home and care for them, with wonder at the miracle of love that I see blossoming in my very own home, the same task becomes a joyous event and I am invigorated instead of exhausted.

When I read Rebecca’s comment, the first thought I had was, “Rebecca’s true self is grateful!” It’s in a posture of gratitude that she finds that invigorated joy, which tells me that deep down, at her very core, she was made to be someone who lives in gratitude.

(Sidenote: I’ve been reading a book by Ann Voskamp called One Thousand Gifts, and it puts forth the idea that all of us find life, salvation, joy, and rest in this continual posture of gratitude. It’s a remarkable and moving book that I highly recommend, if you haven’t read it already.)

Then Leanne shared a bit more about her experience of watering the transplanted flower: 

I think for me it’s being present. Not thinking about what I’m doing next, or one step in front of the other, or thinking about what happened yesterday. Not thinking about the duty (about the guilt of not watering the rose the day before like I was supposed to), the responsibility like Rebecca said, the grumbling heart …

It’s weird but it’s being present, in the moment, and not being obsessed with myself or what others think of me. Self kinda doesn’t even come into it.

I got excited when I read Leanne’s comment because it made me think of a recent discovery I’d had about the true self, too: that the true self is un-self-conscious. 

I believe that in some ways, our true selves are particular — tied to the specific persons that we are, the unique personalities, talents, desires, and stations of our lives that God gave to each one of us to incarnate.

But this conversation, in which we’re beginning to reflect on the foundation of those “restfully invigorated” moments we encounter in our lives, may reveal aspects of the true self that transcend particularity. 

The true self may always be a self that is filled with gratitude. The true self may always be un-self-conscious. The true self may always be found fully immersed in the present moment.

The true self may be many things — universally, for all of us — that depend not on our specific particularities but simply on our bearing the image of God.

What do you think?

Where Is the Strength in Your Life?

In the early days of dating Kirk, he shared something that really stuck out to me. He said:

“If you’re the strongest person in your whole world, you’ll get really exhausted.”

It’s so true.

Think about it. If everyone else looks to you for strength and you’re the one propping your own self up, when do you get to rest? Where is the place you get to go to let go of holding it all together? Where can you just be held in someone else’s strength? 

I’m certainly familiar with this paradigm. I spent the whole of my life being a strong one — both for myself and for other people — without even realizing that was my guiding compass for life. And once the lightbulb turned on and I realized my whole existence teemed with that unrelenting dynamic, I got really, really tired. 

It’s like I suddenly realized I’d been holding up the whole world, a self-chosen and self-made Atlas, and I really didn’t have the strength to do it for one more minute. 

Would anybody ever hold me?

Thankfully, I found Jesus. He now gets to be the stronger one in my life. 

And learning vulnerability with other people — trusting them to carry strength they can offer to me if needed, too — has been a saving grace in my life more and more these days. 

Even though I often slip back into earth-shouldering Atlas mode still today, it’s such a relief to realize I can let go of that burden once I realize I’m doing it and choose, instead, to find strength that holds up the world elsewhere.

Who or what is shouldering the strength in your life right now? Is it God, yourself, other people, something else? What is it like for you to live in that reality?

Where Does Your Self Rest?

I’m inclined to think that when we live in our true selves, we experience true rest. 

For instance, when I’m connected to my true self — living out of and aware of the self that is uniquely me — my entire being fills with rest and calm, even if I’m busy washing the dishes in the sink or picking up the mail at the post office or driving in heavy traffic. 

There is something about the true self that both enlivens and calms us, at one and the same time. 

This is a different kind of rest than the rest we gain through sleep. It is a kind of rest — a consonance of being, I suppose you could say — that we find in our living, waking hours. 

Conversely, I find that the false self exhausts us.

There’s so much self-management, self-monitoring, and worry found there. The false self exists in a constant state of self-preservation and self-promotion. We fear we will cease to matter or cease to exist if we let up our preserving and promoting. 

But the true self lives in a state of rest. A state of harmony and peace.

Here, there is no worry. Here, there is no fear of death.

Where do you find the rest of your true self in your life right now? How easy or hard is it for you to access that rest and that true self inside you? What do you need to access it more faithfully?

What Does He Say to Our Shame? The Benefits of a Reverse Perspective

God doesn’t like me right now. 

He doesn’t want to spend time with me. 

He’s telling me I better shape up.

I’ve heard these words fall from the lips of people I love in recent days, and my immediate response has been to call those words out like the lies from hell they are:

He always likes you.

His enjoyment of you never ends.

He always, always, always wants to spend time with you.

Those aren’t God’s words to you.

That isn’t his voice. 

Why is it so easy for me to see that truth so clearly when it comes to the people I love? It’s another story when it comes to me. 

Today is another day of discouragement for me, just like yesterday was. But it’s different from yesterday, in that yesterday’s heaviness had to do with feeling oppressed by the darkness of the world and the powers at work in it that make the light and love that I have inside me feel so small. 

Today’s discouragement has to do with me.

Barking, snarling voices in the back of my mind tell me everything I’m doing wrong. They yelp about all the ways I’m falling short and failing. They diminish me. They make everything and everyone else feel so big, almost monster-sized.

They make it hard for me to reach Jesus — to see him or hear his voice or even sit still enough to let him find me.

Thankfully, I have the experience of a really good friendship that has taught me a thing or two about how to receive love in moments when I’m feeling particularly unloveable.

This friend and I have been gifted with many moments of realization in the years of our friendship that the love and acceptance we feel toward the other person might — just might — be the same love and acceptance they feel toward us.

It’s always a healing aha moment when we can turn the tables on ourselves in a particularly heavy moment and offer ourselves this kind of reverse perspective:

Hmmm. If you told me that you feel about yourself the way I’m feeling about myself right now and that you feared I would feel that way toward you, too, I know without a doubt that I’d feel the exact opposite than what you fear.

So perhaps — just perhaps — you feel the opposite toward me right now than what I fear you feel. 

Reverse perspectives can be so helpful and such a gift. I think every time I’ve exercised a reverse perspective in a friendship, I have been set free from my heaviness and fears. I’ve been able, thankfully, to accept the possibility of love and open my heart to receive it. 

So today, just a little while ago, that is what I did with God. 

In the midst of all those snarling voices barking at me, I remembered those responses I’d shared the last few days with people I love who have voiced to me their dark beliefs about God’s perspective of them. 

He always enjoys spending time with you. 

He always wants to be near you. 

He never grows tired of you. 

He does not condemn you.

And I turned those words back on myself. 

It really helped. Those snarling voices faded away, seen for the lying dogs they are, and the light of God’s truth shined brighter and brighter still. 

Today, I’m going to keep moving toward that light. I’m going to keep advancing toward Jesus and the truth he speaks over me.

How might a reverse perspective help you in the midst of your own feelings of shame or discouragement today?

Our Burden Really Is Light

Normally I have no idea what I’m going to write here in this space until I sit down and spend time in the quiet with Jesus each morning. But I’ve known since yesterday that I was going to write this post today, when I was in the process of writing that our role is simply to say yes. 

What I want to share with you is something that totally changed everything for me when it comes to understanding what we do and what God does in our process of formation. 

Yesterday, I wrote that our role is simply to notice God’s activity in our lives and then to say yes to it. Our role is to say yes and to embrace his work. I wrote that God does the hard work — all we do is choose to participate. 

But what does our participation look like? What does it mean to say yes? 

Enter the principle of indirection. This is something I first discovered about three years ago, and it completely blew my mind. 

The principle basically says this: 

We do what we can do (something within our power to do) in order to provide an opportunity for God to do in us what we cannot do for ourselves (something outside the scope of our power). 

Usually this means choosing something tangible to practice intentionally and regularly for a season — something it is not difficult for us to exert our will to do — and doing it with the trust and intention for God to do the hard work of changing our character in the places he wants it changed. 

That’s what I mean about him doing what we cannot do. We cannot change ourselves; only he can. But we can participate by acknowledging that we’re aware he wants to work in us and by choosing something small to practice as an acceptance of that work.

This is the idea that backs up Jesus’ words that he came to heal the sick, for the sick cannot heal themselves.

It’s the idea that backs up what Paul promises about how God, who began a good work in us, will be faithful to complete it. It’s the idea that backs up what is told to us about Jesus washing us and then presenting us clean and perfect and pristine before the throne of God in the end.

It’s the idea that backs up all those passages I quoted from Romans 3-5 yesterday about God’s role and our role in the life we share with him.

Our burden really is light because our participation — our saying yes — simply means choosing to do something that is safely within our power to do, trusting that God will supernaturally use it to change our very nature. 

This is not onerous work. It is not meant to be. But it is meant to be intentional. And it is meant to be done with the trust that God is the one who changes us.

Hat tip: I actually wrote about the principle of indirection here about three years ago, when I first learned about it and was starting to have my mind blown by the concept. If you’d like to hear some specific examples of what the principle of indirection can look like in an ordinary life (my own), check out the original article that shares the way I began to practice it from the beginning. 

What simple, faithful choice might you adopt to enter into the acceptance of the work God is about in you right now?

Our Role Is Simply to Say Yes

I’ve been reading the book of Romans lately, and I keep getting stuck at chapters 3-5. These are pretty mind-blowing chapters that teach us so much more than I can even wrap my head around about what God does and what we do. 

These chapters say things like this: 

God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness. 

God sets right all who welcome his action and enter into it. 

Abraham entered into what God was doing for him. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own. 

It was by embracing what God did for him that Abraham was declared fit before God.

This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does.

We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us.

God is the one who does the work. Our job is simply to say yes — to receive and enter into what God’s doing.

I look at my life and see that I may participate in the burnishing and refinement process of my life — the hot fires that make us pliable as he forms us into the image he has always had in mind for who we are — but God is the one doing the actual molding all along. He is the one who conceived of the original image he wanted to create in me from the beginning. He’s the one who went about working with conditions and creating new conditions and then molding and forming me through those conditions into the image he wants in me.

All I have had to do is allow it to happen. 

But let’s be truthful: this “allowing it to happen” isn’t always easy.

It pushes against what we’ve learned so far in life and how we normally operate. It can bring us face to face with pieces of ourselves that aren’t so pretty, and we’d much rather look away or brush them under the couch or push them into a corner closet and then close and lock the door. We may be scared to death of what God’s doing or wants to do because we can’t see the outcome, because it means relinquishing control, and because we’re not (yet) so sure he’s worth trusting with the reins of our lives.

But this, too, is something true: God’s original image of you is brilliant. Glorious. Beautiful. Perfect.

It may take hot fires and great discomfort and courage to live into that original image, but nothing else on earth compares to the result.

Where in your life is God inviting you to say “yes” to his touch right now? 

The True Self is Un-Self-Conscious

I was laying in bed this morning, contemplating the words my spiritual director wrote on my Facebook wall for my birthday today.

She called me her friend “who adores Jesus.” 

First of all, I love that she knows me so well — knows that I am indeed in love with Jesus and that I find my life revolving around him more and more with each passing day.

But it also got me thinking about my session with her last week, in which we discussed the true self and the false self. In that session, she had recalled for me what my true self really looks like. I was reminded that my true self walks and talks and sits with Jesus. I remembered that my true self twirls and dances with Jesus. 

And I realized this morning: my true self is not self-conscious at all. 

I could see so clearly that in those places where I walk and talk and sit and dance and twirl with Jesus, I’m not focused on myself at all. I don’t care what I look like, nor am I judging at all what I’m saying or doing. I’m aware of those things, obviously, but not focused on them.

I’m not the main thing. Jesus is. 

He is the focus of my attention, the one of whom I can never seem to get enough.

What he looks like, what he says, how he looks at me, what his gestures are like, how he smiles, what he looks like when he’s thinking or when he’s listening, the ways he teaches and guides or corrects me … all of him captivates my attention.

In this place, there’s no need or room to be self-conscious. 

It’s a wonderfully relieving place to be — not to be preoccupied with myself, but to be concerned fully, instead, with him.

Have you ever experienced un-self-consciousness? What was that experience like for you?

How Do You Connect to God Right Where You Are?

In the last several months, I’ve noticed a theme crop up in numerous conversations with friends, acquaintances, and strangers. That theme has, at its root, a question:

What does it look like for me to connect to God in my specific life station or personality type? 

This has a lot of bearing on the work done here at Still Forming, and I’ve begun to take this question seriously.

For instance, the foundation of this site is a week-daily invitation to a moment of stillness in your day. But what if moments of stillness rarely exist in your world? What do you do if quiet reflections of the heart are a luxury you can barely fathom?

Or, what if you’re an extrovert? What if you’d rather be outdoors than sitting quietly at your desk, reading the scriptures? What if you need to see and hear and touch God to know he’s real, rather than use your intuition?

In other words: 

Is there room for me and God to connect, no matter where I am in life or how I’m made? 

My response to that question is yes. And I’ll share more of my thoughts on this here with you as I continue to explore and consider the question. (Some of my thoughts on the question have been previously written here, here, here, and here.)

But for now, I’d like to open up an opportunity for you to share your input. 

Where is God where you live right now? How are you finding God in the midst of your current life station?

How do you connect to God through the way you’re made? How does he make himself uniquely personal to you and the person that you are?

Living in the True Self

I was in a session with my spiritual director yesterday, and we talked quite a bit about the true self — the self God created when he created us, the self into which it is his ever-continuing intention to form us throughout our lives. 

There was a moment in my time of prayer during the session when I could see three selves inside of me, two of them false and one of them true. 

The two false selves exist on the extremes of a pendulum.

On the far right is the self that wants and seeks to be super-human. This is the self that wants to create magic, to be the irreplaceable part of other people’s lives, to be the savior for another person’s quandary. It’s the self that exists under extreme pressure to live up to some ideal of perfection and shininess in order to be needed and wanted and utterly indispensable to others and to this world.

On the far left is a completely opposite self. This self exists in the shadows, behind a heavy curtain, cloaked in shame. This is the self who walks with eyes downcast, ashamed to meet other people eye to eye. It is the self who shrinks from being seen, the self who lurches into coffee shops and grocery stores and the post office and drives down the road with a sense of unworthiness and fear. It is the self who apologizes all the time for merely existing.

Neither of these selves are true.

And I’m so thankful for long-standing relationships, like the one I have with my director, Elaine, that can be a place of reminder. Because of our long-standing relationship, Elaine was able to remind me — through concrete examples — of the true self I have come to know and embody and embrace through my relationship with Christ.

This is the self who walks on the beach with Jesus regularly. It is the self who took a four-month journey through the woods with Jesus, even though I didn’t know what would transpire in those woods or what would emerge on the other side of them. It is the self who eventually came upon a village with Jesus and who sits on benches and rocks and walls and front-porch stoops with him. 

It is the self who knows Jesus and is completely free and strong and fully alive and full of joy in his presence.

There is no shame present at all in my true self, and no need at all for magic. Just being.

The true self lives in honest and glad surrender to these truths: Jesus alone is the one who holds and offers and is the magic. And with Jesus, there is no evidence or place for shame.

Have you met your true self yet? What is that self like? When do you most often inhabit and live inside your true self?

Are you familiar, as I am, with the pendulum that swings from one false self to another? What is your false self (or selves) like? What does your false self seek? How might companioning with Jesus help bring you back to center, to living in the rest and assurance and joy of the true self he created when he created you?

Di Cenere: From the Ashes

At the retreat that prompted the writing of this short series on discernment, I learned something new. 

Discernment comes from the root di cenere, which, literally translated, means “from the ashes.” 

What does it mean for discernment to come from the ashes? I’ve been thinking on this question since I first learned of the word’s translation.

The retreat instructor said that discernment isn’t meant to point toward the deadness of things, but rather toward where the ashes came from: they came from fire, from energy, from life. 

This has caused me to linger on what remains when a fire finishes. When we sift through the ashes, what remains? What elements proved of stronger mettle than the fire? What emerges when we pick through the ashes the morning after?

Which then turned my thoughts to this passage: 

No one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have — Jesus Christ. Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials — gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value.

— 1 Corinthians 3:11-13

The passage speaks of the end of time, but it also, reflexively, asks us to consider the elements at the core of our lives. 

What is the gold, the silver, the jewels at the heart of your life? What are those things that simply will not burn away? How can your knowledge of those elements guide you in your process of discernment?

What Are Your Foundational Experiences of God?

Three years ago, when I had just begun my training as a spiritual director, I attended an instructional retreat weekend that had the topic of discernment as its central focus.

On the very first evening of that retreat, we watched a short clip from Mary Ann Scofield, one of the founders of Spiritual Directors International, talking about our foundational experiences of God and how they can serve as touchstones in our ongoing lives of faith. And this past weekend, as I attended a similar retreat weekend on that same topic, we revisited this idea of foundational experiences of God and how they can serve us in our discernment processes. 

Consider the baptism experience of Jesus in Matthew 3.

Jesus comes up from the water, and a dove descends from the clouds as a voice from heaven says, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” This was a declarative moment in the life of Jesus — a moment that confirmed his identity not only as the Son of God, but also as one who is beloved. 

We see Jesus move from the bapstimal encounter into the wilderness, where he is tested by the devil at that very point of his identity. Three times, the devil tempts Jesus by saying, “If you really are the Son of God, do this … or this … or this.” He is testing the very meaning of what it means for Jesus to really be the Son of God, and Jesus must go back to that foundational encounter and remember. Reconnecting with his true identity that he received directly from God in that baptismal encounter allows him to respond to each temptation.

What about you? 

What foundational experiences of God have formed your life? What did those foundational experiences teach you about God and yourself? How might returning to those foundational moments serve you in your own process of discernment? 

Are You a Thinker or a Feeler, and Other Helpful Considerations

Yesterday we began a small series on the topic of discernment. Through each of the daily posts this week, we are going to consider how we practice the art of discernment in our lives and what we can learn about our process of discernment to help us in future moments of decision in our lives. 

In yesterday’s post, I asked you to look back upon your life to see if there has been a pattern or process to your decision-making. Today, I’m going to take that a step deeper and ask you to consider aspects of your personhood and how those have historically played into your decision-making process — or how they might help you in the future. 

If you are familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator, you know that it carries four categories of indication for each person’s make-up. 

• Introvert or Extrovert
• Senser or Intuitive
• Thinker or Feeler
• Perceiver or Judger

There are loads of resources that you can find to explain each of these type indicators and to help you determine which indicators are your dominant preference. But today, I want to consider how these personality type indicators can become helpful to our process of discernment. 

Let’s take, for example, the difference between a thinker and a feeler.

For someone who is a thinker, charting out a pro-and-con list for a particular decision-point can prove immensely clarifying and helpful. A thinker will also be helped along in their decision by conducting research or appealing to those with knowledge and/or experience related to the decision-point they are considering.

Someone who is a feeler, on the other hand, might find themselves better served by noticing the emotive affect a particular decision casts upon them when they hold it inside themselves. They may also be helped by paying attention to the physical responses of their bodies when weighing one decision over another. 

By way of another example, consider introversion and extroversion.

These categories speak to how each of us gains or loses energy. An introvert becomes weary from too much external stimulation and becomes energized and filled up through “down times” of solitude — times that allow them to think, reflect, and rest in the quiet. An extrovert finds that solitary, quiet activity a bit draining, however, and becomes much more energized when around other people.

Which type are you, and how might that truth of yourself shed light on the best decision you are seeking to make? Has your personality preference type served you to discern a decision you needed to make in the past? 

On Being Tied to Others

Recently, I had an experience that was pretty visceral. I was feeling pretty beat up and insecure, and I put out an SOS call to my spiritual director, Elaine. Thankfully, she had some time to connect with me by phone that day, and after pouring out my woes, I landed on an image to describe the way I felt. 

In the image, I was three years old with a ponytail on the top of my head, and people were grabbing me by that ponytail and banging me around at whim. 

Ouch. Pretty visceral, right? 

What absolutely broke my heart was seeing my own response inside that image. I was flinging my arms out wide in a desperate attempt to grab the leg of the one(s) flinging me around, trying valiantly to grab hold and hang on tight, as if to say, “Love me! Care for me! Approve of me! Want me!”

Ouch again. This is me in one of my most vulnerable places. I struggle with things like this.

Thank goodness for Elaine. She asked if Jesus was there, and he was.

I wouldn’t have seen Jesus if she hadn’t asked me to notice him. 

But when she asked me to notice Jesus, there he was, sitting on a set of steps in front of a brownstone walk-up residence off to the side. All that flinging and flailing was happening in the middle of a neighborhood street, and Jesus sat quietly on the brownstone steps, facing the street, watching the scene unfold before him.

I found it interesting he didn’t try to rescue me. He didn’t get off the steps and interfere in the incident. Instead, he looked at me with calmness and knowledge in his demeanor and his eyes and simply communicated, “You don’t have to take that.”

It was like I had a choice. Really? 

So I gave it a shot. I disentangled myself from the abusive swinging and banging around, and I went to sit by Jesus on the steps. And as soon as I sat down, it was like I came back into possession of my whole self. I was 32 years old, inhabiting the fullness of my story, my life, and my body. 

I was whole and pulsing with aliveness. Jesus and I sat shoulder to shoulder, looking out on the neighborhood street before us, and talked like two adults who know, love, and respect each other. 

Do you struggle with something similar — being tied to the whims of others, enslaved to their approval or treatment? What might it be like to receive the full acceptance and respect of the companionship of Jesus instead? 

Continued Thoughts on Personality and Silence

On a previous post, I shared that I have an extroverted friend who is helping me think about God in new ways.

We’ve been continuing our dialogue on introversion and extroversion, and I’ve been learning so much from him about how an extrovert can connect to God in meaningful ways. He’s been kind to share with me, for instance, some pretty amazing examples of how he connects to God that involve group discussion, podcasts, corporate worship experiences, and even exercise. 

Isn’t it amazing that God is bigger than our own personalities? I love that. 

I also love the way two readers here, Terri and Sara, helped me think more deeply about whether silence is the place we grow and heal. They were so wise to say that something being the case for one person doesn’t necessarily mean it is the case for everyone. I think this is so true, and a good reminder for all of us.

I know that for me in particular, being the contemplative introvert that I am, it can be easy to relate to the healing, nurturing side of silence and contemplative prayer. The words of Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton, in particular, are so instructive and encouraging to me. They seem to speak my native language. 

But for someone like my extroverted friend, dialogue with other believers or experiencing the church in corporate worship can also be vastly healing and nurturing. God can be just as present and accessible in those places as he is in a hermitage or monastery or prayer closet. 

All of this has gotten me thinking about the many dimensions of God and his vast personality.

God’s being contains all of the proclivities and preferences that we as humans experience and exhibit. So no matter who we are or how we experience the world, we can find some measure of God there. 

Isn’t that kind of mind-blowing?

I love how vast God is. 

PS: Speaking of Terri, she wrote a beautiful reflection on how silence removes the usual barriers between us and our neighbors, which I found deeply edifying and helpful. Highly recommend!

What Is It Like to Consider Going Home?

I’ve just begun reading a new book by Ian Morgan Cron called Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me. It is “a memoir of sorts” by the author and begins with an epigraph by Wendell Berry that says, “When going back makes sense, you are going ahead.” The first chapter begins with a quote by Robert Lax that says, “Sometimes we go on a search for something and do not know what we are looking for until we come again to our beginning.” 

Pretty powerful quotes, aren’t they? 

I’m pleased to share that the rest of the book is quite powerful, too — at least, what I’ve read of it so far. It is the author’s attempt to wade through the “harrowing straits of memory” in order to make peace with his history and sail more freely into his future. 

Right up front, the author says this about doing this kind of excavation of our histories:

“Home is where we start, and whether we like it or not, our life is a race against time to come to terms with what it was or wasn’t.”

What do you think of this idea? 

Speaking from my own experience, I find it to be true. Pretty much the entirety of my adult life, from age 19 to the place I stand now at 32, has been an exercise in going back to my beginnings to make sense of them and find healing, peace, and wholeness. 

I wrote on my personal blog last night that the first big chunk of years devoted to this excavation brought pain, anger, regret, and grief. I did not find peace for many years, but I knew, all along, that peace would be found on the other side somehow. In my experience, God had clearly invited me to visit that excavation site and hunker down for quite some time.

The excavation is still happening, really, and probably will be underway the rest of my life. But the biggest chunks of history discovered and explored in those earliest of days are now, thankfully, in the polishing phase. That is something for which I regularly give thanks.

Going home takes work. It’s hard. It hurts. But I can’t imagine a more worthwhile endeavor, especially when the invitation is offered and then lived out in the presence of Jesus. 

What is going home like for you? Does the notion appeal to you? Scare you? Turn you off? Have you ever visited the excavation site of your history with Jesus as an excavation partner in the process? 

Learning Your Heart: Sometimes Therapy Helps

Here is something true.

Once you acknowledge those subtle intimations and allow yourself time to collect and reflect on key moments in your life, a whole new and unexpected world begins to open up. You become more in touch with the breadth and depth of your story, and you begin to disentangle yourself from what is merely expectation versus truth. 

You strike out on the path of greater self-awareness, and here’s the difficult part: sometimes the path gets quite thorny indeed.

Who are we? What roles have we played in the world and the lives of those around us? Are those roles true? Are they healthy? What do we believe about God? How did we come to believe those things? Do those beliefs align with what is really true about God? These are just some of the questions that present themselves as we allow those subtle intimations and key moments a voice in our lives, and let’s be honest: these are great, big questions.

This is where I’ve found that therapy can be quite helpful. It creates a safe place to sift through the pieces of our lives with an eye toward greater self-awareness, conviction, and healing, and it provides for a safe and concrete relationship in which to take small steps deeper into the truth of who we are.

Sometimes the help of a trained professional can be the greatest, most generous gift we give ourselves. 

I have been there. It’s not something I’m ashamed to admit, nor is it something I’m shy to recommend. Making sense of our world and the truth of our inmost beliefs and deepest experiences on our own can be confusing and overwhelming, and sometimes we can do more harm than good to ourselves when navigating these waters on our own or only the help of well-meaning friends.

Therapy is not for everyone, and it’s certainly important to find someone who is competent, caring, safe, and professional for this kind of working relationship. But the bottom line is this: you don’t have to navigate the territory of your story and your heart all on your own.

What are your thoughts on therapy? Is it something you’ve found helpful in your own journey? Do you have misgivings or hesitations about it?

Introvert or Extrovert: How Do You Connect to God?

A couple weeks ago, I wrote the following on my Facebook wall:

I am such a homebody. I could be satisfied staying home all day, every day, with occasional trips to Starbucks to spice things up a bit.

A good friend of mine wrote the following response: 

Both sound terrible to me. I’d be depressed from being alone all the time and then adding in burnt & over-syruped coffee would put me over the edge.

As much as his comment made me laugh, it really crystallized for me the difference between an introvert and an extrovert. And it got me wondering: 

How do extroverts and introverts experience God differently? 

This is a website about formation. We talk often here of the inner landscape of the human experience, which is such natural fodder for introverts to think about and discuss (see this article). We talk a lot here, too, about stillness and contemplation and rest — again, such natural preferences and ways of being for introverts. 

What I’m learning is, this site is quite biased toward the introvert’s experience of life and of God!

Again, my friend’s comment got me wondering. How does an extrovert experience God in different ways than I do? Are still moments of contemplation ever helpful for him or her? What kinds of things draw them nearer and close to God than the things I usually do? Do extroverts reflect on their spiritual life and experiences the way introverts are prone to do? 

Which naturally leads me to want to ask you:

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Do you find that your introversion or extroversion influences how you best connect to God? What are the ways you prefer connecting to God?

Are You Friends with Worry?

I am the kind of person who worries about pretty much everything. And if I’m not worrying about what might happen, I’m goading myself to work harder and hurry up so that nothing will go wrong and the earth can go on spinning. I wonder if you can relate to this. 

Here are a few ways that looks in my life. 

When I was completing my first graduate degree, I went to school full time, five days a week, and completed one course per month over the course of a year to get my business credentials. In this fast-paced setting, projects and papers were due with fairly consistent regularity. And often before those projects and papers were due, I would spend days and days worrying about them and hounding myself for not being further along in completing them.

This worry and hounding would last until the day before the assignment was due, when I would finally sit down and churn out a fairly coherent and solid product upon the first try.

All that worry was for nothing.

Thankfully, by the time I started work on my second graduate degree, I had learned to trust my process and worried and hounded myself so much less. 

Here’s a second way worry looks in my life.

I will formulate a plan and use all my strength and energy to make every component of that plan work. When things go wrong (as they invariably do), anxiety rises and so does that goading voice inside my head. Hurry up, it says. Work harder. Work faster. Get it together. Things fall apart and it’s all your fault. 

If I were one step removed from the reality of the situation, I would recognize that voice for what it is and tell it to shut its trap and go take a big, long hike. But in the thick of the situation, I’m not removed from it. I’m trying to figure things out and get the plan accomplished. 

What I’ve found to be the case, again and again, is that things come together just as they’re meant to.

Things fall apart from the original plan because that original plan was flawed, or the timing wasn’t right yet, or new information had yet to come to light. All the time I spent worrying is usually, in the end, wasted time — not to mention how it tears me apart on the inside.

I’ve been working on this area of worry in my life lately.

I’ve been learning to settle into the process of how things need to unfold. I’ve been learning to trust that when things aren’t working out as planned, it’s usually for good reason. And I’ve been learning to embrace the developmental process that has absolutely nothing to do with whether I’m holding things together perfectly enough or not. 

Can you relate to this struggle with worry? Do you have your own goading, hounding voice to contend with? What does it say? What have you learned through experience is the fruit of your worry?