Pulse Check: What Do You Need?

Needs and wants are funny things, especially when it comes to examining the heart.

I’ve noticed so many times over the last couple years that I’m surprised by my wants and needs — that what I think I want and need isn’t what I really want or need at all, once I really quiet myself to listen.

Has this ever happened to you?

My spiritual director, Elaine, is great at helping me clarify my needs and wants — and not just the difference between them but also what is real and what is superficial assumption. There have been several times in the last few years, for instance, that I’ve come into a session with her upset or confused or fidgety about something. We talk for a while about all the conflict of thoughts and emotions I’m carrying, and then she’ll often ask one of two questions: 

What do you need in this place? 

Or: 

If you could ask God for anything in this place, what would it be?

These are such amazing questions. I’ve found they so often crystallize the difference between what I think I want or need and what I really want or need.

So often when I’m struggling with something, I think that I want God to fix it — to take it away, restore peace and serenity, and just overall to clean things up. But when I really get quiet and listen to my heart’s voice in that place, often the real need or desire is different from that. My heart instead says things like: 

• I want to know God is here. 
• I want to know he hears my heart. 
• I want to remember how to trust him.
• I just want to see his eyes looking at me.

It’s been interesting for me to notice that I don’t necessarily want or need God to fix everything, but rather that I simply want to know he is there, that he sees me, that he’s not going anywhere. 

That kind of distinction just blows my mind. 

For today’s Pulse Check, I’d like to invite you to consider your own wants and needs.

Consider what’s right on the surface — if you had to answer in a quick heartbeat right now, what would you say you want or need in this very moment?

Then take a moment to go deeper. Allow yourself to ask the question again, with more intentionality: What do I really need right here in this place? 

What's in Your Heart?

I’ve been curious about you today, wondering how you would answer the question: 

What’s in your heart? 

At one time in my life, understanding myself was foremost in my heart. I spent a number of years in self-examination and discovery, starting to piece together the jigsaw of my heart — who I am, why that is, why I’ve done and thought and felt the things I have. 

At another time in my life, understanding God was my greatest preoccupation. I wanted to understand Jesus, to understand grace, to understand how God views me and wants me to relate to him. 

Some people have in their heart some great and particular mission. I think of people called to serve a specific group of people, to start a nonprofit or some company, to live their life in some specific way — perhaps as a ballerina or gymnast or runner or actor. Their calling occupies their hearts and informs their days. 

What about you? 

What is in your heart right now?

How Does God Reveal Himself to You?

I’m back at home after a lovely, grace-filled week away at Captiva Island. There are so many gifts last week offered me, and I am still so thankful and amazed that it happened.

I’m also very thankful to be home. (I am such a homebody!)

Being home means re-commencing my morning routine at my desk. Being home means enjoying the rhythm and sounds and energy of our life inside this house. Being home means being in touch with the reality of normality. Being home means being back at the church we both have grown to love so much. 

And speaking of church, I got to wondering last night while enjoying the contemplative eucharist service we attend on Sunday evenings …

How does God reveal himself to you? 

He reveals himself to me in so many different ways. 

• There are the pages of scripture, and especially the Gospel accounts that teach me about the Jesus I’ve grown to love so much. 
• There is the love and acceptance and grace and truth given to me by those in my life who care about me. 
• There is the way I learn about God through my girl kitty, Diva. 
• There is the meditative experience of taking photographs, which I’ve begun to realize is a form of prayer for me. 
• There is the sun dancing on water and the wind moving through trees. 
• There is the beauty of sacred chant music and candles and written prayers, which we experience each week at the contemplative eucharist service. 
• There are the words written by others that break open and speak to my heart when I discover them. 

And on and on and on. 

And yet I was thinking last night that the way God speaks and reveals himself to me is only a portion of the ways he can choose to reveal himself to all humanity. 

The way he reveals himself to me can be different than the way he reveals himself to you.

For instance, God reveals himself to Kirk through the sighting of bald eagles flying high in the sky. A friend recently told me that she’s discovered a connection to God while swimming the breaststroke in a recreational pool, alone with God under the water, swimming toward the cross marker at the other end of the pool. One of my closest friends recently shared that being a mom to her newborn girl is teaching her so much about the incarnation of Christ. 

I just love that God can reveal himself to each of us in so many different, unique ways.

So, what about you? How does God choose to reveal himself to you? 

Free and Made Alive

I have the incredible privilege of having been asked to proofread the entire biblical text of the New King James Version of the Bible for one of my freelance clients, a publisher, who is putting out a new study Bible this year. 

I know — pretty stinking incredible, right?

It’s a project I feel so humbled and excited to be part of. I am so loving it.

But one thing I’ve noticed as I’ve worked my way through the Old Testament is how heavy it makes my heart. Everywhere you turn in the pages of the Old Testament, all kinds of wickedness happens left and right. Brothers kill and betray and turn on each other. Daughters trick their fathers into sexual sin. Husbands lie about their wives. Not to mention the way nations war at the drop of a hat. 

The violence, deception, and general brokenness of humanity, written so plainly all over the pages of the Old Testament, hurts my heart. 

But something else about the Old Testament has been hurting my heart, too, and that’s the onerous burden of the law. Read through the Pentateuch — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy — at a single, continuous stretch, and you’ll find law upon law, statute upon statute, written and repeated over and over, again and again. 

And these aren’t simple laws, either. The law of God as given to the people of Israel is rich and complex, with layer upon layer and contingency upon contingency. I can’t help wondering how Israel possibly remembered it all. It makes my head spin.

It also makes me feel like I’m sinking in a very thick lake of molasses. 

It’s just impossible. It’s so nuanced — it almost feels like you can barely lift your feet or turn from left to right without worrying whether you’re up the law correctly or breaking it.

And then the other night, as I was reading through those pages and sinking ever so slowly into that murky mire of despair with all its tentacles gripping me, my thoughts (thankfully) turned to Jesus. And it struck me for perhaps the very first time in a truly gutteral, known-in-the-depths-of-my-heart kind of way what the precepts of Christianity have been teaching me all along: 

We could not fulfill the law, and so Jesus fulfilled it for us. 

The coming of Jesus fundamentally changes everything. God hasn’t changed, nor was Jesus a different representation of who God really is. But our relationship with God has changed now because of Jesus. The way we relate to him and the way he relates to us has changed — all because of Jesus. 

And I am just so thankful. 

Along similar lines, this morning I was sitting by the pool outside our Captiva condo listening to a Phil Wickham album called “Singalong” and was struck by these words in the final song on the album:

The earth was shaking in the dark,

All creation felt the Father’s broken heart,

Tears were filling heaven’s eyes,

The day that true love died.

When blood and water hit the ground,

Walls we couldn’t move came crashing down,

And we were free and made alive,

The day that true love died.

The walls we couldn’t move came crashing down, and we were free and made alive. 

That’s what has happened because of Jesus. On this side of the Old Testament, where we now live, we have been given freedom and life.

I am so, so thankful for this. I’m thankful for the grace-filled, tender, always-full-of-growth relationship with God that is now possible for us to experience because of Jesus. 

What about you? What is it like to hold the gift of that fundamental shift in the way you can relate to God because of Jesus?

Everything He Creates Is Beautiful

Every single morning of the gift that this week on Captiva Island is, I sit on the lanai porch of the condo with my tumbler of coffee and spend time in the quiet, just like I do at home. 

Except that here, there are dolphins. 

For pretty much the entire time I’ve been staying here, at least one dolphin — and sometimes two, three, or even four — are moseying around in the marina right outside our porch lanai. Back and forth they go, enjoying the swim, usually casting back and forth for fish to eat.

And the amazing thing I’ve discovered is this: 

Every single person responds the same exact way to a dolphin sighting. 

There’s the initial screech of discovery. “Oh my gosh, look! A dolphin! A dolphin! Come here, come here, come here — hurry! You have to see it — the dolphin!” And then they stop and linger for sometimes up to an hour, offering their complete focus to the water, watching the movement of the dolphin, seeing where he’ll pop up next. 

This morning, I saw one of the dolphins swat a live fish up out of the water with his back fin and then jump up and capture it. The splash he made upon landing back in the water caused quite a ruckus, given his weight and size, and it was such an image to me of his total abandonment to the moment and his strength. 

I shook my head and smiled, totally overcome with wonder. God’s creatures are amazing.

Here’s a similar thing I noticed this week.

Around the corner from our condo, there’s a small manatee lagoon. A tiny wooden dock juts into the midst of it, and yesterday about ten people crowded on it — three adults and the rest small children ranging from three to seven years old — scouting out the manatees.

“Do you see him? He’s blowing!” I heard one dad crow to his youngsters. They were totally preoccupied with the moment, intently focused on this wonder of life and beauty. 

And I sat here on the porch lanai this morning, taking all of this in and thinking:

You are beautiful, just like all this.

Do you know that?

As much wonder and delight as we take in the sighting of a dolphin or manatee or other creature in its natural habitat in this world, Jesus takes the same delight in you. He made you just as wondrously beautiful and delightful.

Do you believe this? 

Discerning Our Way to Trust

I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’m given an opportunity for discernment, my knee-jerk reaction is frustration and fear. I have an initial preference for how I want the situation to work out, and my gut tells me I won’t get my own way. So I feel defensive — and just a little bit mad. 

It occurs to me this is really an issue of trust. 

Do I trust that Jesus is attentive to me? That he knows what I want and also knows the best solution? That he has a greater scope in his viewfinder than I do in mine? That he knows what he is doing? 

Once I realize this is an issue of trust, I can slow down, breathe, and answer these questions. And that’s when I realize — thankfully — that my relationship with him has built a foundation of trust in me toward him. I do trust him, and I want to keep trusting him.

Sometimes it just takes slowing down, stepping back, and really evaluating my level of trust in Jesus. And that makes going into discernment quite a lot easier than it was before. 

How do you feel about your own level of trust in Jesus? What are the ways you’ve learned to trust him? What are the reasons you struggle to trust him still? 

Meeting Jesus on the Beach

Hello there, lovelies.

Today is the first day since being down in Captiva that I left the condo with the express intent to meet Jesus on the beach. 

As I was walking there, I had the feeling of walking to meet him for a date. He was already there on the shoreline, just waiting for me to arrive, and I was on my way. 

It made me smile as I walked to meet him. 

The photo above is one I took once I reached the shoreline to meet him and start walking. The thought I had upon seeing this view was, “The beach is ours.” Such a long stretch without any other people on it. Just a place for me and Jesus to walk and talk and then turn around and do it all over again. 

He met me in a beautifully powerful way there on that shoreline walk today. It’s a conversation I don’t feel free to share out loud here, but it’s enough for now to say that it was one in which I voiced fears and insecurities and then received gifts beyond measure in return. 

It was one that grew my faith. One that asked for my faith to stretch and trust he would be there to meet such a stretch. One that invited me to attach my faith to visible, tangible markers of what Jesus is doing, wants to do, and will do. 

One in which I received the hearts of others and ended up carrying the heart of Jesus in my hand.

Do you want to meet Jesus?

There’s room for you to join us in looking at Jesus together here. You would be more than welcome to join us. I know that he, for sure, would love to spend that time with you too.

*Pinch, Pinch* Is This Really Happening?

On Friday night, I got an e-mail from a friend offering me a totally unexpected and almost-too-good-to-be-true opportunity. Her husband’s parents had rented a condo on Captiva Island for the week and were unable to use it at the last minute due to illness. Did Kirk and I want to come and make use of it instead, free of charge? 

Did we? Um, let me check my calendar for a moment. *Clears calendar* 

So here we are, still pinching ourselves two days later. 

It is not lost on me that I’m spending a week on the beach — the same place I walk and talk with Jesus on a daily basis these days. And for the next slate of days, I get to walk on the actual beach with him. Actual sand on my feet, actual water on my calves, an actual shoreline on which to walk back and forth, an actual beach upon which to sit and talk with him. 

I wonder how he will meet me here this week? You can bet that I will share it here with you. 

And in the meantime …  

Registration for the Look at Jesus course is now officially open!

I can’t tell you how excited and blessed I feel to be offering this course for a second time. To register, go to the course details page and click on the “Buy Now” button listed in the right-hand sidebar. 

Note: Once you register, you will be redirected to a private page that offers a welcome message from me — including a fun welcome video and some questions to get you started that will help me get to know you.

The course is limited to 10 participants —I hope you’ll join us!

Jesus Is the Beatitudes, Maybe

This morning I was sitting on the beach with Jesus, telling him about something unexpected that happened yesterday about which I’d been invited to make a decision. 

There were some pieces to weigh in the decision, but overall, my response to what had emerged was quite positive. I sat on the beach with Jesus and told him everything I was thinking and feeling about it.

As I spoke, I was quite animated, just letting myself be in the moment and the reality of my thoughts and feelings. And while I shared those things with him, he just kept looking at me, listening, with a smile on his face. It almost seemed like his eyes were sparkling.

I found myself quite captivated by him in that moment, so amazed and thankful that he has given me a chance to know him in this way. But I also found myself quite aware that this is the God of the universe here, sitting on the beach with me, listening and smiling. 

Isn’t this what they call meekness — strength and power brought under control? 

If so, Jesus is the full embodiment of meekness. All the power of the Godhead in himself and all the knowledge of the world and all existence, encased in an ordinary human body and present with us in the minutiae of our lives.

This got me thinking about the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, where Jesus says, “Blessed are the … , for they shall … ” Those who are meek are on that list. Those who are peacemakers are on that list, too. Those who show mercy are on that list, and so are those who mourn. 

Jesus is all these things, and more.

And it got me thinking: Jesus is all the Beatitudes, maybe? That is a new thought for me. I can’t say I’ve ever read the Beatitudes list in quite that way before, using Jesus as an example.

Have you ever thought about this? What do you think about Jesus being all the Beatitudes?

PS: If you enjoy learning about Jesus in this space and find yourself wanting to know him more, I invite you to consider joining us for the next offering of Look at Jesus. Registration will open on Monday — space is limited to 10 participants!

His Center Holds

I love when I’m reading through the scriptures and a certain word, phrase, or sentence grabs my attention. Yesterday, and then again this morning, it happened with this short passage in Isaiah: 

God is supremely esteemed. His center holds. 

   Zion brims over with all that is just and right.

God keeps your days stable and secure —

   salvation, wisdom, and knowledge in surplus,

   and best of all, Zion’s treasure, Fear-of-God.

— Isaiah 33:5-6

That little phrase “His center holds” just keeps getting my attention. I stared at it for quite some time yesterday, just being amazed and thankful for it. This morning, I let the words turn over and over again on my tongue. 

His center holds. His center holds. 

I marvel at this way of God, especially since I’m so aware of the struggle in my own life that it has taken to hold fast to my own center, not to mention how long it took to even know what my center was. It takes great strength of character and integrity — some would call it moral fiber — to hold to one’s center. 

God’s center is so strong it always holds. 

Not only do I marvel at the difference between me and God in this, but I also feel such rest in connecting to this God whose center always holds. 

He is sure. Secure. Strong. Stable. 

We don’t have to worry about him crumbling or second-guessing who he is to himself or to us. We don’t have to worry if he can handle what we bring to him or who we are.

His center holds. What great relief that provides to me. 

How can this truth about God be a companion to you today?

Having Fun with Jesus

Something I’ve noticed about Jesus lately is how much he loves to laugh. 

Yesterday afternoon, for instance, I was praying for someone at my desk when I noticed a huge burst of joy exploding in my heart. It was that moment of realizing I’d been in the presence of God and could trust him wholly — and it made me want to dance!

I was back on the beach with Jesus again, dancing around on the sand in my bare feet and even venturing back out into the water with him. We were laughing and playing, and he was smiling and laughing with me, totally enjoying the moment and my joy. 

It’s kind of amazing: the God of the universe, knowing all things and having all wisdom and holding the entirety of creation together, but also enjoying laughter with me.

How might you enjoy the lightheartedness and laughter of Jesus today?

Just Being Held

Today is one of those days when it feels like I’m holding concerns from many different sources in my heart, and the end result is that my heart is now dragging on the ground. It can feel a bit disorienting, like I don’t really know what happened because I thought I was fine just yesterday, but then when I stop and enumerate what I’m holding, I realize it makes a lot of sense that I’m feeling weighted down. 

I’ve had several moments of sitting with Jesus on the beach this morning through this. 

We sit on the beach head and stare out at the waves, and I try to talk to him about the heaviness of my heart. But words are insufficient, and the talking stops almost as soon as it’s started. Usually, I just end up staring back out at the waves, enumerating to myself again all those concerns and reaffirming, “Yeah. It’s there. The heaviness. For a reason.” 

Each time this morning, this cycle of talking, then stopping, then thinking leads to my just leaning into Jesus, my head against his shoulder, so that he can hold me. He puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me close, just sitting with me and my heaviness. 

And I realize: this is what I want most of all in this place. 

I don’t want someone who will talk with me about solutions. Not right now, at least. I don’t want someone to talk with me at all, actually.

I just want presence.

And being held by Jesus as we sit on the sand and watch and listen to the waves right now? it’s just right. It’s just what I need. 

I love that we can be with Jesus — or, rather, that he can be with us — in whatever state we are. If we need to talk, he’ll talk. If we need to move, he’ll move with us. If we just need presence, he’ll sit with us. 

What do you need in your relationship with Jesus right now?

Love Makes Us Still

I’ve written before that my girl kitty, Diva, teaches me so much about God and our connection to him. Early on, I shared that she teaches me about contemplative prayer. I’ve written how my love for Diva teaches me about God’s love for us, particularly as humans. And more recently, I shared that she teaches me about nature versus nurture. 

This morning she taught me something new — namely, that love makes us still. 

I’ve noticed a pattern with Diva.

For several days at a time, she decides she’s just not that into me. I try to engage her as she’s resting on the couch, and she doesn’t return the interest. I call to her from the bedroom in the evenings, which usually sends her scurrying to my side, but instead she stays planted in the other room. She’s just not that interested. 

It gets rather lonely for a few days, and I miss her.

But then, pretty much like clockwork after a few days, suddenly she’s everywhere I am. She is clingy in an over-the-top-even-for-Diva kind of way. She just can’t get enough of my attention or affection. And since she seems to need it rather a lot, I gladly give it to her. (Between you and me, I’m so glad for her return. I miss her companionship when she’s in those several-days-away hiatuses!)

And then things return to normal. She jumps on our bed at 5 a.m. wanting attention, then settles down and lets us fall back to sleep once she’s received it. She jumps off the couch to follow me a few hours later, once I get up and moving about, fully entrenched in our usual morning routine of sitting at my desk for coffee and prayers for a few hours each day. She alternates between prowling around at my feet and jumping up on my lap and desk during the first chunk of time I’m sitting there. 

And then she becomes very still. 

Just like in the photo above, she will sit on my desk for long lengths of time, completely content to just sit there. She stares at the same exact spot on the desk or out the window for extended moments. She moves her head slowly to look at me if I rub her head, not really inclined to move around.

She’s just content. Just being. Near me.

This morning I realized it’s because she’s fully resting in love. She’s received her usual fill of attention and affection, received during that first big chunk of time we’re together at my desk, and now she’s able to just rest in it. 

Can we do the same? 

Perhaps you can relate to Diva, going away from love for long stretches at a time, preferring to make it on your own for a while, only to scurry back to the source of love after you’ve been away, then drinking it in huge gulps because your thirst has gotten so parched. Or finding yourself in a normative rhythm with God, spending time prowling around at his feet or sitting on his lap and letting him love you each day. Or perhaps, maybe sometimes, you find yourself completely content in that love, settled into a place of stillness and peace as you allow yourself to just be you, fully inhabiting yourself and fully loved, in the presence of God.

Where in this picture are you today?

On Inhabiting Ourselves

In the last 24 hours, I’ve been thinking a lot about clouds and pretzels. 

Clouds, in the sense that they are what I see up ahead to indicate what could go wrong in any given moment, decision, or scenario. They are the “what if?” voices inside of me. What if they don’t want what I offer? What if I misstep their expectation or desire? What if it makes them angry? What if they blame me?

I have oh-so-many “what if?” voices inside me. And yesterday I realized they’re like murky, massive clouds that I can see ahead. 

And that’s where the pretzel then comes in. 

In response to the “what if?” clouds I see ahead, I start contorting. Twisting, turning, anticipating, curling — living outside myself because I’m living up ahead in the possibility of the “what if?” outcomes. 

It’s tiring being a pretzel. 

And who knows if those “what if?” clouds even exist? They exist in possibility, not reality. And yet in response to them, I contort into a pretzel instead of standing up straight and inhabiting my actual body with my actual eyes, arms, legs, skin, and voice. 

The fear of “what if?” creates a pretzel dynamic in me. But today, I’m learning and practicing standing up straight, unafraid and courageous and real.

Can you relate to the “what if?” clouds and the pretzel contortions?

Where Are Your Moments of Stillness?

Do you have moments of stillness in your life? 

Last night at church, we talked about solitude and silence. My small group shared how unconventional it is to seek solitude and silence. Life can be so noisy! And there is always something more to do that keeps us from just being still and unproductive with even a few moments of our time.

Then, when we do get alone with ourselves and God for a moment, the noise of our mind often becomes quite loud. 

But as the teacher of our study shared, the swirly and shaken-up sense that we have upon first being still will settle, like silt in a jar full of river water. The sediment settles, and the water becomes clear.

What would a moment of stillness that leads to eventual clarity be like for you? 

This Is About Lifelong Growth

In lots of different ways lately, I’ve been reminded of this truth: 

Our formation is a lifelong process. 

There is no “big finish” that we reach here on earth and then are done. Our life with God is a lifelong experience. It continues and continues and continues, unraveling more layers of truth and growth as we go, inviting continual form.

This might seem discouraging. We are conditioned to look for answers to problems. We want things to be better. We want a happy ending. 

I’d like to invite you to take the long view in this.

This reality we’re living in is about healing and wholeness. Reality, in the end, does resolve. This is what we understand from the holistic teaching of the Scriptures. 

But it doesn’t resolve until the end. Meaning, the end of all ends, when all things are finished and are then made new.

Our lives today are a piece of that. Our lives today prepare us for resolution. But the resolution doesn’t finish in this life. 

Growth happens here. Healing happens here. Jesus is about your continued wholeness as his aim. But it doesn’t happen in a flash. We are not zapped into perfect existence. It is a process. And a beautiful one, at that, I might add.

How do you respond to this notion of life with God as process? Does it surprise you? Anger you? Relieve you? 

He Knows You

I don’t know about you, but I have gone through so many seasons of my life feeling lonely and unseen by the majority of people. Finding people in life who take the time to really see and know us is rare, isn’t it? (I, for one, am immensely grateful and hold on tight to those who do come along and offer such extraordinary friendship!)

That feeling of being known, being seen and understood, and being selflessly loved and cared for as we are is rare and an incredible gift. 

That is the kind of knowing Jesus offers you. 

A couple weeks ago, we explored the truth that Jesus wants to know you, and we talked about one way that kind of relational knowing can look with him. And in those cases, we talked from the place of what it can be like for us to choose to share ourselves with Jesus and open ourselves to the experience of being known by him in those places.

Today, I’d like to center on the aspect of Jesus that already does see and know you, without you having to do anything to bring that seeing and knowing about. 

Do you ever find yourself in those moments of loneliness, wanting someone — at least one person — to be with you where you are and take the time to see with you what is there? Do you find yourself longing for someone to completely understand, without your having to wonder if they really get it or having to hide parts of yourself that might not be acceptable or understood? 

That is the way Jesus knows you. 

He knows and understands all of you. He knows you in the inmost being. When you are feeling alone and wishing for someone to see and know you, Jesus is ready to know you in that way. 

What is it like for you to receive the idea of being known by Jesus in this way?

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?

Registration Opening Soon for Look at Jesus!

Hello, dear ones!

I’m excited to share that I will be opening registration for the next offering of the Look at Jesus course on March 19, and I hope you will consider joining us this time around. 

The course begins April 2 and runs for six weeks. The cost is $55 USD. Enrollment is limited to 10 participants.

Above is a short video invite that gives you a little peek into my heart for this course. You can also get all the details and questions about the course answered on the course page. A few extra videos that were created for the pilot offering are also available here, here, and here. 

Please let me know if you have any questions — I’d love to help you decide if this is the course for you this time around!

xoxo,

Christianne 

He Has All the Time in the World

I’ve shared with you that I’ve been walking through a season of difficult questions. I keep bringing those questions to Jesus — sometimes in anger, sometimes in grief. And I shared yesterday that I’m aware through all this struggle that Jesus values me and the struggle. 

I shared that he values you in the same way, too. 

This morning, I became aware of yet another aspect of Jesus in the mix of all this: his infinite patience. 

At this point, it feels like Jesus and I have been talking about this struggle for forever.

Really, it’s just been about a month.

But every time I join him on the beach in a time of personal prayer, this is the immediate place I go. Sometimes we’re walking into the sunset. Sometimes we’re sitting on the shoreline crest. Sometimes we’re stopped in the sand, facing each other, and I’m waving my hands wildly about, bumping up against the limits of my human understanding. 

He just keeps being with me in it. 

A lot of times in the struggle, I’m talking so much that I won’t let him get a word in edgewise. He’s fine with that. He keeps listening. 

Sometimes in the struggle, my heart is pained so much that I don’t want to listen to him, even if he did have something to say. I put a wall between us as I look out at the ocean and contemplate the waves and my struggle. He’s okay with that, too. He gives me my space. 

So far in this struggle, I have received his ongoing infinite patience.

He has all the time in the world with me on this.

When I did finally give up one day and surrender my stymied questioning, at least for the moment, he didn’t try to talk back to me about it. All he did was hold me and sing over me. 

This morning was perhaps the first time in all of this long struggle that I actually listened to him.

I made my case yet one more time, and then I listened. It was morning, perhaps around 8:30, and we were walking south on the beach. The sun was not yet warm. The sand was cold and wet beneath our bare feet. 

I had stopped talking, and we walked quietly for a few moments. He knew I was listening. 

And do you know what he did? 

He looked up at the sky for a minute. He looked over at me and smiled. And then he looked back up at the sky and started, slowly, talking to me about the creation story. 

He took me back to before the beginning of time. 

It was a long story. We are still, in fact, talking about it. And I became so aware during this morning’s walk that he will take as much time as is needed to do this conversation justice. 

There were several times in the conversation when I grew impatient. I had things to do and people to see today. I couldn’t take the fullness of time needed to cycle through the entire creation story, attendant with all my noticing and my questions along with it, all in the space of one morning walk. 

That was okay too. We’ll still be there tomorrow. He’ll still be there. Ready to pick things up right where we last left off. 

How might you receive the patience of God toward you right where you are today?