The Sound of Silence

Last night, Kirk and I had the great pleasure of attending a monthly gathering here in Winter Park, called the Wellspring, led by Jan Richardson and her husband Gary, both of whom we met at a contemplative retreat they led here in town recently.

And wouldn’t you know it, but the theme of this month’s Wellspring gathering was rest. Such apt timing for what we’ve been considering here in this space this week.

After each of the Scripture readings in the service, we entered into a short time of silent reflection. And during one of those silences, I just allowed myself to take in its sound.

What was the sound of silence like? 

I could hear the occasional creak of a pew. I could hear the air conditioner’s whir. I could hear the scratch of pen against paper as Kirk jotted down a quick note next to me. I could hear my own thoughts bouncing from one place to the next, from reflection on the passage to the worries I had about my day. 

Eventually, my ears tuned to that A/C whir and joined with the image of the sky scene you see in the photo above, which I’d captured just before entering the chapel that night. And it was like my ears and mind and whole being poised, attentive to the sky’s silence for a moment, taking in the sound of clouds, the space of God’s habitation of the heavens.

The sound of clouds. Just being with God. 

What is the sound of silence right where you are? When you close your eyes and listen, what do you hear? 

What Is the Breathing Room of God for You?

Without quite expecting it to happen, we’ve been focusing this week on rest and “breath spaces” and the resting place of God. In yesterday’s post, I shared that I stumbled on a passage in the psalms during my morning reading that invites us to consider God as one who always provides us with breathing room. 

This morning, I read yet another psalm that said the same thing: 

God, the one and only — I’ll wait as long as he says.

Everything I need comes from him,

  so why not?

He’s solid rock under my feet,

breathing room for my soul,

An impregnable castle:

  I’m set for life.

— Psalm 62:1-2

It just keeps getting my attention, this idea of God as one who provides breathing room for us. 

What does that mean to you, I wonder? 

For me, it means having the open invitation to be honest. It means having space to just be with God — not having to say anything, not having to do something. It means finding a place of rest, especially when everything else in and around me is clamoring for activity. It means peace. 

I think about Henri Nouwen’s concept of “prayer of the heart” in connection with this. I’ve quoted this favorite section of his book Way of the Heart a few times before, but it never loses its impact for me. He says: 

“To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all-seeing, within you.”

— The Way of the Heart, p. 73

As I’ve shared before, this idea of descending with the mind into the heart and standing before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, before us brings me such a sense of peace. There are no secrets here. There is no shame. There’s no need to justify or prove anything. There’s just full and exposed being in truth. 

And while that has the potential to sound terrifying, I’ve found it to be a very calming, healing experience. 

What is it like for you to consider receiving the “breathing room” of God?

God as Your Resting Place

We’ve been talking about rest and “breath spaces” this week — seeing the need for them to stay grounded and healthy and self-reflective about our lives — and this morning, I read a beautiful related passage in the course of my morning time in the Scriptures: 

You’ve always given me breathing room,
   a place to get away from it all,
A lifetime pass to your safe-house,
   an open invitation as your guest.
You’ve always taken me seriously, God,
   made me welcome among those who know and love you.

— Psalm 61:3-5

God, the provider of our safe-house. God, one who gives us breathing room. God, one who takes us seriously. God, one who makes us welcome. 

Is this your experience of God? Would you like it to be?

Living a Rhythmed Life: The Challenges I Face

Hi, friends. 

So, we’re on the back end of the rhythmed life series. We spent a full three weeks looking at the concept of a rhythmed life from various angles, with last week allowing us to flesh out what this could mean for us individually. (To see a comprehensive list of the posts in this series, click here.) 

This week, I’d like to sew up the series by sharing some final thoughts and perspectives. I’ll share some stories from my own life about living this way, and we’ll look later this week at how the rhythmed life affects our online lives. 

If you have any remaining questions about this subject, feel free to chime in and ask in the comments. I’d love to make sure your questions get answered before the series ends. 

Today, though, I’d like to talk about challenges. 

What hurdles crop up when living this way? 

The one I face most has to do with my availability to other people.

Even though, as I shared earlier in the series, being with people in this approach to life means being more fully present when I’m with them, the rhythmed life — at least in the rhythm I’m meant to sustain — means being present to less people, and often being present in different ways than I would have been before I began living this way.

It means saying no to coffee dates and dinner invites and social parties sometimes. It means only being available in certain timeframes, which may not end up working for other people’s schedules. It means, for me, having to schedule phone dates with people I love rather than leaving things open-ended and spontaneous.

It means missing out on connection sometimes. It means other people might not understand why I said no. Living a rhythmed life means accepting these realities and limitations, and this can be hard. 

There’s also the challenge of how life just happens sometimes.

People get sick. We can’t get to sleep. Plans fall through. Our work goes through a busy season. The car breaks down.

As I shared earlier in the series, this isn’t about rigidity. There’s always room for grace and the unexpected here. This is about rhythm and intention, not schedules and rules. 

About once a month, for example, I have a work commitment that keeps me in the office all day for three days straight — sometimes into the late hours for each of those days. On those days, my morning routine and my evening routine must flex to accommodate. 

And that is totally okay. We let life be what it needs to be, and then we shift back to usual rhythm when we can.

Lastly, I face the challenge of comparison.

I just can’t do as much as other people can. I have a very low tolerance for stimulation and noise. I lose energy quickly in large groups. I need to take things slow. I need a lot of silence. 

It can be easy to judge myself for these limits. It can be tempting to goad myself to do more. 

But the reality is, I’m made the way I am in order to do the things I’m meant to do. The life I’m called to lead and the work I’m invited to offer needs slowness and great cadences of silence. I can’t do what I do without those things, and so my personal make-up become a proper fit for my life. 

Rather than compare, I have to remember who I am and the life that’s mine to live.

What challenges do you face — or anticipate facing — in living a rhythmed life? 

Living a Rhythmed Life: Do You Have a Sense of Call?

“If ye have judged me to be faithful.”

Hello there!

We’re heading into our third week of the “Living a Rhythmed Life” series, and this week will be a return to the practical. We’re going to answer a few more questions about our lives and then turn to our trees of discernment to begin making decisions. 

The first question I want you to consider, then, is: 

Do you have a sense of call? 

This may not seem like a practical question, but I promise that it is. A sense of call impacts the decisions we make about our life’s rhythm. For instance, I’ve had a sense of call significantly impact the practical details of my daily life at least 3 times in the last 3 years.

I’m going to share those 3 instances with you here. 

The first time was in 2009, when I created that very first discernment tree I shared with you during a particularly overwhelming season of my life. At the time, when I stopped to think about it, I had a very clear sense of the direction my life was headed. I had received a call to ministry in 2007-2008, and so I was completing graduate work in spiritual formation and training as a spiritual director as a result.

I didn’t necessarily know what that calling to ministry meant or what it would look like or where it would lead, but I knew that it was a calling I needed to respond to and follow. Additionally, over the previous year I’d become significantly moved in the direction and study of nonviolence. The subject and its practical implications in our own hearts and lives had an inordinate occupation in my heart and mind.

And so, consequently, I knew that my schooling and training needed to take priority over other things in the sorting out of that very tumultuous time of 2009, and I knew that the ongoing invitation to the study and consideration of peace and nonviolence needed to stay in my life.

I couldn’t turn away from these things. Other things would have to go.

The knowledge of this impacted the way I made decisions after drawing my tree of discernment.

Another sense of call came when I graduated both study and training programs in 2011.

I had spent some time discerning with a few key people in my life in the months leading up to the completion of both programs about a specific call to serve in online spaces.

These mentors in my life had noticed with me that most of my spiritual direction clients had come to me over the years in long-distance contexts, with many of the directees coming to know me first through my blogs. I had completed my spiritual formation training in an online cohort context, so doing the work of spiritual formation online was not new to me. I was very comfortable with it. And, to top it all off, I had just finished my master’s thesis proposal on the intersection of digital connectivity and spirituality, and through the research process had developed some very clear ideas about what is needed for us to tune into our spiritual lives amidst all the noise and stimulation and distractions of our increasingly connected online lives.

The online medium had become, surprisingly, a space for me to exercise my call.

And so, as a result, I decided to commit, first of all, to this online space of Still Forming. I began writing here five days a week. (And just recently, I celebrated a year of faithfulness in this space.)

More recently, God has been bringing even more refinement to my calling.

I’ve come to see in recent months that my work is that of creating spaces for people to reflect on their lives with God. Still Forming is that kind of space. The Cup of Sunday Quiet is that kind of space. The Look at Jesus course is that kind of space. And the spiritual direction I offer to people is that kind of sacred space, too. 

This refinement of calling has required even more decisions that affect my daily rhythm. I recently made the decision to close down two personal blogs I’ve kept for quite some time. I’ve also had to turn down or adjust my involvement in certain opportunities based on the way they fit or don’t fit into that clear sense of call.

It’s about letting the call get my yes — and adjusting my daily rhythm to support the continued creation of those sacred spaces.

A sense of call impacts our rhythm. 

Do you have a sense of call at this point in your journey?

Finding God With and Within

I read a quote by St. Augustine this morning that helps illuminate our path to God. He wrote: 

Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new. Late have I loved Thee. For behold Thou were within me, and I outside; and I sought Thee outside, and in my unloveliness, fell upon those lovely things Thou hast made. Thou wert with me and I was not with Thee. I was kept from Thee by those things, yet had they not been in Thee, they would not have been at all. 

I keep marveling at this sense of being outside ourselves that he mentions — how God can be found when we go interior, inside ourselves, but how we often flee that level of intimacy and knowing and being known by casting about outside ourselves. 

Or the way, too, he mentions God being with us but our not being with God. 

It is so easy to avoid presence, isn’t it? Presence with ourselves and presence with God. So we go outside ourselves.

It’s such a visceral picture to me — this going outside ourselves — as though we are leaving our real habitat, our real encasement, leaving it as an empty shell while we seek something elsewhere. Except as we are seeking that something else, we’re only a half-being because we left ourselves back with God.

Visceral, isn’t it? 

Can you relate? 

What is it like for you to consider finding God by going inward or finding God right there next to you?

He Delights in You

The last couple days, I’ve been camped out in a single verse from Psalm 44: 

We didn’t fight for this land;

   we didn’t work for it — it was a gift!

You gave it, smiling as you gave it,

   delighting as you gave it.

— Psalm 44:3

I keep meditating on this verse in the context of my tree. I mentioned yesterday that I experience these images from Jesus as a gift, and this image of being a great oak tree planted on a jutting cliff, where birds come and find nest in its branches is certainly that. 

So in this psalm, I find resonance. I didn’t fight for this place I’ve been planted. I didn’t work for it at all. It was a gift! Jesus accorded me this identity as a tree, and he led me to the place of my planting. 

And then the psalm says that he gave it, smiling as he gave it, delighting as he gave it. 

Yes. 

I’ve learned that Jesus loves doing what he does in our lives. He loves being present. He loves spending time with us. He loves hearing what we have to say — he really listens. He smiles!

And he loves doing the work only he can do in us: the work of excavation, of restoration, of building up, of leading, and of planting. 

He delights in us and in the ever-new realities he is making of our lives. 

Do you feel connected to the delight of Jesus in you?

What Images Do You Have of Your Life with God?

By now, it’s pretty apparent that images show up in my life with God quite a lot. And even though that’s been a reality of my prayer life for, oh, about 12 years now, I never cease to be amazed by it or surprised by the images that come. 

I’ve learned that these images are pure gift.

They are given, not constructed by me. Suddenly, they’re just there.

And I’ve found them to be a real help because they illuminate truths about myself and my life with God that I would not otherwise have known.

For instance, gazing at an image can be such a layered experience. 

You can look at it from one angle, and then you can turn it around or walk to a different side of it and look at it again. You see new things from the different angles. Or you can pull back and look at the image or scene as a whole. What surrounds it? What else is happening, beyond the focal point? What sense or impulse do you have while gazing at the image?

The Eastern Orthodox Church is familiar with this practice of holding images in their lives of prayer. They regularly utilize icons to help them “see deeper” into their lives with God. The icons become a window of sorts — a window into the reality of their souls, a window into the reality of God.

Images can be a help in our prayer lives — whether given to us directly by God or utilized externally for contemplative gazing, as with an icon. I am so thankful for these images. They speak truth to me, teaching me, rather than requiring me to speak or teach myself. 

Do images play a part in your life with God at all?

He Is Abundant Life

As I’ve been talking with Jesus about the tree that we are together, water has remained close by. I’ve been aware of it as an essential component to this new life Jesus has been preparing to give to me as a tree planted by him. I knew that wherever he planted me, the water of the Holy Spirit would be a necessary presence to nourish my roots and interior system continually.

And sure enough, it’s true.

Yesterday, Jesus planted the tree of me on the jutting edge of a cliff that overlooks the ocean. The beach where Jesus and I have walked together this past year in prayer is not far from view, and the huge, wide, blue ocean stretches out before me. All of that water encircles my cliff foundation, providing sustenance up through the elements and minerals to the grassy plain surrounding my tree, pushing all the way up through the fullness of its trunk and limbs and leaves. 

The water is necessary. 

It carries an abundance of life. 

The Godhead is many things, and one thing it definitely is, is the source and sustainer of abundant life. 

I feel aware that even as Jesus and I are the tree together, he is also the sunlight that nourishes it. He is the water that sustains it. He is its nourishing soil. He is the one who chose its location and planted it where it should be. He is the one who will prune and care for its leaves and bark and branches. 

In my awareness as this tree, Jesus has been and will continue to be the giver and sustainer of my life. And oh, it is such an abundant life he gives — life everywhere, surrounding and filling this tree of me.

How can you find God a source and giver of life in your own life today?

He Is a Haven

My favorite tree in Winter Park.

Jesus and I have been talking a lot about trees lately. (Which is great because I absolutely adore them. I am such a tree girl.)

A lot of this conversation about trees has been in the context of the kind of tree he has been making me to be. But this morning, as he has been showing me more and more of the tree that I am, I got to asking him about his part. 

If I am a tree, what is he?

As I exist as a type of tree in this world, where is he in that image?

He showed me that he’s also the tree. He’s the lifeblood of my existence as a tree. His Spirit is the water that sustains and nourishes my tree. It’s not that I am a tree and he is separate from me in that image in some way. 

We are together. One tree. 

In the context of this conversation, I keep going back to this passage in Matthew that says: 

“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” 

— Matthew 13:31-32

I love this passage! It’s so beautiful.

But specifically, I keep being mindful of the safe space that the tree in this passage provides for all the birds of the air. It is a place all of them come to make nests in its branches. It provides support. Famliarity. Safety. Home. 

Jesus is that kind of tree for you. 

Do you know him to be a haven like that?

What I've Learned About Suffering

It’s been a long journey, hasn’t it? 

We embarked on the exploration of suffering on May 1, and I can hardly believe it lasted a month. Who knew the unsuspecting discovery of a poem would lead to such an intensive journey for us here? I hope it has been helpful for you.

As I mentioned yesterday, I know this month-long series has fallen far short of examining all there is to be found and learned about human suffering. I am still contemplating a personal writing exercise where I type out all that I want to say and explore about this subject — all that couldn’t fit on those pink plastic tasting spoons in this space each day — just for my own benefit.

Just to see what I see. 

In the meantime, I want to share a realization I’ve bumped up against over and over again throughout this journey: 

The turns in the suffering have so much to do with Jesus. 

At least for me, this has been true.

Every turn in my own experiences of suffering can be traced, like a single trail of red yarn, directly back to Jesus. What he taught me about myself. Ways he helped me see a bigger picture. Truths he helped me learn in place of lies. Love he showed to me in places of pain. 

So much of human suffering creates a monumental court case against God. How could he let these things happen? How could a good God permit so much pain? Did God make this happen, or just allow it? Why would he let that be? 

I have certainly been there. I’ve wrestled with the problem of pain and God’s responsibility in it a lot the last few years. Sometimes it feels like I bear a particular burden about these things, as I’ve chronicled a bit in another of my online spaces. 

But one thing I’ve noticed, at least for myself, is this:

Any healing and wholeness and strength I’ve ever found has come directly from Jesus. 

Whatever God’s role in the world’s suffering is, I know at least one thing to be true: Jesus heals me in my suffering. 

What have you learned about suffering?

A Turn in the Suffering :: When It's Bigger Than We Understand

I have felt so aware throughout this suffering series that this subject is vaster than any bits and pieces of a blog series — even a whole lot of those bits and pieces strung together in a month-long series — can cover. 

I told Kirk that writing this series has felt like offering a tiny taste of perspective each day on one of those tiny pink plastic sample spoons you get at Baskin Robbins when you want to try an ice cream flavor before ordering your scoop. Each and every post of this series has felt like a tiny pink tasting spoon like that, and I feel like I could write whole book chapters on each post — each post that examined how suffering can affect us, and each post that has examined ways we might hold the suffering and learn what it can teach us. 

Not to mention all the perspectives that weren’t included in either side of that exploration yet.

This subject is just so big and vast. 

And this morning, as I was walking along the beach in prayer with Jesus and talking with him about all this, I felt so aware of the truth of this. It was like he looked out across the vast ocean stretching out for miles beside us and swept his arm out toward it, as if saying, “See this? This is its vastness. It’s true.” 

Sometimes our actual experience of suffering feels like that, too. 

There’s a vastness to it. An imperceptibility because it can be so all-consuming and great. An inability to pull back and see or even comprehend anything rational when it comes to what we’ve suffered or seen others experience. 

Sometimes it’s just too big to understand. 

And I think, in those places, we sometimes just keep walking — that that’s all we can do. Keep holding the tension of what is hard and what seems necessary. Keep living. Keep feeling. Keep knowing God and ourselves. Keep trusting that something in all of this matters, even if we may never know why. 

I think there is dignity in this way of holding our experiences. 

Because just because something doesn’t make sense or cannot be held in our minds doesn’t mean our experience of it is less valid or that there’s no meaning in it at all. Who are we as we live inside that inexplicable complexity? What will we choose to believe? What will it make of our faith? What will it make of our lives?

These are some of the questions suffering’s vastness invites us to hold, I think.

A Turn in the Suffering :: When We Can Consider Forgiveness

It took me a really long time to get to forgiveness. 

I knew forgiveness was pretty important — Jesus makes that really clear in the Gospels. But I also had gone through enough of the process of learning my heart to know what was really in there. I couldn’t fool myself into believing I’d forgiven when I really hadn’t.

Besides, I knew that wasn’t what Jesus wanted, either. He’s the one who taught me the importance of the heart. He’s the one who helped me learn that our hearts are the key players in relationship with God.

I couldn’t just play lip service to forgiveness. Neither Jesus nor I would be fooled. 

So what do you do when you know forgiveness is important but you just aren’t there? 

You ask God to help you get there, and you be with the truth of the mess in the meantime. 

I’m serious. This is what I did. For years — literally, years — I consciously asked God to help me learn forgiveness. And then I would look at the reality of my heart and know that forgiveness wasn’t in there yet. I was still reeling. Still in shock. Still picking up the pieces of brokeness. Still learning what happened because of all that brokenness. 

Still learning what Jesus could do with all that brokenness, too. 

I read so many perspectives on forgiveness over the years, and none of them penetrated me.

Forgiveness is a choice, they said. It’s a choice you keep choosing and choosing and choosing each day. Or they said, Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting what happened or saying that it’s okay. It means wilfully choosing not to hold that against someone anymore. Or here’s another one: Unforgiveness is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the other person to die. 

These things may be true, but none of those declarations or platitudes meant anything to me. They just didn’t compute. And they annoyed me. 

What got me to forgiveness was being with the pain. Examining it. Learning from it. Figuring out how it had formed me. Allowing Jesus to take me on the long journey of reckoning. 

And then getting to a place where I saw new things. 

The thing that helped me the most with forgiveness was having been with Jesus through that long season of darkness and scratches at healing. That long season helped me realize Jesus could handle everything that had happened to me. Even more, he could bring me through it — teach me new things, make something new.

I became more identified with Jesus and what he was making of me and my life than with the broken circumstances that had brought me to him in the first place. 

That’s when I could finally consider forgiveness.

When I didn’t need to hold the wrongdoings so close to my chest anymore. When Jesus had given me something more.

Taking the Suffering Seriously :: How It Defeats Hope

Early in our series, Kirsten shared in a comment her experience of suffering: 

It leaves me expecting the worst. It leads to distrust. It leaves me always waiting for the other shoe to drop. In a way, it defeats hope.

I’ve been thinking about her response a lot these days, and I really resonate with it. It’s a lot like what I wrote about how suffering can shut us down on a heart level. It leaves us protected against life. Our guard goes up, and we’re just waiting for the next hit to come.

There’s something about hope that always conjures itself in my mind like a bright point of light ahead. That’s what hope looks like to me. And in receiving Kirsten’s words, I connect suffering to a response of turning away from that bright point of light, turning away and crouching away from it, eyes closed tight against its invitation. 

We become crouched against life … against possibility … against openness … against hope. 

In what ways has suffering defeated hope in your life?

All That Happens Is ... Perfect?

I Promise

Has not the Architect, Love, built your heart

in a glorious manner,

with so much care that it is meant to break

if love ever ceases to know all that happens

is perfect?

And where does anything love has ever known

go, when your eye and hand can no longer

be warmed by its body? 

So vast a room your soul, every universe can

fit into it.

Anything you once called beautiful, anything

that ever

gave you comfort waits to unite with your

arms again. I promise.

— Hafiz

A dear friend of mine included this poem in the weekly inspiration e-mail she sent out this morning, and thinking on it has gobbled up my morning.

It speaks of the very things I fiercely believe:

• that our hearts are, indeed, built in a glorious manner
• that they break when we cease to know the perfection of love
• that the shattered pieces of the love we once knew inhabit whole universes of secret rooms inside of us
• that the heart waits, even yearns, to be rediscovered and to heal and to be made whole and connected with our full selves once again

There is a bit of a sticking point in this poem, though. It says that the heart, in the way it was made, “is meant to break if love ever ceases to know all that happens is perfect.”

This implies that everything that happens is, indeed, perfect … even if it doesn’t feel that way. 

I’ve wrestled at various times, for various reasons, with this idea that everything that happens is perfect. I know wounding. I know pain. I know the imperfection of love, for sure. I know this world is pretty fantastically, grievously broken.

So, how can all that happens be, somehow, perfect? Is this poet speaking true?

I think this has to do with believing — trusting — that something greater than the pain is present even in the midst of our being grazed by it. It’s the idea that something holds all things together and has a greater, grander scope than we can see in the midst of our wounded, pain-filled realities.

This is a hard idea. I know.

And when we are in the midst of pain, this idea is the last thing we want to hear.

But here is something true.

I have come out on the other side of hell — several times, actually —  and have discovered, on the other side of it, a perfect love that casts out the fear that doubt implanted. I have discovered a more perfect love that encompasses and heals those painful, disturbing wounds. I have discovered Someone faithful and capable to hold all things, even the most painful realities I have known, in his hands. 

And incredible as it may sound, I have become thankful for the pain. 

It is only because of encounter with the perfect and intimate love of Jesus that I can say today that I am thankful for it. The perfect love of Jesus makes everything — even seeming darkness — beautiful in its time.

But I won’t pretend. This is a really hard idea to hold. It’s one I still wrestle with, in various forms, today.

Here’s a possibility, though, in the midst of the struggle. Perhaps the more we feel the pain and grope in seeming darkness toward the light of love, the more overwhelming and sweet that light will be once we find ourselves inside of it. 

I know, for myself, that the measure of my love for Jesus is inextricably tied to the very personal ways in which he has met me in my distresses. 

What is your response right now to this idea that everything — perhaps all things — are just as they’re meant to be?

What Is Your Simple Prayer?

I’ve started a daily readings process with a good friend of mine. Every morning, we receive a scripture reading (the same each day for a week), and at the end of each e-mail is a simple reflection question for the day.

After spending the week with a passage that reflects on the nature of true prayer, today’s question asked:

What is your simple prayer today?

I’ve been noticing how my simple prayer keeps changing throughout the day so far.

My first simple prayer, upon waking up this morning, was, “Meet me.” I had a hard time getting going in my day and didn’t have much strength or energy to get into the day, but the thought of being met by Jesus at my desk was a great comfort. 

Then, as I sat at my desk for a while, reading and thinking, I kept bumping up against a new prayer:

“I’m low.” 

It was a prayer of request for him to hear the truth of my experience right now.

I’ve continued to live in a season of aloneness with my life’s work, and it’s been quite acute and painful, even though Jesus has been showing me some of his purposes that he’s working through it all. Also, my schedule has changed quite a bit in the last couple weeks, and I haven’t found my center of gravity with the new adjustments. It’s left me feeling pretty discombobulated and perplexed. And then, of course, you already know about the conversations I’ve been having with myself and with God about my body this week. That is all so new and still so mystifying to me.

So, I’m low. So many changes and unanswered questions leaving me low. And my strong desire was for Jesus to know that, for him to see it. 

And now that he’s seen it, my simple prayer is that he would be with me in it. 

It’s doesn’t feel quite comfortable to sit with the lowness, the unanswered questions, the unfinished feeling of so much right now. But, taking my cue from yesterday’s post, there’s no energy around the idea of gearing up and making it all come together with some strength I simply do not have.

The invitation, instead, is to let Jesus be with me in the brokenness. To experience his presence and companionship right here. To let him know me in this low place. To let him listen to me. To let myself listen to him. To sit here together in the truth of it and see what the experience of relationship with him in this place might bring.

Right now, and probably for the rest of today, my prayer is simply, “Be with me.”

What is your simple prayer today?

You Don't Have to Fix Yourself

I’ve been sharing with you this week about my personal health struggles (see here and here), and it’s been a bit of a surprising turn in the conversation for me. I didn’t really expect to lay out in the open with such gritty detail how much I’m personally growing as a wee babe in this area. (I usually leave extended revelations and stories about my own journey for my personal blog, rather than here.)

So I’ve been a bit perplexed before Jesus this morning about that, wondering if I shared too much or why he may have wanted me to share that much personal detail with you. 

And what I heard him saying to me this morning about all this is that he wants you to receive this truth: 

You don’t have to fix yourself. 

I’ve mentioned the principle of indirection here in these last few days. It’s something I’ve written about in the past a few times, as well. In a nutshell, I want to communicate that this the idea that says we can’t change ourselves by sheer will power or conditioning.

Only God can change the very fibers of our being.

This gets at the root of character. For instance, I cannot actually make myself into a patient person. I cannot make myself into a humble person. I cannot make myself into a generous person. I cannot make myself into a loving person. And right now, I cannot make myself into a person who cares about the way I treat my body. 

I cannot change my character. I may be able to direct my behavior, but behavior is different than character, than our nature, than our fundamental being.

And here is the beautiful news:

Jesus wants to make us into new people. 

He doesn’t want us to be people who just behave a certain way. He wants to make us into people who actually are patient, forgiving, grace-filled, generous, loving, respectful, and so on.

And that is work only Jesus can do. In fact, that is the work Jesus is all about doing.

And so this morning, as I sat with a bit of a vulnerability hangover at having shared such detailed pictures with you about my own growing edges in the area of physical healthiness right now, I had this image of coming to Jesus on the shoreline of that beach with a broken toy in my hands. 

In my own hands, the toy was a plastic, broken thing, sharp and useless and cracked into several broken pieces.

But when I handed the toy to Jesus, it became a soft, stuffed doll ripped down the back side, stuffing hanging out, an arm torn nearly right off.

I saw Jesus take that busted-up doll into his own two hands with such loving care and slowly start making it new. Stitch by stitch, with methodical, slow intentionality and mastery, he pushed the stuffing back into place and began closing up the backside with even, perfect rows of stitches. I saw the stitches begin to close up the ragged uselessness of the doll. 

He was making it new.

Jesus closes up our brokenness. He puts everything back in its place. He stitches us back together.

Our part is to let him do it — to bring him our brokenness, to put it into his hands, to stay beside him, watching him do the repair work, letting him put everything where he wants it to go.

We watch and wait with him, and we let him perform the operation. Our part is being with him, handing ourselves over, and complying with his movement. This is the heart of indirection.

How might he want to repair areas of brokenness in your own life right now?

Indirection as a Daily Choice

So, yesterday was a success. I consumed healthy food at regular intervals and showed up and worked hard at the YMCA kickboxing class. (The class made me so incredibly aware of the unconditioned state of my body!)

But this morning I face a new day. 

That reality has the potential to sideline me.

And that’s because yesterday was hard. It took focus and continued commitment to accept the choices I had made for the day. I was tempted to stop by 7-11 for a Slurpee on my way home yesterday, for instance. Several times, I looked at my bag of carrots and was ungrateful for them. I was sorely tempted to skip out on the kickboxing class because Kirk and I were enjoying a very real and meaningful conversation on the couch before I needed to get ready and head out for the class. 

When I see how much mindfulness and energy and commitment it took for me to be faithful to those decisions yesterday, I can get sidelined when I look ahead to the future and see day after day after day, stretching out to seeming infinity, of more days just like that. More days of decisions and commitments. More days of giving up my own preferred appetite for junk food, easy fixes, comfort, and a sedentary life. 

But here’s the thing about indirection. 

It isn’t about will power. It isn’t about gritting our teeth and bearing it. It isn’t about muscling through. And it isn’t about mastery, either.

It’s about small choices made each day in the mindfulness of God’s greater work within us.

And so this means, first of all, that I’m not in this process alone. God is here, and he’s working new realities in me that are so much greater than the small choices I make along the way to participate with his work. (I’m so thankful he’s the one doing the bigger, harder part of the job!)

It also means that this is not about how much I can do — how hard I can work at this to make myself better. That is not the point. The point is my acknowledgment of what God wants to do. He is about the work of forming in me a greater respect and care for my embodied existence — a respect and care that I don’t currently possess.

My part is mere participation, accomplished through small choices that acknowledge my acceptance of what he is doing.

And so today, I will not seek to overwhelm myself in this process. I will not look at the string of days ahead of me. I will not look at the one lone day behind me. I will not take on the task of being perfect or strong or full of power I do not possess.

I will identify small choices I can make today that cooperate with God’s active, greater work in me. 

In what way might the principle of indirection come alongside you in your own life right now?

Getting to Know God

Mary Magdalene: “I have seen the Lord!”

When I realized what the title of this post was going to be — “Getting to Know God” — I kind of chuckled and shook my head in amazement. I mean, really — get to know God? The maker of the whole universe? The one who conceived of the reality we know and exist inside each day? Get to know him?

It’s rather incredible that God even allows such a thing, isn’t it?

In this “getting to know God” process, I find myself so thankful for the Scriptures that teach us who God is. There’s a whole massive book written by about forty different individuals, all sharing with us different facets of God’s character and action in the world.

I’m thankful, too, for the created world and how it can teach us about this God. For instance, just yesterday, Kirk and I were talking about heaven. He wondered aloud if we would still have organs in our bodies in heaven. Such an unusual thing to think about, but my eventual response was, “Why not? God created the super-complex and incredible systems of our bodies. Why wouldn’t those remain in heaven? God considered them good when they were first made.” The uber-complexity of our bodies and how beautifully they susbist in their own system teaches us a lot about this God of all being — it teaches us that God is masterful, creative, scientific, mathematic, and precise, for instance.

I find it incredible, too, that the person of Jesus is also there to greet us in the Scriptures as one more way for us to get to know God. God himself! In the flesh! Walking around and talking with and being in relationship with real, live people. Yet one more way that God allows himself to be known to us.

All of this is kind of mind-blowing, if you ask me.

How have you gotten to know God in your own life? What kind of things have you learned?

What Would It Be Like for You to Walk With Him?

Today I’d like to invite you to take a walk with Jesus. 

I don’t mean this literally, although you are certainly welcome to actually go walking somewhere in your neighborhood or in a park or some other place you like to visit. 

I mean it imaginatively. 

If you were to actually take a walk with Jesus, where would you want that walk to be? What would be the perfect place for just such an experience? Take a moment now and ask yourself that question. Then take another moment and imagine that place in your mind. What are the surroundings like? What are the sounds, the smells, the feel of the air like? 

Now imagine Jesus is there with you, walking beside you. What does he look like? Are there any remarkable features you notice about him — his height, his stature, his clothing, his eyes, his mouth, his hands?

What is it like when he looks at you?

As you walk, notice yourself. Do you look at him? Keep your eyes on the ground in front of you? Look ahead or away from him? Do you put your hands in your pockets, swing them freely, hold his hand?

And now I’d like to invite you to discover what the actual walk with him is like. What would you like to say to him? Can you let yourself say it? Would you rather remain quiet? Would you like to listen to him? What might you hear him saying to you?

This has been an exercise in imaginative prayer. If you practice this exercise, I would love to hear what it was like for you to connect with Jesus in this way.