It Doesn't Have to Look a Certain Way

One thing I am continually struck by in the vocational work of formation that I do is that life with Christ does not look one particular way for everyone. 

Each person is unique. Each person’s story is unique. The way each of us were formed by God to be is unique. The way each of us were formed by our own particular lives is unique. 

Jesus wants to walk with you in your own particular life. 

He wants to be with you as you are.

If you are an extrovert, he wants to connect to your extroversion. If you are musical, he wants to connect to that musicality in you. If you are quiet and introverted, he wants to know you in that quiet, introverted way that you are. 

You don’t have to be someone else.

You don’t have to be other than he already made you to be. 

This is exciting for someone like me, whose life’s work is to walk alongside others and pay attention with them to their lives and the presence and movement of God in their particular life.

Every conversation is different. It is absolutely glorious and beautiful and amazing. I love to see how God is speaking and forming each person in unique and utterly creative ways.

What are the particulars of your one particular life? How can you invite Jesus into those particularities today?

Oriented Toward Encounter, No Matter the Circumstance

“I remember a time when I used to be much godlier. It was sometime in junior high and my room was clean. It must have been beautiful weather outside because the lighting was very nice in my room where I was reading my Bible every day and feeling really good. It was quite clear to me that my sanctification was progressing very well. …

But God took me out of that life and threw me into the rock tumbler. Here, it is not so easy to feel godly. … Here, there is very little time for quiet reflection. … The opportunities for growth and refinement abound here — but you have to be willing. You have to open your heart to the tumble.”

— from Loving the Little Years, pp. 13-14

I’ve connected with a few friends recently who are in the soul-sanctifying work of motherhood every day.

One of them shared with me that no station in life has presented her with the reality of her sinfulness so much as motherhood. Another shared that life is an absolute sprint from the moment she wakes until the minute she falls asleep. Still another shared a glimpse into the tension between loving one’s child and one’s God — putting their needs and desires above her own — and the reality of emotions and desires and hormones and personal needs. 

I heard that nothing has so fulfilled these women as being a mother — I saw the joy in their faces and heard it in their voices — even though they have found it to be the most demanding and humbling work they have ever done.

I also heard these friends share that intentionally connecting to God in this place is difficult.

How is stopping to orient one’s self and connect to one’s inner heart and an intangible God possible in the middle of a full-out sprint that involves Fruit Loops, spit-up, sibling rivalry, and getting everyone cleaned, dressed, fed, brushed, strapped in, scooting around town, and eventually sleeping safely in their beds every night?

There is bewilderment in this place. What does connecting to God look like here?

I am sure these friends of mine could answer that question much better than me. I am not a mother, and they are. They are the ones presented with the question each and every day who are finding their way through to the answer the best way they know how.

But I share these stories and ask these questions to draw our attention to this: God is here. 

Ours is a God who met a childless woman each and every year she came to the temple and did not fail to hear her prayer (Hannah). Ours is a God who met a king in the midst of his sin and called him to repent (David). Ours is a God who wrestled with a man so strongheaded that he bulled his way into every reality he wanted to create for himself (Jacob).

Ours is a Jesus who knew exactly how to speak to an adulteress, a blind man, a remorseful fisherman, a traitor, a thief, a mother weeping over her son, a government official, a leper, a pair of sisters, a man throwing Christians in jail, a prostitute, a man sneaking off to talk with him in the dead of night, and the list goes on and on.

If the Scriptures teach us anything, it is that ours is a God who knows how to connect and relate and speak directly to us, no matter the situation or circumstance in which he encounters us.

As the quote at the top of this post declares, finding God in the rough and tumble (the author speaks to motherhood, but I would expand this sentiment to include any and every station we might live out) simply asks of us an orientation toward encounter.

Openness. Awareness. Receptivity. 

Are you open to God meeting you exactly where you are? What might encounter with God look like for you today, right here and right now, in the midst of your exact circumstances?

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?

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? 

Becoming a God-Listener

Since April, I’ve been privileged to work alongside a team of people developing an online resource that offers hope to people who need a glimpse of God’s light in difficult places. It’s been such a meaningful and gratifying project to be a part of, and I’ve learned and grown so much through the experience. 

The project will wrap up in a few short weeks, and so I find myself asking one particular question with increasing regularity these days: What’s next? 

I’ve lived a rather unconventional life the last several years.

I left a full-time career in publishing in 2007 to pursue a path of contribution in the lives of people seeking their way. This led me, unexpectedly, to a ministry of spiritual direction and writing about the spiritual life and life of the heart. I have loved every moment of this journey and am so thankful for the way God has directed my steps along this path. 

But it has not been easy. 

It has required an immense amount of faith.

A lot of this journey has included that question: What’s next? Sometimes the work God has given me to do as I’ve trod this path of learning and growth has been freelance writing and editing; other times he’s given me special projects, like the one I’m currently finishing. 

God has been faithful, but each stepping stone has asked — and still asks — for my faith to believe it will emerge from the water at just the right time for me to step upon it. 

I find myself in that place of faith-testing yet again these days. 

Last week, I took a step forward to pursue a potential opportunity beyond the bounds of this current project, and I learned that potential opportunity wasn’t going to work out after all. I was disappointed. And it landed me back at that question yet again: What’s next? 

I texted my spiritual director, Elaine, about the lost opportunity and my disappointment that day. She knew I’d been exploring the possibility, and she had prayed with me recently about it. When I told her that I hoped God had something else in store and that I keep asking him to show me where to go, she responded:

You’re a good God listener. 

Her response encouraged me. It reminded me of the ways I’ve listened and heard and followed God’s lead before.

And then, over the weekend, I stumbled on the following prayer in 1 Kings from King Solomon. When he assumed the throne of Israel after his father, David, had died, God asked Solomon in a dream what he wanted as he began to rule the kingdom. Solomon responds: 

Give me a God-listening heart so I can lead your people well, discerning the difference between good and evil.

— 1 Kings 3:9

That prayer from Solomon has stuck with me the last few days. Give me a God-listening heart. It is my intent to lean deeper and deeper into that prayer. I want to follow the ways God wants me to go in this life of faith I lead. 

So here’s to faith. And to God-listening in the midst of it. 

What Brings You Joy and Life?

We’ve been spending time in some difficult places lately, haven’t we — getting to know the cavernous workings of our hearts, discussing wounds, and talking about the darkened hallways we sometimes find for safety and protection.

Today, I want to talk about life.

Joy.

Places of beauty and enjoyment in our lives. 

Do you have any places like that? 

When you examine your life, where are the places you lose track of time, fully enjoy and savor the moment, or find yourself in touch with what matters most to you? 

For me, it happens in these moments: 

• When I write
• When I see sunlight bouncing on water
• When I share a meaningful conversation with Kirk
• When I stare at Diva
• When someone makes me laugh
• When taking photos on my iPhone
• When planning ideas for the Look at Jesus course
• When thinking about nonviolence and how the heart learns to love
• When perusing my Instagram feed at the end of each day

What about you? What moments and activities make you feel most alive and grateful and in tune with life and the present moment?

Where Has God Been Present to You?

Tonight I attended a healing prayer service at our episcopal parish and was reminded by our rector of the daily examen prayer. 

Have you heard of the daily examen prayer before? 

This is a daily prayer first introduced by St. Ignatius of Loyola in the 1500s, who said he considered this daily practice to be the most vital spiritual discipline anyone can incorporate into their daily life. He found the benefits of practicing it too rich to miss for even one day. 

What is the daily examen prayer, you ask? 

It is a time set aside at the end of each day to prayerfully review the day you’ve just finished and consider how God has been present in it.

For example, when I sat and prayerfully reviewed my day today for God’s presence, these are some of the things that emerged in my awareness: 

• The gift of an extended coffee date with one of my dearest friends
• A conflict with Kirk that ended in our renewed commitment to each other and our life together
• A couple kind e-mails
• The opportunity to meet with my spiritual director
• The smell of rain
• The granting of an unusual request I made of someone recently
• The joy-filled smile of an elderly woman at church tonight
• A spontaneous opportunity to capture a photograph of some beautiful velvety flowers
• The way Diva (my little girl kitty) sits with me at my desk while I work

These are large or little graces that communicated God’s presence and care toward me today. 

What kind of things would be on your list today? 

When I began practicing the daily examen a few years ago, I found that it increased my sense of gratitude at least ten-fold. I became aware of God’s goodness and presence in my daily life in ways I never would have realized otherwise. It led to an increased sense of well-being and joy because I grew in my trust that God was present and actively working in the nitty-gritty details and tiny moments of my life.

That God would care and attend to my daily realities as much as I came to realize he does really floored me.

These days, I typically practice a different daily examen prayer of sorts at the end of each day by listening to a podcast called Pray as You Go. I’ve mentioned this podcast here before, but it’s a 10-15 minute daily recording that includes a different Scripture reading each day with personal reflection questions and beautiful sacred music that promotes reflection and reverence. I love it.

Today I encourage you to practice the daily examen by prayerfully considering your day and then asking: where has God been present to you in this day? 

Where Are the Pieces of Light?

This morning, as I spent time with Jesus, talking with him about you and this space and asking him what you most needed to receive today, I held out my hands before him in a cupped posture, waiting to receive whatever he placed in those cupped hands to give you, and saw several pieces of light land in my cupped and open hands. 

They looked like the gold bricks you see in cartoons, thick and solid and bigger than a candy bar, and they were made of pure light, tumbling down into my hands, one resting on top of the other. 

The question presented itself: 

Where are the pieces of light in your life right now? 

For centuries upon centuries, Christian spirituality has used the language of consolation and desolation to describe points of light and darkness in our spiritual journey with God. Consolation is that feeling of being buoyed, filled with life, and surrounded by an abiding presence of love. Desolation, on the other hand, is accompanied by feelings of abandonment, grief, and sometimes despair.

Desolation in the spiritual life is complex, I’ve found, because its source can be quite varied. Sometimes the inexplicable events of life land us inside its terrain. Sometimes the discouraging and oppressive powers at work in this world conspire to push us inside desolation’s borders. And sometimes, perhaps surprisingly, desolation comes when God makes himself absent for reasons only God may know. 

But consolation is a bit simpler.

Consolation is present wherever there’s life — wherever life and joy and peace and their enlivening currents are found.

Many spiritual directors encourage the pursuit of consolation when it’s present, believing that where life and joy are found, there God is also found, for God is the source of life and joy.

So today, as I hold these “bricks of light” in my hands for you, I ask you to consider where light is evident in your world today. 

Where do you see glimmers and pieces of light shining as you look about you and your life right now? How might you move toward that light and joy today? How might you pursue its consolation even more?

Noticing God in Everyday Life

The past couple weeks have been full of many surprising adventures!

Front and center is the unexpected trip I took to the Pacific Northwest for my new job. I had so much fun and made unforgettable memories too numerous to count with my new co-workers. So many aspects of that trip created a solid foundation for our team to bond while sharing compelling, incarnational work experiences together. 

While there, I even had a chance to share a great conversation over dessert with the lovely Kirsten Michelle and her loving hubby, James. That was such a treat and a gift. Thank you, my friend, for taking that time with me!

Then there are all the fun surprises and adventures I’ve been encountering back home in our local office! Our company is doing such a superb job preparing us well for the work we’ll be doing together. We’re having a blast as we go along.

Kirk gets quite a kick out of my exuberant downloads at the end of each day. But usually after that high-energy download and a bit of dinner, I crash. This is my naturally introverted self learning how to hit the recharge button. :)

It will be interesting, as I resume classes with Spring Arbor next week, to see how my course-load responsibilities come alongside and support my work life. It seems serendipitous that I’m beginning with a course called “Spirituality in Everyday Life,” geared toward noticing how God shows up in the nooks and crannies of daily life. This ties in well with my recent prayer that God would help me learn how to notice him in the midst of busyness.

As I’m adjusting to these new aspects of life for the next few weeks, I expect to be keeping a lighter presence in this space. It feels important to give myself room to take in these new experiences, focus on learning to do my work well, and keep myself as rested, refreshed, and nourished as possible.

(However, I will mention as an aside that I’ve rejoined Facebook after my 7-month hiatus. If you’d like to be connected in a more informal, ongoing basis that way, send me a friend request — and be sure to mention you’re a reader of this blog if we’ve never personally connected before.)

And in this moment, I’d love to hear from you: What opportunities are you being invited to notice, receive, and relish right now?

Celebrating 31

Today is a special day for several reasons: 

1. It is my 31st birthday. 
2. It is the official start date of my new and beautifully amazing job.
3. I spent the day meeting a great group of co-workers while traveling across the country in an unexpected training trip to the Pacific Northwest. (!!!)
4. I have the privilege of sharing this day with the honorable Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As I write this, there are 10 minutes left of West Coast time on my birthday. In these last moments of the day, I thought I’d share a quick list of 31 things I’m celebrating and/or thankful for right now. So without further ado, here goes … 

My “Celebrating 31” List:

• A beautiful children’s book on peace my friend Katy gave to me. 
• Laughter.
• Access to water. 
• Food, shelter, and clothing.
• A heart that breaks for redemption and peace.
• A voice that loves to sing worship to Jesus.
• Follow Me to Freedom, a cool book by Shane Claiborne and John M. Perkins that Kirk gave me for Christmas.
• My silver butterfly ring, another Christmas gift from Kirkum.
• The chance to work for an amazing company with an incredible mission and a unique approach, alongside a group of truly talented, good-hearted, and enthusiastic people.
• Sudoku puzzles.
• Free wi-fi.
• Quiet moments.
• My 2010 Moleskine notebook planner.
• Text messaging.
• My nonviolence mentors over this past year: Gandhi, MLKJ, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and John Dear.
• Grits.
• My MSFL cohort at Spring Arbor.
• My spiritual director and my Audire supervisor.
• Prayer.
• Diva and Solomon.
• Kirk’s smile.
• Zoey, the white Jetta that keeps on going, even at 130,000 miles.
• Brother Merton, my vintage Smith-Corona typewriter.
• New glasses.
• Health.
• Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. (Great music. Check out the Once soundtrack or the new Swell Season CD.)
• Beauty.
• Contentment in who God created me to be.

Thanks for sharing a few moments of this special day with me! I’d love to turn the question back to you: What are you thankful for in this moment?

Word for the Year: Integrity

Last year for Christmas, Kirk presented me with a question-card that asked two questions: “What is God trying to free me from?” and “How does he want me to live?”

This resulted in a reflection process that led me to a season of active rest. 

It was a season of asking God to demonstrate himself as the Father who provides for all our needs. And as I wrote here, he did demonstrate that truth with great alacrity in the first few months of the year. He even repeated the demonstration several more times in later months through the way different opportunities continued to present themselves to us. 

And then, as I shared in my life update video more recently, I bumped up against this truth yet again in the way God led me to my new job. (It starts just two weeks from today — I’m so excited!)

Needless to say, the practice of holding an intentional question for the year was incredibly fruitful for us. So this year, we did it again. 

In the days leading up to New Year’s Eve, Kirk and I considered a lot of questions. We kept sifting through them to find the singular question that could frame the year ahead for each of us. And the question I kept coming back to was: 

“What does it look like to live with increasing integrity?”

This has a lot to do with what I shared in my life update video. I shared about the challenge of the past few months of life and how I eventually completed an intentional discernment process to make some hard decisions about my commitments.

The words I kept using during the discernment process were congruence and harmony. These words helped me remember that I was seeking to unify my inner convictions with my outer life. 

In the end, this is all about integrity.

Congruence and harmony concern my commitments. Integrity concerns how I live. Congruence and harmony supply the “what.” Integrity supplies the “how.”

I want to live what I believe. I want to speak honestly to others, and with kindness. I want to represent the truth of who I am always, not just where it feels safe. I want to share who I truly am with those I meet and engage on a regular and not-so-regular basis. 

I want to do this with greater and greater freedom, each and every day. Hopefully, it will soon become the most natural thing of all. 

What about you: how are you intending to live with greater intentionality in the coming year?

Life Update: A Video

Hi, friends. 

My apologies for the lack of posting activity here in the last two weeks. I took an unexpected and very wonderful trip to California to visit one of my dearest friends on the planet. She had a frequent flier ticket that was set to expire at the end of the year, so we decided to jump on the chance to use it since we both had several days in a row available.

I’m so glad we did this.

In the thirteen years we have been friends, we’ve never spent more than 24 hours together, and we’ve never spent any of that time doing normal, mundane things like shopping for groceries, watching TV, or calling the plumber to stop by and fix some pipes and a sink or two. We relished the chance for this extended time of simply sharing normal life together.

Also in the meantime, lots of things in life have been happening in my world. I’m posting below a video update on these happenings. It clocks in at just under 10 minutes and includes:

• a story
• a process of discernment
• a special announcement
• an extra note worth noticing about the announcement

One hint about the announcement: It concerns a job opportunity I just accepted and can’t wait to begin in the new year!

PS: My apologies for the occasional jiggling of the camera. The laptop was sitting on my lap as I recorded this.