Thoughts on Mary, Our Christ's Mother

A few quiet moments in front of the fireplace and Christmas tree at my mom's house.

Happy Christmas, dear friends.

As I sit here on this Christmas Eve night and compose this note to you, I wonder where you are as you read it. What have these days been like for you? Is this Christmas holiday a joyful or painful one for you, or perhaps a mixture of both?

I wonder, too, in what ways you may have anticipated and encountered the Christ child for whom this holiday is named. I hope you have discovered him in these recent days. I hope your heart is one in which expectation has been set and preparations made for at least one transforming encounter with the love of Christ.

Love came down to meet us. That's what this holy day signifies.

These days, I am thinking much on Mary, the mother of Christ. I've been reading my way ever so slowly through a little book called The Reed of God, which is a meditation on her life. The book suggests that she, more than any other human being who ever lived, is our best teacher on what it means to be emptied so as to be filled with Christ.

Through the reading of this book, I find myself asking all sorts of questions, such as: What sort of person was Mary to say yes, without hesitation or question, to a kiss from the Holy Spirit that would lead to all sorts of scandal and misunderstanding and inconvenience in her life? What would it have been like for Mary to create a truly hospitable environment in her body, spirit, and soul for this Christ child to grow in health inside of her before being born into the world? What would it have been like for Mary to raise Jesus in the world as his mother, teaching and exhorting and correcting him as he grew, yet serving him and bowing to him as her Lord?

This book has given me much to ponder.

I've been struck, too, by this statement: "God knew Our Lady's trust in Him was absolutely without limit. Everything that He did to her in the future emphasised the same thing. His trust in her trust in Him" (page 34).

God knew that Mary trusted Him unconditionally and that whatever he did or asked of her would be met with unquestioning acceptance. That's why he could choose her to bear Jesus inside her body. That's why he could choose her to be his mother, even though he knew this beloved son of hers would die at a too-young age and under quite horrific and unjust circumstances.

She trusted God, and so God knew that he could trust her.

When I read these words, I realize one thing: I didn't have that kind of trust in God throughout this pruning year. I questioned and struggled and cried. I pounded my fists and demanded answers. I expected to receive those answers, and yet I couldn't find them, no matter how hard I looked.

I didn't trust him. I see that now.

I shared recently that God has graced me with glimpses into the work he has been about in me. He didn't have to do that, but he did, and these sightings have greatly increased my trust in him. They've taught me in quite a big way that God has always known exactly what he was doing, even if I did not. Even if it made absolutely no sense to me. Even if I couldn't find answers or relief.

It is my hope that I will now move into the future with a greater trust in God at every moment. It is my hope that I will trust that God is always about the work of completing what he started in me and that he will not give up until it's done. It is my hope that I will always remember not a hair on my head goes unnoticed by God and that every movement in my life, therefore, is intentional and purposeful.

This is my hope. It is a hope birthed from contrition that led to repentance. I pray that God would find in me a willing vessel to receive him and serve him without question. Even now, I know that he will find in me that vessel, for this is the work he has been about all along: preparing me to receive him, emptying me so I could be filled with him, all because he has had in mind my vesselship for his use.

I love you, Jesus. Welcome into the world this day. Welcome into the world through me.

This Loud, Profound, Pervasive Peace

Mount Calvary Monastery

Santa Barbara, CA

August 2005

With this joyful offering of my whole self last summer so that Jesus could become all that is seen in me, I came to closely identify with these words from Thomas Merton:

"For now, oh my God, it is to you alone that I can talk, because nobody else will understand. I cannot bring any other man on this earth into the cloud where I dwell in your light, that is, your darkness, where I am lost and abashed. I cannot explain to any other man the anguish which is your joy, nor the loss which is the possession of you, nor the distance from all things which is the arrival in you, nor the death which is the birth in you because I do not know anything about it myself, and all I know is that I wish it were over -- I wish it were begun. You have contradicted everything. You have left me in no-man's land."

-- The Seven Storey Mountain, page 459

I so loved (and still do love) these words from Brother Merton, who has become like a spiritual father to me in so many ways. These words resonate with the experience of light and dark, apprehending and distancing, leaving and arriving that this giving over of self has been like for me. There are so many contradictions here, and yet all the contradictions are true. It is strange to talk about, and there really are no sufficient words. Merton does as good a job as I could ever hope for, so I'll let his words do the talking.

It's been interesting to notice the peace that has descended upon me since those two spiritual friends asked me that momentous question about gift in the midst of my inadequacy. Once I realized God was answering the prayer I had enjoined with him over one full year ago, all the fiery anger and indignation and frustration and self-striving that had been my experience over this past year went completely out of me. I accepted the inadequacy. I began to welcome it. I even began giving thanks for it.

It was like my huge, indignant balloon deflated in that one moment. I became willing to learn to be emptied. After more than a year of fighting against myself and against God and against circumstance, I finally gave up the ghost.

Since then, I've noticed an increasing quiet taking up greater habitation inside my soul. This, too, is hard to describe, but it is as though I am present while absent at the same time, especially when engaged in my listening practice. I feel myself fully attuned and alert and present to the other person, but I also feel myself not present, in the sense that it's like I've stepped aside so that God can stand in my place.

It's a strange experience, at least when trying to describe it in words to another, but it actually feels like home. It feels like how my soul was meant to live in the dance of life with God. It's a loud, silent, profound peace that pervades the whole of my insides, and in this place I don't need to say anything. I don't even notice time. I don't need to know where things are going or have any answers. I don't need to feel awkward or worry whether I'm saying and doing the right things.

I simply hold the space. I stay present. And I let God and the other person talk and move toward one another . . . because, after all, that is what a true listening practice is all about.

A Prayer Remembered

Greenville, SC

January 2006

Hi there, friends.

As I shared in my last post, I've been learning more and more about this pruning year and what it has held for me. Whereas I have previously looked at this last year as a terrific blight upon my soul, I'm beginning to see that from God's point of view, it has all been utterly intentional and even good.

The beginning of this realization came when, as I shared in my last post, two people totally unrelated from the other asked if the inadequacies I've been feeling in my listening practice might somehow be gift. That notion struck me as laughable at first, but I eventually came to see that it has held the gift of my utter dependence on God. Through my inadequacies, others have received more of God and less of me.

And that's when I remembered the prayer.

Last summer, a new prayer emerged in my times of quiet with God. This was in the midst of my summer of solitude and study.

It was a prayer to learn how to die.

Now, this wasn't a prayer for physical death, but rather for Jesus to become all that other people see and receive when they encounter me and for me to become completely hidden from sight. This might sound like a strange prayer, but it emerged out of a growing adoration and love for God. I found myself, as his beloved one, wanting to give him everything. I thirsted to be undone and lost for him. I wanted him, my beautiful beloved, to be the only one seen.

Through this process, I began to sense God's re-naming of me as his Hidden One. It was a tender name for me to receive from him, and we shared such sweet times of conversation and contemplation during the weeks this prayer was at the forefront of my intention. It became the great joy of my heart to give God more and more of myself. I sincerely wanted to become nothing so that he could become everything in and through me.

It's so obvious to me, looking back on things now, to see that these past 15 months have been an answer to that prayer (and is still in progress). And yet somehow, once the fall months began and chaos ensued, I totally forgot about that prayer.

I think it fell off my radar because I couldn't in any way connect the consolation and joy I held in those sweet prayer times with the stumbling, fumbling confusion I began to experience in greater and greater measure everywhere I turned. There just seemed to be no connection at all between them. It felt like I'd entered a totally foreign land. (And in a way, I guess I had.) But I think that's why I fought as hard as I did against what happened once the summer ended. I thought God and I were headed in one direction, but he took me in another.

Now, 15 months later, I see what needed to happen.

First, I can see that he took me through a solid year of chaos in order to unglue me. And it worked. I could not depend on myself if I tried. No matter where I turned, all I met was overwhelm. I was utterly, utterly unglued. I felt like a fish flopping about on the shore with no water to keep it alive.

And then, a few months ago, when I stepped away from some commitments in order to create greater spaciousness and quiet in my heart, I did recover a deep and solid sense of myself again (for which I'm so completely grateful!), but I then also found myself back in familiar territories that now, for the first time ever, felt totally and completely foreign. As you know from my previous post, that resulted in a whole lot of desperate, pleading prayers for God to fill up what I lacked.

So I became unglued, and then I became dependent.

I'm still learning as I go in this process, but God has been gracious to pull back the covers and give me a peek at his intention through all this. That peek is such a gift because we're not always granted those gifts, are we?

But now I can say in all honesty that this past year has been a gift. I can give thanks for it, which is a total marvel to me. I see that God, in his own mysterious ways, has been answering my prayer to learn to die. Less of me, more of him . . . even though I had no idea he was diligently about that work all along.

This Inadequacy, This Gift

Laguna Beach, CA

November 2005

So, the story of this pruning year has developed quite a bit in the last several weeks. I'm gaining new insights into what God has been about these last 14 months or so. And I have to tell you, it's quite a marvel to me. It reminds me once again that God always knows what he is doing, even if I don't.

This is going to take a couple installments to fully articulate, so I hope you'll bear with me as I go.

As I've shared with you a bit before, I spent a lot of time in the last 14 months kicking and fighting against what was happening. I went from a pretty strong and beautifully fruitful place inside my soul to a place of utter chaos. I blamed myself for this chaos. I blamed my circumstances, too. Other times, I blamed God. I just couldn't seem to figure out what was happening, and I couldn't seem to get away from it or make it better. I hated it so, so much. I felt so weak and poorly. I couldn't show up for others in the ways I wanted to, and I couldn't seem to get a grip on everything vying for attention in my own life.

It was a hard year.

Then, as I've also shared with you, I reached a point where it was time for a change. I needed greater spaciousness and quietness for the restoration of my soul, but it had also become quite clear that the time had come for me to reclaim a direction for my life that God has clearly marked out for me. So Kirk and I agreed on some changes, and I set out into this new chapter inside my story.

However, I didn't expect what came next: I discovered completely new places of inadequacy, this time in places that had always been known and natural and familiar to me.

Primarily, this happened when I was listening. Listening is something that has always been like second nature to me, ever since I was a child. It is something I love doing for others, and it is something that somehow God always seems to use. For the last several years, I have come to embrace that truth more and more and have been walking deeper into the ways God can use this gifting in the lives of others more intentionally.

But here, in this new chapter of my story, a chapter that was to see me embracing that listening role even more, I felt inordinately clumsy at it. I felt like an old car lurching down the road because its fuel injection mechanism isn't working quite right. There I would go, lumbering in fits and starts down the street, lurching and then stopping, lurching and then stopping, with an occasional squeal of the tires and sometimes a blast of the horn.

It was so puzzling to me. And a bit alarming. Instead of being fully present to another's sharing, an interior monologue kept going off in my mind every time I was listening to someone, and that interior monologue kept chattering about all the things I ought to be doing or saying or not saying, and then doubting every last word and gesture and action and inaction I took.

In other words, I found myself far too focused on me in moments that were meant to be fully focused on the person before me.

This was not what I was used to experiencing in my listening practice with others. And so I would cry out to God in desperation, asking him to overcome my failings and my weaknesses, asking him to be all that was needed for them, since for some reason I couldn't do this listening thing well right now.

I kept bumping up against this fact over and over again: I was needing to relearn how to listen.

This bothered me because, again, listening has always been something I've intuitively known how to do. It's not ever been hard for me to focus on the other person, and prior to this last chaos year, I had begun to inhabit the sharing of other people's stories so much that I totally forgot myself while I was listening. I somehow came to feel and know their own experience as they shared it with me.

All of this distracted inner chatter and outer clumsiness, then, confused and frustrated me. I wasn't being the kind of listener I'd always known how to be.

A few weeks into this new (un)experience of listening, I shared all this with my spiritual director, Elaine. A few days after that, I shared it with another good friend who is training to be a spiritual director as well.

And both of them, quite separate from the other, asked me the very same question: Could there be gift here?

Gift . . . in this inadequacy? At first pass, I scoffed at their question. But then my mind turned directly to this: one thing every person kept receiving from me in this new place were those desperate, pleading prayers on their behalf for God to be everything that was needed because I couldn't know or do what was needed.

Yes, this was gift.

Those prayers were gifts that those individuals wouldn't have received otherwise, if I'd been in my stronger, more healthy place. When I listened to people before, I felt a distinct partnership with God in those sessions, and I certainly felt aware of his presence throughout and often asked for his help. God usually showed up in those listening sessions in ways that were unexpected and needed.

But this? This was new. Never has there been such a desperate cry for God to be everything because I felt myself nothing. All of this was utterly new. And I couldn't help but think those prayers on behalf of others, those prayers as a result of my inadequacy, were indeed gift.

Stay tuned . . .

I'm Such a Halloween Grinch

So, I confessed publicly yesterday on Facebook that I am quite the Halloween grinch. I don't really like this holiday at all, and my dislike for it keeps growing with every year. For the last couple years, Kirk and I have turned off the front-porch light and holed up in our bedroom to watch our two favorite Halloween-themed movies: It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and To Kill a Mockingbird. (Don't you just love those movies??)

I'm not one of those people who grew up hearing about the evils of Halloween. That's not where this is coming from.

Rather, I grew up trick or treating like everyone else, usually dressed as a cheerleader, a 50s girl with a poodle skirt and saddle shoes, a Southern belle, or even an angel. I loved the chance to get a pillowcase full of free candy, especially since I've always had quite the sweet tooth. My sister and I would venture out into the night and go door to door around several blocks in the neighborhood, then return home at the end of the night for the very best part: dumping our booty on the living room carpet to begin the sorting and exchanging of treats, alongside our older brother Bobby.

In high school, I visited a few of the local haunted houses like everyone else. These were the ones that turned out to be evangelistic efforts by local churches intent on scaring people into salvation from hell. Rather than inclining me toward God, those experiences did nothing more than make me feel frustrated and betrayed. I knew that life with God was about so much more than escaping the fires of hell, and I resented the scare tactics used by people who, I felt, presented a distorted view of my God.

Sometime in college, I remember hearing stories from a friend about the places she knew near her home where sacrifices and other acts of real evil took place on Halloween night. That was my first exposure to the dark side that really exists for some people on Halloween. But even though hearing those stories impacted me and still come to mind from time to time when I think about this holiday, it's not been a particular preoccupation for me when October rolls around every year.

To be honest, I'm not really sure what causes the discomfort for me on this night. I only know that when the conversations about Halloween begin each October, I find myself trying to skirt those conversations as deftly as I can. I don't want to be invited to costume parties. I don't want to pass out candy to little kids. And I really don't want to attend a Halloween Horror Night or haunted mansion.

I told Kirk last night that I'm not really sure what this is all about for me. He said something quite perceptive: "I think it's because you have a really sensitive spirit. As you keep growing more and more sensitive in your spiritual journey, the spiritual nature of the world around you also increases." Wow. Smart man, he is.

So there you have it: my anti-Halloween post for today. What is Halloween like for you?

This Pruning Year

" . . . every branch that bears fruit He prunes,

that it may bear more fruit."

John 15:2

Hello, dear friends.

I've had quite a revelation stirring up my mind and soul these past two days. It is causing a complete reframing of this past hard year, and I can hardly believe it is happening.

On Sunday morning, I settled in at my desk for some time of devotion with God. Are you familiar with the lectio divina method of reading Scripture? It's a way of reading that allows for deep introspection and personal response, usually in such a way that evokes a conversation between one's soul and God.

This is the way I most often read the Scriptures in the morning. I'll take a psalm or other small passage in the Bible and, before I begin, will sit with the page open before me on the desk and consciously open my heart to God. I'll ask him to meet with me through the words we're about to read together.

Then I'll read through the psalm or passage once, often aloud, and then sit for a few moments and reflect on what I just read. If I have questions about what I read, I voice those questions to God. If something doesn't make sense or is hard for me to fathom, I tell God about it. If I find myself adoring God just a little bit more by what I learned of him in that section of Scripture, I tell him that too.

And then I go back to the beginning of the passage and begin to read it again, this time a bit more slowly. (This is the real heart of the lectio divina practice.) During this second time through, I pay more careful attention to the words, asking God to alight my eyes upon a small portion that is to be my focus of devotion for the morning.

Here's where this practice created a complete reframing of this past year for me on Sunday.

I was sitting with a somewhat lengthy passage in John 15, and on my second time through it, a verse near the beginning of the chapter completely arrested me: ". . . every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit." When I came to these words, it was like they jumped off the page in brilliant and holographic light. I couldn't stop reading and re-reading them. I kept turning the verse around in my mind, hearing it again and again, tasting it on my tongue.

Every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 

It was so clear to me in that moment that this verse applied to me and this last year of chaos I've sustained. There's no doubt that my "branch," at the end of last summer, was bearing much fruit. As I told one friend yesterday, it was like huge mounds of fruit were bursting off my branch at that time . . . fruitfulness upon fruitfulness everywhere! And like I said a couple posts ago, I emerged from that summer feeling more healthy, spiritually and emotionally speaking, than I'd felt in my entire life.

But then I was swept into chaos. Waves upon waves came crashing down on me, and no matter which way I turned, I couldn't seem to catch my breath or find any semblance of peaceful waters.

I kept looking to my circumstances, seeing how they might need to change change. And in late November, I landed on the word "congruence" and went about pruning back some of my commitments. (I can hardly believe this now, but I even used a tree and branch metaphor and image for this process of discernment at the time!)

There was a little bit of calm after that initial pruning in November, but still the waters felt prone to choppiness, and when I started my full-time job in January, the tumult started up all over again. I couldn't seem to catch my breath. I just couldn't get any kind of grip on life.

Again, it was so, so strange.

It's been such a sadness to me, the pain and tumult of this past year. I've written before that it contained an incredible amount of loss, primarily through relationships I couldn't maintain because of all the many which ways I was being swept from one end of the ocean to the other in what seemed to be every single waking second of each day.

But more recently, I've been noticing an incredible sense of loss that is more spiritual in nature . . . a loss of who I had been in the world, to God and to others, when I was standing in that whole and healthy place before the chaos began. Where had that girl gone? How long will it take her to recover from this year? The word regression keeps coming to mind.

Up to this point, having made the decision to leave full-time work, I have had such mixed feelings about what transpired through the course of this year. Because of the way my decision to leave my job came about, it's so clear that God has used this last year's experience to fully clarify in my mind how he made me to exist in this world, not only for his own glory and my health, but also for the benefit of others. My decision to leave my job was wholeheartedly, then, about claiming these truths and doing what was necessary to continue striding forward toward the work he has given me to do in this world. (I'm sure at some point I will share more of this story and its implications with you.)

But even though I can see how God used the year to clarify his intents and purposes for me, which has been such a great gift on the back end of what felt like nothing but pain and confusion, I've still felt that acute sense of loss. I've felt anger about this. And I've even felt a lot of shame, as though the tossing and jostling in those waves was my own dense inability to know how to ride waves instead.

But no more.

Now, because of John 15:2, I see that this has been a pruning year. Every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. My God has been pruning me this year. There's something in me that needed to be pruned. And he did it so that I could bear more fruit.

It's no wonder I felt such pain and confusion: I was having whole pieces of myself lopped off with each incisive and precise clip of my smart gardener's shears! But even more than that, he's helping me see through this revelation that the tumult and confusion is not my fault at all. It is his doing. His intentional purpose for me. He has work that he's about in me, and he's been going about it, even if I've been unable to understand what was happening.

You can bet I'm going to be sitting with this one for quite a while. There's so much here for me to learn and better see.

A Place for My Heart to Rest

Hello, friends.

I have been trying to figure out how to share with you some of the pieces of my heart's journey over this past year. I want you to know where I am, given where I've been and where I'm going. Plus, writing is always the best way for me to process my deepest truths, so writing it out for you will also be like writing it out for me.

It's tricky, though, because some of the strands of this story overlap and circle back and sometimes even seem to contradict. (This is one reason why writing is so helpful to me . . . it helps me work out the kinks and apparent contradictions in my story.) Other strands of the story still feel too close and raw to share beyond the bounds of my closest inner circle.

So I guess one thing I'll say right now is this: I'm in the process of having my heart restored.

It's been such a painful thing, this getting to a place where my heart even needs restoring. Last summer, I emerged from a summer of solitude with my heart beating very, very strong. I felt more healthy, spiritually and emotionally speaking, than I had ever felt in my entire life. I had spent a lot of that time over the summer in worship, in quiet, and in deep introspection. I had made peace with some of my fiercest demons, one huge piece of which was walking through an intentional process of forgiveness in some of the deepest crevices of my heart. And I had reached a place that was utterly, utterly new and which I can only describe as beginning to care more for Jesus and for others than I needed to care for myself.

These were all very new places for me, and this growth was such a marvel to me. God was so good in bringing me to that place.

But this past year, I seemed to lose all of that growth. I couldn't find that still center anymore. I couldn't find my footing. I tossed and tumbled the whole way through. And in the process, I lost my connection to God, to myself, and to others. I also seemed to lose my ability to give of myself, which felt like a complete annihilation of the person I had slowly but gladly become over the long journey of many years of growth.

But God has still been so good to me. He somehow, through his grace, sustained me through a year of being unable to sustain myself. And he also used this difficult year to ultimately bring me back to myself. One day I woke up and just knew: it was time to return. And that moment felt just like the moment Mary Oliver writes about in her most famous and wonderful poem:

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began . . . 

[from "The Journey"]

And so, here I am.

Through this process of returning to my heart, I have found myself on a path that provides much intentional space for the revitalization of my heart and spirit. This is a work God must do, and so I am seeking him and asking him to do it. I just lean into the space, and I show up, knowing that all of this restoration of spirit is ultimately meant for others: as God strengthens me, I can love others more.

One place providing a space of rest and nurture for me right now is this Lilies blog. This, right now, is a place I am bringing my heart, no matter its state, to simply share what is. Bruised, battered, hopeful, enlivened . . . Jesus is taking all of it, and here I will share how I'm giving it to him and what I'm discovering about myself and him in the process. (And some days, this is just a place where I can be plain silly or talk about normal life.)

Basically, this is a place for my heart to rest right now, no matter what that happens to look like on any given day. So you will get my heart in this place while Jesus tends to it. I'll share with you (and with me) this heart that Jesus is mending . . . all for the joy of becoming strong in love once more.

Mostly, I've Been Nothing but Tears

Hi there, friends.

It seems I've been nothing but tears these last few days. Over the last few days, I've cried deep wrenching tears at least three times, maybe four. The kind of tears that wrench deep in your gut and bowl you over in half because it feels like your insides are splitting in two with the pain you feel.

Have you ever known those kind of tears?

Most of these tears stem from sorrows in the lives of those I know. Many close friends are walking right now through unimaginable and unbearable darknesses, and God is letting my own heart connect in some small measure with the pain they carry so that my entire being spills open in tears upon tears.

Even if my experience of that pain barely approximates the fullness of their own, it is enough to tell me that the pain they carry is magnificently terrible.

So I sit here in these tears and wonder what to do. Sometimes I feel like a friend of Job, sitting in the silence, passing the shards of pottery his way so that he can scrape at his sores in his grief because there's nothing else he can do to change his circumstances or take away the profound reality of his loss.

But I don't want to be like those friends of Job, those friends who eventually tried to tell him what to do or how to feel or how he could have made his situation different than it was. If there's one thing I'm learning in this shared sorrow God is giving me to experience, it's that there's nothing I can do. I feel utterly helpless, mute, and incompetent pretty much all of the time.

Each time, then, I am left begging God to do what only he can do. Each time, I plead with him to overcome my own humanity and failings so they receive only what is pure and not what is lacking in me. Each time, I beg him to come closer to them.

Tonight, as I was crying one of these soul-deep cries after a phone call with one of the dearest souls of my heart, Kirk gave me the gift of his presence in my incredibly burdened tears. He smoothed my hair and rubbed my back as I cried and cried and cried. Sometimes he said a few words, and sometimes he asked a question . . . but just his simple presence was all I needed most. The smoothing of my hair. The rubbing of my shoulder. The gentle feel of his hand on my back.

I didn't need words. I needed his presence and those quiet, small, but comforting gestures. They were so much more than enough. He, too, in this moment, was re-teaching me how to listen.

Tonight a friend shared the above video with me on Facebook. It's a song by David Crowder called "Shine," and it speaks the words of a prayer that asks God to come close and whisper and to shine inside a heart that is listening and yearning for what only that light of love can do: overcome.

The video itself tells a love story, and I love the Lite Brite creativity of it, but really it's the words and the melody of this song that rend my heart and meet me where I am. In this song, I find the words of my own prayer right now: that the light of the love of the only one who overcomes would shine from the depths of my heart, offering comfort and presence to those who mourn, especially to those I love.

Weeping and Rejoicing

Giant wooden Psalm 139 plaque that hangs in our house.

Tonight I am spending a lot of time thinking about how varied life can be, and how it can range from high to low at the exact same time.

Right now, some people in this big, wide world are celebrating the highest moments they've ever known in their lives while others are dropping to the deepest lows they've ever touched. At one and the same moment, there is weeping and rejoicing in this world.

Similarly, today found me rejoicing in a way I haven't rejoiced in a very long time, but it also found my heart marked with extraordinary sadness: my dear friend continues to navigate a terrain so completely unpredictable and terrifically heart-wrenching, I hardly know how her heart bears it. At one and the same moment, I wept and rejoiced tonight on my bed.

Inside my beloved friend's story, even, yesterday was cause for celebration and today brought heartache and pain. Weeping and rejoicing, in almost the very same breath.

And somehow God is present to it all.

How can that be?

I remember when little Ava Hunter struggled through her cancer diagnosis over a ten-week period this summer. I watched in amazement as her family continued to worship God, even as their beloved little girl slipped further and further away. At her memorial service, we all stood together and sang, "You give and take away, You give and take away, You give and take away, blessed be Your name."

I've been sitting on my bed tonight, staring up at the ceiling with joy and grief both swirling like mad in my heart, and I can't stop thinking about this: You give and take away. Blessed be Your name.

I can't say that I've been particularly good at blessing God's name in the difficult places of late. The Hunter family and my friend Kirsten have been great teachers to me in this regard. Even in the darkness, they have blessed God's name.

Oh, that I would do the same when darkness visits me.

But for now, I hold the weeping and rejoicing in my heart and marvel at the mystery of knowing both at once . . . perhaps, in some small way, similar to how God knows them too.

Video Challenge Day 5: Worship

Hello there, friends.

So, today's video post for the video challenge is as much of a surprise to me as it may be to you: I sing a few songs!

I found myself thinking, "Eeeeks! I am about to get really vulnerable in public right now!" as I saved and uploaded this post.

But this isn't about me. It's about God. And how worthy of worship our God really is.

I hope these songs somehow usher you into a deeper communion with God, no matter where you find yourself in your faith journey.

Amen.

An Epilogue, of Sorts

Hello, friends.

It has been such a long while since I've written anything here. I never thought I would encounter the day when three weeks . . . then a month and a half . . . then two months . . . and now almost three months would pass without new words from me in this space. The journey to here has been twisty-turvy and surprising.

I guess I should begin by saying that I had every intention of finishing my series on learning to rest. Even from the time I began the series, I knew there were at least seven or eight installments that could be written at that point about this process for me, not to mention however many more pieces that would fall into place as I continued to walk this path.

The first few months of this year were filled with so many opportunities to lean deeper into the rest I was asking God to teach me to receive. Writing those first four installments that got me up to the point of my January residency in Philadelphia was only the beginning. I was really enjoying the process of chronicling the fullness of all this journey for you here.

But then things happened. Really surprising things.

The first thing that happened is that Kirk got a job. That happened right after I wrote my last post in mid-March. It happened very quickly and quite unexpectedly. One moment we were driving to the beach on a sunny Friday afternoon, enjoying the beauty of the day together, and the next moment he was on a phone call with a friend who wanted to meet for lunch on Monday to talk about working together in a relatively new department at Full Sail. Less than a week later, he was in salary negotiations for the new position. A little over a week after that, he showed up for his first day on the job.

This completely shell-shocked me, but in the best of ways. Really, it shell-shocked both of us. It was kind of like waking up in the middle of a very busy street, all kinds of new and bustling activity happening around you, then scratching your head in a wholly stupefied daze and saying to the person beside you, "How exactly did we end up here?" It happened just that fast and just that unexpectedly.

But it was a complete blessing. For one thing, Kirk was (and continues to be) in love with the opportunity. It gives him the chance to listen to people's stories and hear their dreams and ask them compelling questions while continuing to build the educational institution that has been a part of his personal and professional life for so long. The work is good, the people are like family, and the place feels so much like home.

For another thing, the whole situation humbled me like you wouldn't believe. You may remember that my first and second posts in the series on learning to rest described how utterly self-dependent I had realized myself to be about the future. I had for some reason imposed a heck of a lot of internal pressure on myself to unlock the mysterious puzzle about where God was ultimately taking us in this very unconventional life we lead together. I was crunching my mind on overtime to crack that particular code, and a lot of this season of learning to rest was about releasing the need to do that anymore. It was about coming to believe that God indeed is our heavenly Father, which means that he sees us, knows our needs, and will provide for each and every one of them.

Well.

That's pretty much what Kirk's new job had to teach me, and it totally rocked my world. You see, I had absolutely nothing to do with that opportunity coming along or dropping into his lap. I didn't touch it. All I did, if I did anything, was listen to Kirk process through the decision and ask him good questions about it along the way.

Yet here it was. Something he was thrilled to be given the chance to do. What's more, it was providing for exactly all of our needs at that exact moment in time.

And I had absolutely nothing to do with it. That's the part I couldn't quite shake. God wasn't dependent on my doing all the right things or figuring out all the right answers in order to bring the next good thing into our lives. He did what he wanted to do, and he brought Kirk into that mix, and he let me just sit back and watch. With my jaw hanging down to the ground.

I'm pretty sure it stoked God to do this for us: to bring us around the next bend in our journey, finally, after wondering for so long together what it would be and when it would happen. I'm also pretty sure it gave God no shortage of endless delight to watch my wholly dumbfounded reaction as I made the very obvious connections that were there to be made to my very personal journey into greater and greater rest.

So that's the first thing that happened after I wrote my last post. It kind of distracted me for a while from writing anything here. I was pretty full on the inside just holding the weight of all God was communicating to me through that experience.

That he sees us. That he knows our needs. That he will provide for each and every one of them. That he's a whole heck of a lot more creative than I ever could be. That when he wants something to happen, he sets it in motion and it just flows.

Message received. Thank you, Jesus. I believe you now.

The next thing that happened was yet another marvel, and it was this: I started living completely in the present. For several weeks in a row, I found myself content to be concerned only with what was right in front of me to do. When I reached the end of a task, I was happy to simply ask myself, "What is the next right thing for me to do now?"

These were simple tasks. Things like washing the dishes in the sink. Pulling a load of laundry out of the dryer and folding the clothes in the bedroom. Paying the bills. Running to the post office. Calling the credit card company. Shopping for groceries at Costco and Publix. Working on an assignment for school.

Many of these tasks (especially grocery shopping!) were things I used to hate doing and would put off doing as long as possible. They were things Kirk would often do for the both of us, if I'm to be completely honest. Except now he was working 50 to 60 hours a week to get up to speed on his new job. Clearly, he wouldn't be paying the bills or shopping for us when he got home from those long days. It was up to me to do it now.

And I found myself really enjoying it. I loved the simplicity of all these specific tasks. I loved the feeling of contributing to our household and making Kirk's life that much easier. I loved moving from one thing to another in the quietness of our little home.

What's interesting to me about this is how little I thought of blogging. Every rare once in a while, I would remember I have a blog. I would remember it like I was peering, or straining, through a foggy mist to see that blog in the back reaches of my memory. And I would remember that I'd been in the middle of writing a series that seemed to culminate in the life I now found myself living: a life of peace, of simple joy, of resting contentedly and wholeheartedly in the present, without worry and without fear.

The thought of completing the series felt like forcing myself to go backward, to stuff myself back into shoes that were too small after a giant growth spurt. I had left off the series with events that had happened in January. And here it was: April. So much had occurred in the space of that time, even before Kirk got wind of the new job, to teach me lessons about learning to rest. Connecting the dots with all the stories that had happened between January and April to prepare me to receive the rest I had finally found felt overwhelming and somewhat stifling. It would force me to focus on the past instead of living completely in the present, which is what I most wanted to enjoy doing after the long road it took to get me here.

So that's what kept me from this space for quite so long. There's more to this story and more to where I'm heading from here, but I'm going to share those thoughts in a separate post. For now, know that I have indeed found the rest I was so longing and praying to find. Though it makes me sad to think of all the stories making up that journey that will never get told in this space after all, I'm contenting myself to hold all those untold stories close to my heart, known by me and Jesus, believing that the not-telling of them does not make them any less real or a part of who I am today.

Learning to Rest: Part 4

That night, after the prayer service, a group of my cohort friends and I decided to take a trip to the mini-mart. I, for one, was utterly famished and found myself practically salivating at the mere mention of chocolate chip cookies. So we crowded into one friend's car, cranked the U2 music as high as we could handle it, and headed down to the only establishment open close to midnight in that quiet little town where our retreat center was located.

We decided to each purchase something worth sharing with the rest of the group, and once we made it back to the retreat center, we laid claim to one of the main living areas, scooted several tables together, and then spread our booty of candy and chips along the tables to share.

I don't know that I have ever laughed or giggled that hard or that long in my life. We must have been sitting together for at least a good hour and a half, sharing and joking and telling stories. One friend had worked in a funeral home during one season of his life, and he regaled us -- completely straight-faced -- with stories about some of his most bizarre experiences. Soon people were quoting scenes from The Office. Then someone would pass around the bag of Sour Patch Kids or Doritos. Everything happening around that table of fellowship struck me as insanely silly and insanely good.

Periodically, I would catch myself giggling like a little girl, and I would be thrust back into the memory of that time of play Jesus and I had just shared during the prayer service earlier that night. That experience felt so connected to the purity of fun and laughter I was now sharing with my friends around that table. I felt so safe and so free. It felt like an invitation to more childlike play.

The next morning, I woke in my room about an hour before my alarm went off. I debated getting up or turning on the light to read in bed, but ultimately I decided to go back to sleep. As I cozied back under the covers, my mind returned to the healing experience I'd shared with Jesus the night before. I remembered how I had rested in his arms like an infant after we'd run and danced and played together. So in my bed right then, as I nestled deeper into my pillow and pulled the blankets closer, I pictured myself in Jesus's arms once again, allowing him to hold me as I fell back to sleep.

That last hour of sleep was the deepest I'd had the whole night. I woke feeling incredibly rested and warm and safe and loved. I am not sure I have ever experienced sleep that deep and restful in my entire life. All because I'd let Jesus hold me for that last hour of sleep.

This whole experience fell smack-dab in the middle of the week. Up to that point in the week, my hidden extrovert had come out of hiding and was living on full alert. Whereas I would normally have been heading to bed at a decent hour at a planned retreat, I was finding myself choosing to stay up until one-o-clock in the morning to talk and share and laugh with my friends. Whereas I would normally have used any scheduled free time for a nap, a solitary walk, or a chance to read and journal by myself, I found myself choosing instead to be with others, to go exploring with a group, to linger over the lunchtime meal because we were enthralled in a good conversation.

In other words, I hadn't connected much to my highly introverted nature up to that point in the week.

But that all changed after that healing prayer service, after that night of giggling hard with friends, after that last hour of deep, restful sleep the next morning. As I walked into the first morning session that next day, I found my body moving more slowly and engaging with others less quickly. There was a serenity and lightness to my heart -- a heart that was now captivated by play and laughter and freedom with Jesus -- but there was also an incredible feeling of exhaustion creeping over the rest of my being. I found my brain shutting down about halfway through the sessions. I took more time for myself during the free hours and went to bed much earlier. I felt stripped and in need of naps. I didn't have much to give anymore.

Slowly, I came to realize that I was experiencing something that felt like a deep soul slumber. Who knows how long that hardened piece of my heart that Jesus took from me that night had been in effect in my life, operating as though everything depended on its efforts and alertness, operating as though it was the only living savior around. But however long it was, I know it was a really, really long time. So much so that I don't think it had any concept of rest or play in its experience of my life at all.

These gifts of rest and play, then -- these gifts that then led to its continually deep soul slumber -- were completely new and completely, utterly needed.

Learning to Rest: Part 3

About a week and a half into the new year, I traveled to Philadelphia for a week-long residency with my classmates from Spring Arbor and six other cohort groups enrolled in our spiritual formation program. We were there to learn about social justice from Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne, and we were provided intentional time to connect in our cohort groups about the work God has been doing in each of our lives.

During the cohort sharing time, we were asked to individually share our responses to two questions: "What has God been doing in my life since last we met?" and "What hasn't God been doing?"

Wow. Those two questions pack a lot of punch, and it was beautiful to hear each person in our cohort community share their diverse, heartfelt responses to how these questions meet them in their lives right now. And then it was precious to gather around each person after they shared so we could spend time praying for the concerns and questions and praises they had voiced. In all, it was a time of vulnerability, tears, intense listening, intense caring, and holy lifting up.

Since our cohort group has 21 members, it took several installments of several hours each for us to provide this sharing and prayer time for each person. I was next-to-last in line, which means that my sharing time landed in the middle of the week, just before we were scheduled for an evening lecture in the main meeting room.

I told my group about the invitation to practice active rest with God this year, allowing him to teach me what it means for him to be my heavenly Father who sees me, knows my needs, and will provide for them as I release my grip on the future and simply watch, wait, and learn to receive. I shared that this felt scary and that I didn't really know yet how to trust that God would show up. And when it came to sharing what God isn't doing right now, I wryly joked that God is not providing me with a job. It's hard to wait and trust that all will be revealed in the fullness of time.

After the group gathered around and prayed for me, we headed downstairs for the main session. Along the way, my friend Seth came up to me and asked if he could talk with me later. "When you were sharing," he said, "I felt like God gave me something specific to share with you, but I didn't want to share it in the larger group." Intrigued, I agreed to talk with him a little later about it.

That night during the main session, the director of our program talked about the role social justice has played within the charismatic tradition of our faith. He talked about prophecy and about healing, about spirit baptism and about spiritual warfare, linking each of these to the work of the Holy Spirit on behalf of social justice in the world. And then, after learning about the history and tenets of the charismatic tradition, we were invited to participate in a charismatic-style worship service.

We pushed all the tables and chairs off to the side of the room, creating an open space that would allow people to stand, sit, kneel, lay down, or even dance. We were told that we would be provided an opportunity for prayer later in the evening so that people could receive healing and the reception of their gifts and ministry if they wanted to be prayed over.

Since I have been so focused these days on receiving the work God has for me to do, I had every intention of going up to receive prayer for the reception of my ministry. But all of that changed once Seth came over to talk with me.

It was about halfway through the worship service, and I had moved from kneeling on the floor to sitting in a chair on the side of the room. Since I was now somewhat detached and no longer singing, Seth came over and asked if he could share with me what he felt God impressing upon him earlier that night. I nodded.

He sat down beside me and said, "I feel like God wants you to know that he's inviting you to play."

I looked at Seth and arched my eyebrows, not sure what to make of this.

He continued. "I'm serious. It's like God wants you to come up and sit on his lap, and he wants to cuddle with you, and tickle you, and laugh with you, and run around with you, and chase you. He's inviting you to play with him."

And then, without him having any knowledge of the image I've been carrying around about clutching the hardened pinecone at the core of my heart, he said, "I just feel like you're clutching something in your fist. Like you're holding on to it really hard and can't let it go."

My eyes widened, and I sat there, dumbfounded. How could he possibly have known?

"You're right," I said slowly. "Just before I came up here, God was showing me that there's this last little sliver of my heart -- almost like the last remaining 25 percent of it -- that has never been given over to him. And it's so frustrating because the other 75 percent has learned to trust him and receive healing. But this last 25 percent has never done any of that. It feels exactly like I'm clutching it in my fist, and it feels like this hardened, dark pinecone digging into the palms of my hands."

Seth nodded and listened, and then, with his eyes fixed on me, he said, "Christianne, you can receive healing for that."

"I know," I said. "I believe God is trying to heal me of it. That's what this season of active rest and learning to let him be my heavenly Father is all about."

"Right," he said. "But I mean tonight. You can receive healing from that tonight."

I looked at him skeptically. "I don't know, Seth. God has healed me in many different ways over the years, but my experience is that it always takes a really long time and a lot of intentionality on my part. I'm not sure I believe it can happen immediately, in a moment."

"Well, sometimes it doesn't," he agreed. "And God may choose not to heal you tonight. But he also could do it, if he wanted to. And maybe you could just start by asking him. I would really encourage you to go up for the healing prayer when the prayer time starts."

Seth has been involved in healing ministries for a while, so I trusted that he spoke from experience about God's ability to heal in an instant. But still . . . I didn't know what to make of all this. Like I said, the work of healing is something I've experienced, but it has always taken whole seasons of life and intentionality to enter into and receive it. It has always been something God and I work through together, sometimes with the help of friends or the help of a therapist. I didn't know if I believed God could really heal me in an instant.

I sat in my chair and took all this in, and all these thoughts and questions kept racing through my mind. I kept trying to reconcile, too, what he had shared about God inviting me to play. What did that mean? Why was it important? Why did it even matter?

And then suddenly, I was weeping. Deep, wracking sobs seemed to well up from the depths of my body. Tears began streaming down my face. My shoulders shook from all those heavy tears. And I felt so embarrassed to be crying like this, out in the open surrounded by classmates I'd just met in person for the first time a few days ago, plus a whole bunch of other people I didn't know at all.

For a long time, the tears just kept flowing and I didn't really know why. It felt like a grief that had been a long time coming, so I just let it come. And then, slowly, I began to see an image of myself in my mind. I was about four years old, and I was sitting on a chair in the middle of my living room. Activity swirled around me in the house, but I sat alone in the room.

Except that I wasn't alone. I saw Jesus with me in that room, right next to me as I sat in the chair. And I realized that this was somehow connected to the presence of Jesus I've always known.

My conversion story has always been a little awkward for me to tell because it has always been the case that I have had an awareness of Jesus with me in my life. From my earliest memories, Jesus has been there. I had never asked him to be there; he was just there. And I've never known what to make of that.

And yet here, in the midst of my tears, God was showing me that the presence of Jesus being with me from my earliest memories has been intentional. In all the ways I have ever felt alone in my life, I really wasn't ever alone. Jesus was always with me, because he knew I would need him to be.

This revelation that helped me understand something I'd never understood made me cry even more out of gratitude and wonder. And somewhere in the midst of these tears, I felt someone place their hand on my head, as though they were praying for me. They left a few moments later. As I continued to cry, my eyes closed and myself completely oblivious to the worship service going on around me, another person came up behind me and began to squeeze my shoulders, massaging the tension that must have been evident as I was hunched over in my chair. Slowly, I felt my neck and shoulders relax. This stranger, too, then moved away.

The tears began to subside, and I opened my eyes and sat quietly. They were beginning the prayer time at the front of the room, calling up those who wanted to receive prayer for their gifts and ministry. It was now clear to me that healing prayer -- not this prayer for ministry -- was what I needed to receive, and I felt willing to ask for it.

But how does healing happen, I wondered. How do I let God do it? How do I let myself receive it? My brain kept crunching these questions over and over, trying to open myself to receive healing but not knowing how to make sense of how it happened at all. Having some mental understanding of what I needed to invite and assent to seemed important. I mean, how could I receive healing if I didn't know how to let it happen?

With these mental gymnastics playing over and over in my head, I moved to the front of the room once the invitation came. Our director, Ken, approached me with a small bottle of anointing oil in his hand and asked how he could pray for me. But I didn't know how to tell him what I needed. "I'm holding on to something, and I don't know how to let it go," was all I could say. I shrugged my shoulders and looked at him, probably with no small amount of tears and desperation shining in my eyes.

Ken made the sign of the cross with oil on my forehead and prayed for me. Then he moved away to pray over another person and I found myself standing in that spot at the front of the room by myself. I felt self-conscious, and again I found my brain working its mental gymnastics on how to let this healing thing happen. I could feel myself getting nowhere, and I felt completely helpless and frustrated with the whole thing. I couldn't help wondering if all of this was just a little ridiculous.

After a few minutes, one of the prayer volunteers came up to me. He introduced himself as Austin and asked how he could pray for me. "I don't know," I told him. "There's this part of my heart that I'm holding on to, and I need to let it go. I need to give it to God, but I don't know how. I don't know how to let healing happen. I don't understand how it works."

Austin nodded and looked at me quietly. "Do you think you could name it? If you could give a word or two to what you're holding on to, what do you think it would it be?"

I just stood there, not saying anything. I didn't know. I shook my head in utter helplessness and looked back at him without saying anything.

He looked at me intently for a few moments, as though listening to the words I wasn't saying and listening to the spirit of God at the same time. "It feels to me like it might be a great loneliness," he said. "But I don't want to name it for you. Do you think you could give it a name?"

To the best of my ability and knowledge, all I could say was, "Trying to make life happen. I would name it, 'Trying to make my life happen.'"

Austin asked if he could pray for me, and his prayer took on a similar theme to what Seth had said to me earlier: that God wanted to play with me, that he wanted me to know how much he delights in me, that he wants me to be like a child with him, running around and being chased. I found myself wondering how he could possibly know what he was praying, how it was possible for his words to mirror Seth's so closely when he hadn't been there for our conversation.

After Austin prayed, we both stood there together. Neither of us said anything for a moment. Finally, I said, "I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to give this over to God so he can heal me. It just doesn't make sense to my mind. I feel like I need to understand how it happens in order to let it happen."

As I was talking, Seth came up and stood on the other side of me, placing his hand on my shoulder and praying for me quietly. Austin nodded at what I had said and then continued to stand there with me, as though listening. After a moment, he said, "I'll tell you what. Why don't we both stand here together quietly and see if God speaks to either one of us about this. And then, if either one of us hears him speak, we can tell the other person what he said. Does that sound okay?"

I nodded. We closed our eyes.

And then I saw him.

In my mind, I saw Jesus standing before me. He was smiling and laughing and beckoning me forward to run and frolic and play. His eyes twinkled. And he just kept laughing and inviting me forward, as though playing with me was the best thing he could imagine doing right in that moment.

So I did it. I imagined that four-year-old me that had been sitting in the living room chair entering into the scene with him and letting him chase me. I laughed and shrieked with joy. I let him catch and tickle me. I was having so much fun! And I could feel, as Seth and Austin prayed beside me, that a huge smile was beginning to spread across my face. It felt like it would be totally stuck there forever.

I stood there for a long time, allowing myself to bask in the moment, just watching myself play with Jesus in that image in my mind. And then, as I continued watching, I saw myself crawl up into his arms and rest. Jesus held me in his arms, my four-year-old self laying in his arms like an infant, fastly falling asleep.

A deep sense of rest came over my body, and I felt like I had no muscles at all. It felt like Seth was holding me up, keeping me from falling backward with his hand lightly touching my shoulder as he prayed. I could tell it was happening. The healing was happening. This is what healing felt like.

Soon Seth and Austin walked away, as though they knew I was with Jesus, just resting, just being with him, no longer needing them beside me in prayer, totally content to be with Jesus for a while.

I had the sense of a group of people standing behind me, a band of four or five of them, praying for me. My friend Annie came up and sang a beautiful worship chorus with her hand resting lightly on my shoulder. Her voice sounded like angel's wings in my ears. And then, with Seth's words to me from the beginning, and Ken's anointing oil and prayer, and Austin's inviting me deeper into all of it, and nameless strangers coming to touch my head and massage my shoulders while I cried, and a group of them standing in a circle of prayer behind me, and Annie's beautiful singing, I was struck with the greatest sense of being held up and supported by the literal body of Christ that I have ever known.

And in the midst of it, Jesus. Jesus holding me in his arms.

I'm not sure at what point it happened, but I slowly came to realize that it was gone. The hardened pinecone that was the core of my heart, the dark pit I had been clutching in my fist and didn't know how to let go of, was gone. Somewhere in the midst of all that playing, he had taken it from my hand, like a parent distracts a child to some other kind of activity so they forget what they'd been holding and the parent can pick it up after they've abandoned it.

I hadn't had to do anything to consciously offer it over. I hadn't had to understand how it would happen, or even when it would happen. He had done it all. He had taken it from me completely, and all that I did was play.

Learning to Rest: Part 2

On Christmas morning, Kirk gave me a small, two-sided card on which he’d written several questions. These questions were to be held in prayer by both of us for the duration of the week in preparation for the upcoming year. The idea was to pray separately over these questions for a week and then, when we went to dinner on New Year’s Eve, to break the silence of prayer and share what we discerned God was speaking.

The first question on the card asked of God, "What are you trying to free me from?" It didn't take long for me to sit with this question and discover its conclusion. Given the events of late, it seemed quite clear that God was wanting to free me from the iron grip with which I held the final remnants of my heart. This is the part of my heart that had been pushing itself along as though God did not exist. It was the vigilant sentry, a merciless machine, an isolated, sad, and lonely island.

And yet I'd seen Jesus inviting me closer. He had held out his hand toward my self-sufficiency, as though he wanted me to give it over to him. He seemed to want me to trust that this interior, desolate machine that is my greatest and last attempt at my own salvation could be entrusted entirely into his hands.

But could it be? This part of me didn't know the first thing about trusting anything or anyone other than the efforts of its own highly capable self. It was, quite honestly, a functional atheist.

I turned to the second question on the card: "How do you want me to live?"

At this point I began to see that it was perhaps providential that I'd just spent the past eight weeks learning about the spiritual disciplines for a class at Spring Arbor. In that class, I had learned firsthand about the principle of indirection. This principle states that we cannot, in our own power, make ourselves into the kind of people God wants us to be. In the face of that truth, we commit to little practices that are within our capacity so that God, along the way, can cultivate in us the character and fruits we cannot produce ourselves. We commit to what we can do so that God can grow in us what we cannot do. We do it together: his part, and our part.

I began to wonder how the principle of indirection could apply to this situation. If God wants to grow my trust in him in this deepest of interior places, how could I participate in its coming about? What kind of practices could make room for that trust to grow?

I looked out over the coming year of 2009 and, even in that moment, felt how immediately this part of my heart springs into action upon considering it. It channels all sorts of energy and worry toward answering the question of provision. It conjures up ideas for how that provision could happen. It wonders how people answering a vocational call to ministry go about finding jobs. It considers building a new resume. It speeds along channels concerned with connections, contacts, and networks. And it gets exhausted very quickly, even though it helplessly believes this is the only way it can survive.

But maybe there was another way. Just maybe.

That week I had been reading and re-reading the section in Matthew 6 that talks about worry. During one of those readings, I noticed a little sentence embedded in Jesus's sermon that I'd never paid much attention to before:

"Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? . . . Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' . . . For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you." (Matthew 6:25-33)

All throughout Matthew 6, Jesus keeps emphasizing our relationship with our heavenly Father. He talks about "your Father in heaven who sees you" (vv. 4, 6, 18) and says that "your Father knows the things you have need of" (vv. 8). He talks about how our Father in heaven feeds the birds of the air who don't put an ounce of energy into planting and harvesting the food they eat, and how God clothes the lilies of the field in majestic splendor, even though they are but mere flowers. And here, in the section of Matthew 6 that so carefully speaks to the very same worries of provision for physical needs that are the voice of my own heart in apprehending the future, Jesus says that my heavenly Father knows that I have need of all these things.

What does it mean for me to believe I have a heavenly Father who sees me, knows my needs, and will provide for them? What does it mean for me to allow him to be a heavenly Father who actually provides for those needs, in the same way he provides for the sparrows and the lilies without their lifting a toiling finger or worrying one single day? What does it look like for me to be a child, carefree about how the needs are met but content to simply receive with delight the gifts provided each day, trusting each day that those gifts and provisions will be there? What does it mean not to worry?

In considering the question "How do you want me to live?" and the principle of indirection, I began to ask God if 2009 is meant to be a year of practicing active rest, a year of willfully choosing not to spend time or energy figuring out the possibilities and details of my future life, spending that time and energy instead on attending to Jesus and loving others. I wondered if this is perhaps a year of attending to God's activity in my life, watching and waiting for him to bring his good gifts to me and learning to receive and respond to them when they come. Perhaps by actively watching for what God brings each day, my trust in the reality of him as my heavenly Father will grow.

This seemed like a big step to take: turning aside from a way of existing that was like second nature to me in order to trust an invisible God to provide for an invisible future. Was I crazy? I asked God for his Holy Spirit to confirm this path of active rest.

That's when all sorts of crazy things happened within one 24-hour period.

Later that same day, someone shared with me an image they had of me sitting in a meadow surrounded by butterflies. When I asked what those butterflies were doing, she related the idea of a butterfly coming to rest on somebody's shoulder. The person was sitting in stillness, and the butterfly came to them. Interesting.

Then my self-sufficient boy cat who is never interested in cuddling or receiving my affection took an unusual interest. He sat and stared as I worked on my computer and then jumped into my lap and wouldn't budge. He nestled his head into my arm and fell asleep. For seemingly no reason at all, this masculine cat that never cuddles decided to rest, unbidden, on my lap. Weird.

I happened that same night on a poem about butterflies. It spoke of butterflies eluding us when pursued but coming to alight quietly on our shoulders once we are still. Curiouser and curiouser.

And then, as a final bang, I had a dream that an invitation for guest-blogging showed up, completely out of the blue, in my e-mail inbox. I woke up and knew that all these things were God's ways of speaking to me. He was asking me to sit still, to choose not to make my own life happen this year, and to see what shows up, completely apart from my own making, as gifts he brings to me. He wants me to rest in such a way that allows him to demonstrate the faithfulness of his fathering of me.

I felt scared to make this commitment. The part of me that depends entirely on its own ability was completely and totally freaked out by it. But that is because it has known no other way. And this is where another passage I had been reading that week became incredibly comforting and incredibly instructive:

"I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, by paths they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them." (Isaiah 42:16)

The first few times I read this passage, I connected so much with the parts that spoke of blindness, of darkness, of a path unknown and places that are rough. The part of my heart to which this year is dedicated needs to unlearn self-sufficiency and, at the prospect of such unlearning, feels all these things acutely: blind, in the dark, on a road it does not know, and completely rough and unformed.

And yet as I continued to meditate on the passage through the week, I began to notice something else that completely blew my mind. I began to notice how many times God asserts himself as the agent of this journey along the new road, through the darkness into light, from rough ground into smoother levels. Over and over again, he says in this passage, "I will . . . I will . . . I will."

I could not avoid the truth that God would be the one leading me where I needed to go and bringing me out of the darkness I'd always known. It was just this kind of trust that I needed to cling to and learn to believe in, right that very moment.

Learning to Rest: Part 1

Do you remember when I wrote this post? It was late December, and I was coming to see how little I trust God with the future. Kirk and I had taken a "drive of psalms" that included spontaneous prayer of confession, and I had spilled immediately into a tear-drenched, prayer-filled confession of this distrust in God's real activity, this deeply held belief that my life and what gets made of it is all up to me and what opportunities I find or create. I didn't realize this truth was deep inside of me, but there it was: my belief in myself, my unbelief in God.

It made me sad. I could feel how exhausting it was, all the mental energy expended daily on the potential future, all of the thoughts turned constantly toward planning and hoping and imagining outcomes. It felt almost as though these thought patterns had become part of all the other involuntary, automatic processes of my internal world, something that just happened as my mind flew down its very well-greased tracks, just like my heartbeat happens or my nerve endings work without my having to ask them to. That's how much my mind-schemes about the future and utter dependence on myself had become a part of my waking reality.

A few days after that night of prayer and confession on the drive of psalms, the despondency over the truth of my heart and my inability to yield my trust to God had set in pretty deep. I was carrying the sadness around with me and didn't know what to do with it. That night, Kirk asked what it would look like to bring all of these things into the presence of Jesus.

So I sat and imagined myself doing that. In my mind, I pictured myself approaching the entrance of a garden I've come to know very well, situated on the grounds where we do our monthly Audire training. And as I imagined myself approaching this garden, I saw Jesus standing there at the entryway, waiting for me.

When I reached where he was standing, we stood at the entrance, facing each other. As I looked at him, I could feel all the growth of my long journey that has developed a deep bond of trust between us. It is a trust that allows me to look into his eyes and see deep love and compassion and delight, believing he feels each of those things deeply for me.

But in that moment, standing at the garden gate, I could sense that it wasn't the whole of myself receiving that love and delight and care. I could feel a part of myself being held back, almost off to the side, away from his line of sight. In fact, the deeper I looked into the image of the two of us standing there in my mind, the more I could see that my left hand was indeed clutching something, balled up in a fist over my heart as the entire left side of my body turned away from Jesus in shame.

I could tell that I was clutching in my fist the deepest, most inner core of my heart. I could tell, too, that even though a large part of my heart has experienced the love and life of Christ that I mentioned above, this part of my heart had never experienced it at all. Whereas a large part of me has become comfortable with mystery and ambiguity, alive to the adventure of living in the journey and not having to know all the answers, this part of my heart has been tucked away from all that growth, suffocated from the air and unable to receive the grace of that kind of trust.

I couldn't imagine giving Jesus this last part of my heart. It is the deepest core, functioning like the reserve tank of a car that the car pulls from when it has nothing left to burn. It seemed clear in that moment that my heart, without my knowing it, has been holing away vestiges of its familiar, former life as more and more of me has continued to be transformed by God's grace for these past many years. It has been preserving itself in its inmost reaches.

This inner sanctum has never been given over to Christ and has never experienced his gentle, tender, piercing presence. It cannot imagine the possibility of life outside the power of itself. And I could hardly believe it had been here all this time, functioning as though no transformation and growth had ever occurred in my life at all. Truth be told, that made me kind of mad.

As I stood there clutching this core of my heart, a hardened core that resembled an unopened pinecone dropped from a tree or the dark, hardened pit of a peach fruit, I saw myself attempting to hide this part of my heart from Jesus. And yet, as I watched myself attempting to hide, I experienced his patience. He wasn't trying to wrest this part of my heart away from my grasp, and he wasn't asking me to hurry up and be ready to give it to him already. It was as though he knew this part of my heart could only be given once it had grown to trust him, and that this kind of trust could only grow through an experience of his love and openness and gentle invitation. So he stood there, hand outstretched toward the left side of my body, just waiting with incredible patience.

Quietly, Kirk asked what I thought Jesus might say to me in that moment. I felt the stronger part of me that is more accustomed to receiving Christ's love and living in it everyday look into his eyes and hold his gaze. Slowly, I voiced the question: What would you say to me right now?

As we stood there together, his hand outstretched and my left side turned from him in shame, I heard Jesus say: I understand.

He understands why I am holding back. He understands why I am scared to part with my deepest reserves of self-reliance and all those protective shields. He understands why those shields and responses exist in me in the first place, much better than I do or ever will. He understands all these things, and he is patient. He is committed to waiting with me as my trust in him grows, is nurtured, and blooms. He is committed to me until the day I can hand him my whole heart.

No Longer Operating at 130 Percent

When I was going into third grade, my mom had me tested for the gifted program at my school. I met with a child psychologist and had to push together and solve a whole slew of different puzzles in a certain amount of time. And at the end of it, I was found to be a young girl of above average intellect who poured everything she had -- and then some -- into everything she did. The psychologist found that I regularly functioned at 130 percent of my capacity.

My mom shared the results of that test with me once I'd grown older, and I wasn't sure what to think when I learned this news. I'd always performed well and stood at or near the top of my classes. I wanted to believe all that effort and all those results meant I was, in fact, a genius. But in truth, I wasn't. I was a smart, capable girl who applied herself wholeheartedly.

Now many years beyond my discovery of those test results, the greater significance of that IQ test continues to demonstrate itself. It amazes me still to realize that seven-year-old girl who took that test had already discovered and readily inhabited her false-self mold. It cannot be clearer than it is for me today that it was my false self that showed up that day and every other day beside it. Only a false self learns to operate above and beyond the actual capacity of a person (or below it, for that matter).

As I shared in my last post, I've been discovering a new rhythm for my life these days. It is slower than I'm used to, and that has been both wonderful and hard. On the one hand, it feels self-honoring to take things slower, to be more intentional about how I move through my day, to let thoughts and impressions sink in deeper, to let my responses come when they're ready, and to know that what is building in me as I do this will, in the end, be more solid and sure and substantive, a more true offering of me.

But it is humbling, as well. When the world is flying past me at 100 miles an hour, when everyone else has something to say, when it takes me longer to ingest the fullness of a thought than time always seems to allow, when witticisms abound and I don't always catch them on the first go-round, it's hard not to feel like some large, lumbering ox slowly moving across a free expanse where gazelles quite naturally frolic.

These days I have to trust that the real me gaining strength as I let it form organically these days is a better, more true, and healthier fit than the me that drives a world running at 130 percent throttle. As enticing a world it seems I would gain if I keep that speed on my radar, my deeper self just can't abide it. My deeper, truer self wants to be simply, unequivocally who she really is.

Embracing Mystery, Despite Fear

So, yet again, I have been absent. I do not have a lot to say. And really, right now, I feel God inviting me into the silence. I sense there is something for me here, some gift on the other side of this mystery.

And yet I struggle in fear. If I do not preside over this space, will I be forgotten? Will I be reduced to what little my latest string of posts have offered? So much growth has happened in this place in two and a half years. This is a place I've poured my the fullness of my journey. A place I've wrestled with questions larger than life. A place I've practiced honesty and risk. A place I've found community and grace.

But always the question: what have I offered here lately? And the answer is: not much. Although much has happened internally, it hasn't been shared here. And if it hasn't been shared here, written out for my own heart to see and for others to receive, did it really happen? Perhaps all writers ask themselves this question.

Kirk and I took a drive the other night. It was a drive along highways, lakesides, and back country roads. We called it "The Drive of Psalms" and made it a time of spontaneous prayer and confession. We talked out loud to God, and then we talked to each other. It was long and meandering and full of questions held openly and gently. Toward the end of our time together in that car, I remarked aloud, "You know this, that we've been doing here? It's got a slowness full of life. It feels like the true rhythm of our life together."

Slow. Rhythmic. Gentle and open. Questions and confession and prayer and shared hearts, with each other and with God.

A few days ago I finished my second class at Spring Arbor. It was a class on the spiritual disciplines, and it was incredibly rich, full of so many gems that I'll be mining for some time yet to come.

The capstone project for this class was a large-scale paper that explored many facets of the class: resources I'd located along the way in order to teach the material to others, meditations on Scripture and a bodily fast I'd conducted for eight weeks, and reflections on how God had been working to transform my life and heart through the practices of the past two months. It was a lengthy and deepening endeavor, and it took the whole of me to complete it.

On the night I completed it, I curled up in our recliner chair in the library nook, a lamplight burning on the table beside me, the kitties resting nearby. I opened a book I hadn't read in some time and simply embraced the quiet. As I read, my mind absorbed the beautiful story but also, from time to time, began wandering into thoughts and territories I hadn't explored for some time. It was responding to quiet, feeling the expanse and beginning to walk around in it.

I watched where it wandered and felt the goodness of doing so. I haven't offered myself much room to breathe and explore and simply turn up questions I don't rush to answer. So much of my time has felt managed, so much of my soul has felt managed, so much of my future has felt managed . . . all by hands that are my own and that feel the fear of the mystery of God.

One of the things I confessed during our drive of psalms was this self-management of my life. I worry and tend to the future and wonder just how much God wants to actively unfold it. I struggle to trust him with too much control because giving up my own worry and management of my life might mean I get left alone and out in the cold. He might not show up. He might do nothing. He might not lift a finger, and then what opportunities might I lose?

I feel something at work deep inside that I can't name or quantify. I don't know what it is. I need to let it happen. And I need to surrender what I cannot do while that work is taking place, which is, partly, keeping the content coming along the way. I simply don't know how to talk about it. Not yet. I wonder if I ever will.

Last night I was reading in Sue Monk Kidd's book When the Heart Waits, where she talks about the deep stillness the soul needs to move forward. Speaking of her own journey to embrace stillness, she says, "Overcoming my resistance to waiting meant coming to terms with the 'still journey.' I would have to give up the compulsion to keep my line moving at the world's pace. I would need to find my own pace, one that flowed with the rhythms of the earth and the Spirit, not with the frenzy of modern life. Our inner clocks tick at a much slower speed than that of society. Slowing our feet, our minds, our desires, our impulses -- stilling those things that drive us into faster and faster patteerns of living -- will help open us to the transforming experience of waiting. . . . Here's the paradox: we achieve our deepest progress standing still."

I guess all this is meant to say that I feel myself getting in touch with the true rhythm of my deep heart. It does indeed move slower than the pace of the world, and that scares me. If I respond to what is needed inside, I risk becoming irrelevant and lapsing into obscurity.

This is the tension that I face today: saying yes to my soul's true rhythm and needs, or keeping to the path that is more outward and more known.

Right now, I'm embracing the mystery of the inner journey. I pray for God to give me the grace to continue into the depths of what He is building and creating and growing inside of me, no matter how long it takes.

Spending Time with Her

The main reason Kirk and I went to New England this month was to spend time with Diana. This female warrior in Kirk's life is facing stage 4, metastatic breast cancer. This isn't her first time with breast cancer. Twenty years ago she braved and conquered it into remission. But the cancer recurred last year, and it has now advanced to stage 4, spreading into other regions of her body despite the many treatments she has sought.

Prior to this visit, I had only met Diana once. She came last year with the majority of her family tribe to visit Florida, and we were able to spend one evening with her and the rest of the family at a gathering that Kirk's sister arranged. At the time, I was struck by her sincerity and presence. When Diana sits with you, she asks questions you know she really cares to hear you answer. She laughs a lot and joshes her brother (Kirk's dad) around. She makes you feel so at ease.

One afternoon during our visit with her in New York, she took us on one of her favorite hikes to a place called Huckleberry Point. Snow had reached the region that week, and it was starting to thaw. This made the trail quite mushy with mud and water. There were places we had to step delicately and others that required advance strategy. At one point we even forded a river, the three of us cheering and hooting as, one by one, we crossed several thin and slippery logs, hoping to goodness we didn't fall in.

What amazed me most about Diana was her hardiness. Here is a 70-year-old woman in advanced stages of cancer who could trot through several miles of uneven climbing trails as though breezily riding a bike. Many times, especially on the return hike back, she left Kirk and I in the dust. We were huffing and puffing along, our poorly shod feet very wet and very cold and very sore, yet she was dozens of yards ahead of us, loping along with a hiking stick and rarely stopping for breath.

But the trip to the top was different. On the trip to the top, we walked and talked in tandem. What emerged was a conversation I will never forget.

Soon into the hike, Diana and I discovered we had both struggled in our lives with perfectionism. We talked about the root of this, what this says about our lack of trust in ourselves and other people for grace and room to learn. We talked about how rules and regulations and following what other people tell us to do ultimately prevents us from being responsible for the results of our own lives, and how sometimes there's an uneasy comfort to be found in this kind of escape artistry.

We ventured pretty easily into the corridors of faith and religion. Diana wanted to know what caused the Protestant Reformation and why Christians believe Jesus is the only way to God. She shared her respect for different faith traditions, and how one specific Buddhist teaching has been helpful for her, teaching her that fear and hope are more alike than different: both keep us locked in the potential future while preventing us from living in the actual present. We moved across narcissism several times and discussed the capacity for choosing good or evil that lies inside each one of us. Somehow, we also managed to cover evolution, abortion, and stem cell research before reaching the top of the mountain.

What I loved about this conversation was how easily it flowed between us. I didn't feel any pressure to have answers for every subject she raised, and it was easy for me to say, "You know what? I'm not sure what I think about that." There were times when I could say, "Because of my faith, I believe such and such to be true. But I'd love for you to help me understand the view that differs from mine." Both of us bumped up against the limits of our knowledge and belief in different ways, but there was an easiness that allowed us to acknowledge to the other when this happened and even laugh about it when it did.

It meant so much to me that Diana and I could penetrate such depths with vulnerability, care, and openness so quickly. I think this has a lot to do with the kind of person she is. She is a safe person. She is intellectually curious but intensely caring, which is what I believe enables her to carry a complex conversation with someone who believes different things than she does without it becoming threatening for either person. She has a noble spirit, and she draws out the noble spirit in others.

Diana is precious to me. The time we spent with her is precious to me. The chance to inhabit her home, get to know her family, and talk about things that matter to us both is precious to me.

Last week I was talking with K., my spiritual director, about why Diana moves me. I shared that it's because she is fully herself, at home in her own skin, fully alive to life and people and questions and joy, and that she creates safe space for others. "Perhaps in Diana," K. said, "you see the hope of your own future, the person you're poised to become, the kind of life you want to embody yourself."

She's right. I hope that at age 70, I too will be a person who makes a 29-year-old girl feel right at home, an equal and a peer, and also like a sister.

toward a definition of the heart

a little bit of diva sweetness for you

i use the word heart a lot in this space. sometimes i use it without even thinking twice about it, so integrated a part of my belief system and way of life has it become. but other times i'm incredibly self-conscious about using it so much. i'm afraid that in using the word heart so much around here, i give the impression of being some kind of sentimental sap who bursts into tears at the sight of white fluffy bunnies. (for the record, i don't.)

i was reminded of this today when i got to a section of henri nouwen's way of the heart that talks about prayer, and specifically prayer of the heart versus prayer of the mind.

it's a great week for me to be meditating on the subject of prayer, and especially the distinctions between prayer of the heart and prayer of the mind, as i've entered into a special prayer season this week with my close girlfriends about the ministry to women that God is entrusting to us at our church. after an evening spent with some very special women on sunday night concerning this very thing, the group of us girls agreed to fast from analysis and planning this week, including a refrain from even conversing with each other or our husbands about the subject of this ministry at all, turning ourselves instead totally over to God in prayer with nothing but open hands, no agenda.

it's a hard place to be, prayer. especially when your mind is spinning as fast with questions and thoughts and ideas about where things are headed, like mine is. this is why i'm glad henri nouwen is teaching me about prayer this week, and also why i've identified so closely with the temptation to pray just with my mind. when i pray with my mind, i find myself talking at God instead of talking with him. when i pray with my mind, i find myself working through all the analysis and planning and self-talk i said i wouldn't do, and i find myself too impatient to sit quietly and listen. and none of that can, in my mind, even be called prayer.

but prayer of the heart? this is something that is helping to naturally slow me down, to make me more present with God in the moment, to talk with him instead of at or around him, to get in touch with what is truly there inside of me, and to bring all of that, no matter what it is, into the open as he sits there with me, present to all of it. there, we truly converse. there, the greatest concerns of my heart truly become a matter we share together.

i share this to share a bit of where i am this week and a bit of what i'm learning about prayer. but i also share this to better define what is encapsulated in the word heart when i am referencing it so regularly here on my blog. please hear my heart (wink, wink) and know that instead of sentimentality, and in fact far from it, i rather mean along the lines of the following when i talk about the importance of knowing and honoring my heart or holding up the painfully beautiful hearts of others as we walk along through this world together:

prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and where we are totally one. there God's Spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. there heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, within us.

we have to realize that here the word heart is used in its full biblical meaning. . . . the word heart in the jewish-christian tradition refers to the source of all physical, emotional, intellectual, volitional, and moral energies.

from the heart arise unknowable impulses as well as conscious feelings, moods, and wishes. the heart, too, has its reasons and is the center of perception and understanding. finally, the heart is the seat of the will: it makes plans and comes to good decisions. thus the heart is the central and unifying organ of our personal life. our heart determines our personality, and is therefore not only the place where God dwells but also the place to which satan directs his fiercest attacks. it is this heart that is the place of prayer. the prayer of the heart is a prayer that directs itself to God from the center of the person and thus affects the whole of our humanness.

i'll have more thoughts to share about the heart later this week, but for now i thought this a good place to share some helpful thoughts on prayer and foundational thoughts on heart. love to you all this night . . . and grace.

dallas willard, technology, and community

given recent conversations here and in other places, i found the following interview with dallas willard profoundly moving and uplifting. i learned that this interview with relevant magazine took place back in may 2005, but the ideas still run deep because they are timeless.

stepping into community: an interview with dallas willard

i was refreshed by this article today. i hope you will be, too.