Saying Hello

in ,

Lily pads at Leu Gardens

February 2011

Hello, friends.

It's been too long that I've kept quiet here, and I'll be honest: that has been hard for me. Writing about my season in the woods has been so incredibly meaningful, and I have loved sharing the story with you as it happened. It has been hard to have left that story -- and you -- hanging.

When I went on silent retreat at the beginning of May, some really mind-blowing things happened, especially concerning my journey through the woods. When I got back from the retreat, I didn't quite know how to write about all of what happened, even though I knew I wanted to. The story is rather in-depth, and some of it intensely personal, and I just couldn't seem to find the right way to enter the story and go about telling it.

And then, right on the heels of that, came a whole lot of Big Things.

* Kirk transitioned into an amazing new responsibility at work, which created a lot of change for the way we attend to our life together and at home.

* I began working in earnest on the final research project for my grad program.

* We traveled to Michigan to celebrate the conclusion of my grad program with its graduation festivities.

* I closed out my responsibilities for some part-time contract work I'd been doing in order to make room for a new meaningful project that had recently emerged on the horizon.

* I finished out my training program in spiritual direction and celebrated that graduation process, too.

Whew! It's been busy over here. Lots of changes and transitions, all of which are good.

So, I'm here to say hello. And that I've missed you and this space.

I consider this a place where I can let my hair down and share anything and everything about life in my little corner of the world. It's where I like to share with you what I'm dreaming about and planning, what's happening in life with Kirk and the kitties and me, how God and I are growing together, while leaving room for any general silliness a random occasion might warrant.

In other words, I love that this is a space I can simply be me, whatever that "me" looks like, and to share that "me" with you.

Interestingly enough, partly in response to a long-held hope and partly in response to the work I did on my final graduate research project, I've started posting daily contemplative reflections this past month on my spiritual formation site, Still Forming. I say it's interesting because while this Lilies blog is a place I feel the freedom to just be "me," the Still Forming site has clearly become a place more centrally focused on you (or, rather, anyone who chooses to frequent it).

I recently made a commitment to write one contemplative post on the Still Forming site every weekday in order to provide a quiet oasis from the noise for whoever might need or value that kind of oasis. We're now almost at the end of four weeks of those daily posts, and I keep noticing and telling people that writing those posts each day feels like having found my joy.

That's pretty amazing, isn't it? I'm paying a lot of attention to the emergence and discovery of that joy these days.

You are, of course, welcome to stop in over there each weekday for your own daily moment of stillness, reflection, contemplation, or prayer, if that is what your heart and soul desire. 

In addition, today was an exciting day as I announced over there that I'll be offering a Gospel immersion experience in the next couple months for those who are interested. This, too, has been a dream of mine to do (so excited it's finally taking form!), and I look forward to sharing more about what that will look like over in the Still Forming space over the next few weeks or so.

I still plan to write here about the rest of my experience in the woods and what happened on the silent retreat. I will have to ask you to bear with me, though, as I suspect it may take several separate installments to do it well . . . and I may choose to spice things up with smatterings of posts about other things going on in my Christianne-sized world these days. :-)

I hope you are well. Thanks for being here.

xoxo,

Christianne

Marking an Important Day

in

Our rings

Photo taken March 4, 2011

Today is St. Patrick's Day, and six years ago today, Kirk and I began an e-mail correspondence that eventually led to our sharing our lives together.

On that day in 2005, nothing happened that would have led us to suspect it. He has some business to settle with the organization where I worked, and I was the person tasked with following up with him about it. We had met once before, through my organization again, but other than that, we had no real context for conversation.

Except that conversation began to happen, and we learned that such conversation between us could carry on endlessly. We talked about books, God, ideas, theology, life, and lessons learned. The e-mails grew longer and longer, and soon we needed to ask ourselves and each other and God the question: what is going on here? 

Neither of us knew St. Patrick's Day would change our lives, but it did.

Fast forward one year, and Kirk asked me to marry him. Five years ago today, we got engaged.

We both had a pretty good sense at least a couple months before it happened that this was the weekend we would get engaged, although we'd never breathed a word of it to each other. He kept to himself his plans to make it so, and I kept to myself my growing sense that it would happen at that time.

Prior to getting engaged, we had talked about a lot of things. It seems we had covered every possible subject two people in a relationship could cover about their lives and future, except we'd never discussed any concrete details about the future: where we would live (since he lived in Florida and I lived in California throughout the duration of our pre-married life), when we would get married, where we would get married, and what sort of ceremony we'd have. These were conversations I knew would happen once we'd made a formal commitment to share our lives together, but until then, we stayed focused on growing as a couple and establishing our relationship on solid ground.

I flew out to Florida from California for the weekend of St. Patrick's Day in order to celebrate our one-year anniversary as a couple. Although nothing romantic sparked on that first day our e-mail conversations began in the previous year, we had decided March 17 was the mark of the beginning of our relationship.

He put me up in the JW Marriott hotel, which is one of our favorite places to stay to this day (and one of the most luxurious hotels I'd ever witnessed up to that point!), and the anniversary weekend celebration soon became an engagement weekend celebration when he proposed that first night in Manuels on the 28th in downtown Orlando.

That weekend, he took me to the Kiev Symphony Orchestra at the Bob Carr auditorium. We went on the Winter Park Boat Tour, which is still one of our favorite things to do in Winter Park. As it is every St. Patrick's Day weekend, that weekend was the Winter Park Art Festival in downtown Winter Park, and we spent some time mingling with the crowds and looking in on the various booths displaying artwork. We rode over to the Isle of Sicily at one point and discovered an old, abandoned piece of property that looked prepped to be demolished soon, and we got out of the car and went exploring on the property, peeking in windows and open doors and walking underneath the trees that lined the lake and dock.

That first night of my visit, when Kirk proposed, was the first time we began to speak of the concrete details of our future life together, and we started with a conversation about the wedding. What sort of ceremony would we have, and where would we have it? Kirk's family is from Central Florida, and my family is in California. Would we have the wedding in one of those two places?

The bigger question for me, rather than location, was the type of ceremony we would choose to have. I'd been married before, at nineteen, and had the kind of wedding you normally expect of a wedding at that time: the big dress, the bridesmaids, the location, the reception, the photographer, the formal invitations, the extensive guest list. I had done that before, and something in me resisted the idea of doing it again. I didn't like the idea of re-creating a similar experience. I didn't want to walk down the aisle in a big dress and have deja vu of walking down the aisle at my first wedding. For a long time, before ever knowing Kirk, I knew that I would do it differently next time, should I ever marry again.

When I was preparing to fly to Florida for that first anniversary weekend, then, I remember starting to ask myself what sort of wedding ceremony I would want to share with him if he did actually propose that weekend. I became aware again of my desire to do something totally different, and for the first time it crossed my mind to plan an elopement in another country -- perhaps England, since we'd always felt an affinity to that place.

I held the idea of England in my mind for about a week, but as the St. Patrick's Day weekend in Florida drew nearer, the reminders of all the Irish roots in our relationship came forward. Our relationship began on an Irish holiday. We might be getting engaged on that same Irish holiday. And we had originally met in Ireland. I began to think, for the first time, that I might want to marry him in Ireland.

The uncanny part of all this  (or perhaps not so uncanny, given that God has always been in the mix of our relationship) was what happened when I told Kirk I'd been thinking of a planned elopement to Ireland. He pulled the car over, opened the trunk, and pulled out an issue of National Geographic magazine that had arrived in his mailbox that week. The cover story was a feature on Celtic history, and inside that cover story was a picture of a couple getting married in the ruins of a 12th-century monastery on the Aran Islands of Ireland.

That weekend, we found the monastery online and contacted the priest who performs weddings there. Soon afterward, we heard back from him. The arrangements for a ceremony in that location were quite simple, the fee was nominal, and he would perform the ceremony and provide the photographer. All we needed to do was get ourselves there.

Thus began our three-month engagement season that included preparations for a wedding and honeymoon in Ireland and a cross-country relocation move for me, as I transplanted my life from California to Florida.

So you see, this day, St. Patrick's Day, has always held significance for us. It changed the course of our lives more than once -- first, by being the day upon which Kirk and I began interacting quite innocently by e-mail, and second, by being the day upon which our engagement turned our lives more fully toward one another and our future.

PS: If you'd like to see photographs and read the story of our wedding day, you can find that story here.

Please Excuse Me While I Take a Rest

in

Hi there, friends.

I write this post as part of my Lenten commitment to blog daily as a means of "giving to," and yet it comes to you from a place of great weariness inside. This morning, I woke at 5 a.m. to get a head start on some projects that needed finishing today . . . and now it is 10 p.m. and the work is finally done.

I worked straight through for most of today, only stopping occasionally to eat food and check my e-mail . . . 17 hours in total.

I'm spent.

So, please forgive the brevity of today's post.

But let me at least offer you a little bit of fun. Last weekend, we purchased this:

Our nearly new Vespa, currently unnamed (any suggestions??)

Isn't it cute??

We've been living quite conservatively with one car for the last three and a half years, and that has worked well for us for a season. But Kirk's work life has kicked into high gear, and mine has too, and lately we've found ourselves in need of a convenient  and affordable second mode of transport.

This is the fun and quite economical option we chose.

It's a nearly new Vespa that cost much less than a very used car would have cost us. It gets 75 miles to the gallon. It costs only $6 to fill the gas tank.

Plus, it's a ton of fun.

Do I look like I know how to ride? Trust me, I don't. 

I leave that to Kirkum!

This is Kirk's new ride to work each day (or, at least, the days where weather permits), but he takes me on the back of it with him in the evenings sometimes. We tool around the brick-lined streets of our hometown and enjoy the wind on our faces, the smell of the orange blossoms and jasmine floating through the air, and the feeling of being so much more alive and in touch with the life and community around us. (A Vespa really puts you in touch with how isolating it is to drive in a car!)

Plus, you get to wear goggles like this:

I like to call this my "Yikes, professor! I don't have the power!" pose.

So fun!

And now, my friends, I'm off to get some rest. Tomorrow is another big day.

xoxo,

Christianne

Hard Labor for an iPhone Valentine

in

Do you remember when I made a video that introduced you to Bloggie, the newest member of our household, at Christmas? Bloggie replaced the iPhone gift Kirk had originally planned to give me at Christmas, since neither of us could stomach what it would actually cost to switch our service to AT&T back then, plus the additional hardware costs.

Well, when Verizon (our wireless carrier) announced its partnership with Apple last month, we decided it was finally time.

So now I've got someone new for you to meet.

Readers, meet Mr. Phone . . . Mr. iPhone, that is.

Isn't he handsome? Very dapper, I must say. Quite chic. Here, here! He's sure to be a man about town, I'd say. :-)

But as exciting as Mr. Phone's arrival on our doorstep was late yesterday afternoon, we had quite the taxing experience actually bringing him to life. The labor process included nothing short of seven different software installations, four separate reboots of my ailing MacBookPro, and a total of six hours spent downloading, updating, waiting, and more waiting, before Mr. Phone finally synced and came to life.

And yet, I must say . . .

Mr. Phone, welcome to the family. You were certainly worth the wait.

Keeping Promises to Myself

in

I love this pic of me and Kirk that I captured in Naples, FL. 

It's like my eyes are saying, "Hi there. I see you."

While I was in California last month, I found myself growing more and more excited to come home and re-engage in my day-to-day life with Kirk. I am totally a homebody personality, which means, for example,  that I can be home in the house for three days straight and never once step foot outside and be perfectly content with that.

So, as much as I loved being in California for an extended period of time, I also looked forward to being back in the life and surroundings I hold quite dear and enjoy very much.

Another part of my anticipation and excitement of coming home were the goals I had set for myself upon my return. One of those goals had to do with the decision to hold my mornings as intently sacred. Another one of those goals was to take better care of my body, since I, admittedly, don't treat it very well.

When I set those goals for myself in California, I had very specific ideas about what the accomplishment of them would look like in my daily life back home. For instance, holding my mornings sacred meant carving out specific hours of each morning for me and God to share in the company of my desk, my Bible, my typewriter, and my mug of coffee. And when I say "specific hours," I'm serious: from the vantage point of my California eyes, I decided that I wanted four hours each morning for this sacred space, and that meant (given other commitments in my life) waking at six in the morning each day. Since this sacred time was important to me, I decided waking early was worth it.

When it came to body care, I had specific ideas about that, too. Those ideas included occasional morning walks and eating better foods. I also decided that hosting solo impromptu dance parties in my house in the afternoons -- turning on some adrenaline-infused music and cranking the volume high! -- would be a fun alternative to cardio work at our gym.

But when I got home, I did none of these things. Sure, I spent time in quiet at my desk almost every single day, but instead of waking at six, like I had planned, I woke at nine or ten. And since I wanted to begin my days with a time of quiet and was unwilling to compromise on that, this kept pushing the rest of my day back. I felt perpetually behind.

I never did have one of those dance parties.

It didn't take long for great disappointment and shame to creep in around all of this. I felt discouraged, and no matter how many times I set my alarm to wake at six, I never could do it.

Kirk encouraged me, then, to start a bit more gently. Instead of waking at six, why not try for eight instead? Instead of completely changing up my diet or conducting spontaneous afternoon dance parties, perhaps I could start with just cutting soda out of my diet at first.

Start gently. See how it feels to make little promises with yourself and keep them. Build up your self-trust.

I've been taking that to heart.

Instead of setting my alarm for six, I've been setting it for eight. I'm usually up by 8:30 these days, and that is a huge improvement. And I've been drinking water instead of soda. Pepsi has been my nemesis for years, but I'm getting used to going without it. Water is starting to feel more normal to my routine than soda these days, which feels good.

All of this is about building trust between the one part of me that makes plans and the other part of me that keeps (or breaks) them. It's about learning to keep promises to myself. It's about teaching myself that, when it comes to setting goals and keeping them, I'm trustworthy.

PS: I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I re-opened my Journey Toward Nonviolence blog on MLK's birthday. It's been fun to write in that space again about a subject that has captivated my heart these past couple years, and I'm enjoying the superb dialogue that always taking place in the comments section of each post. You're welcome to join us over there and join in the dialogue.

PPS: In related news, I re-opened my Still Forming website this week and have posted a couple entries that I hope will be meaningful and encouraging to you. Still Forming a space devoted to the process of spiritual formation, the practice of prayer, and the contemplative life. It's a sacred space I hold dear and that I hope will provide a place of respite and reflection for you in your spiritual journey.

Things We Learned on This Trip

in

The cottage where we stayed for several days on Captiva Island

(Isn't it adorable?!)

We're back from our time at the beach with Kirsten and James, and what a beautiful time it was. As we drove away from the house on our last day, Kirsten affectionately said to the house, "Goodbye, house. You were magical." 

I think that about sums it up.

This was the first time the four of us had spent any extended time together, and we has so much fun. We also learned a lot along the way. Here's an abbreviated list for your enjoyment. :-)

1. Kirk and James must have been separated at birth. You would not believe how long these two can sustain continuous conversation about various forms of wildlife, including all the varied species of snakes and sharks, not to mention moles, shrews, bobcats, panthers, alligators, caimans, wild boars, foxes, and flying squirrels . . . just to name a few.

2. A restaurant called the Bubble Room serves simply divine desserts . . . most particularly, a dessert called the Orange Crunch Cake. Serious yum.

3. The beach on Captiva Island is filled with thousands and thousands of seashells, and people visit the beach with the sole intent to mine for unique shells to take home.

4. Baby sandpipers gather in large groups to hunt and peck for food inside the sand. (See short video below.)

5. Grocery shopping on the island can get quite pricey.

6. A GPS system can be incredibly handy . . . but can also take you on a wild-goose chase.

7. The stars in the sky always shine brighter when viewed from the vantage point of a remote island.

8. It's fun to take walks in the dead of night.

9. Beauty heals.

10. Quiet spaces heal.

11. Friendship heals. 

12. Two couples can inhabit one home peacefully and with an incredible amount of mutual enjoyment and respect for each other's space.

A Perfect Kind of Morning

in

Tiny sandpiper, digging for food

Captiva Island, January 2011

We're staying on Captiva Island for a few days with Kirsten and James -- did I tell you they came for a visit? Well, they did, and they're staying for a week, and because of the incredible generosity of a dear friend of mine, we've kidnapped them to Captiva Island for a few days. So fun and sneaky of us!

Our first morning of waking here could not have been more idyllic or peaceful. We slept in, and then I came down from the upstairs apartment where Kirk and I are sleeping to make a full pot of coffee for the house. There's a sunroom off the main living room with four wicker chairs around a table, and I settled in with my coffee and a copy of Henri Nouwen's Inner Voice of Love and Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea.

No one else was up and about yet, and I just sat in the silence of the sunny porch room for several moments and took in the morning. A fluffy cat passed by the window next to me, and I watched him wander into the driveway and sniff the license plate of our car before wandering off.

Then I opened to the first few pages of Inner Voice of Love, a book that shares the pages of Henri Nouwen's "secret journal," and the first few pages I read deeply moved me. I closed the book began to sing aloud a devotional song I learned in my early college days.

Kirsten came out of their bedroom a few minutes later and poured herself a cup of coffee. She said good morning, and then each of us sat in our own quiet spaces -- she in the living room, me in the sunroom -- soaking up the morning silence, together but separate.

It was glorious.

Shortly afterward, I began reading my copy of Gift from the Sea. It's a 50th-anniversary edition of the book, hardcover with a beautiful sea-green dust jacket, with an introduction written by Anne Lindbergh's daughter, Reeve. 

Before Kirsten arrived in town, I had purchased a copy of this very same book for her as a birthday gift. Kirk and I knew we were surprising Kirsten and James with these few days at the sea, and I loved the idea of this profound little book companioning with her during our time here on the island.

However, when I began reading my copy this morning, I exclaimed aloud with surprise at discovering the following in Reeve Lindbergh's introduction:

When my mother was writing the book, she stayed in a little cottage near the beach on Captiva Island, on Florida's Gulf Coast. Many people have claimed to know which cottage it was and where it stands today, but the Florida friends who originally found the place for her told me years ago that the cottage had been gone, even then, for a long time. 

Isn't that amazing?! What serendipity.

Kirk and I have sensed from the beginning of our planning this trip that this time in Captiva is set aside as sacred and special in some way for Kirsten and James. We don't know what that means, but this fortuitous discovery inside the opening pages of Gift from the Sea seems to affirm the same.

Can't wait to see what happens.

Happy Birthday to Me

in

 

Hi, friends!

Today was my 32nd birthday, and it began with a very sweet breakfast prepared and delivered to me in bed by Kirkum. :-)

In the video above, I share some of this special day's highlights with you and just generally reacquaint myself with you since I've been away the last couple weeks.

It was fun for me to share the joy of this special day with you! I look forward to hearing how you're doing in the comments below.

Love,
Christianne

PS: I reopened my Journey Toward Nonviolence blog yesterday with a special tribute to Dr. King. Feels so good to be writing in that space again.

Reclaiming the "J" in Me

in

Have you ever taken the Meyers-Briggs personality test? (I once wrote a humorous post on the Meyers-Briggs, in case you need an orientation to what it is and which type you might be.)

I took the test about 10 years ago and learned I was an INTJ. This means that my quiet, reserved self had a very strong analytical side and rules-oriented bent. And this was the perfect temperament for the editor I had set out to be early in my professional life. I loved to read, think about ideas, and figure out how things worked, which made me the perfect partner for the creative types whose work I edited and critiqued each day. Also, I loved to do my work in quiet spaces, which is a great fit for an editor who needs lots of quiet time to go about reading manuscripts and composing her editor's notes.

But then I went on a very long interior journey that landed me at grace and love, and at the end of that long journey, I found that my core values had shifted around quite a bit. Rather than rules, I cared about people. Rather than ideas, I wanted to hear and think about stories. Rather than staying up in my analytical head, I wanted to sink deeper and deeper into the feelings and pathways of the heart.

It was such newness for me, all these things. I felt tender and vulnerable and soft, and sometimes I watched in amazement at this new person I'd become over many long years who now willingly chose to embrace such tender vulnerability and soft edges inside herself. This new person I was didn't have to be in control all the time. I didn't have to know all the answers or figure everything out. I even found, sometimes, that I didn't care about the answers or figuring anything out anymore.

There was so much freedom here. It was a transformative work that had been done in me, truly.

Then I met Kirk, and we were, in so many ways, like two peas in a pod. Our courtship year didn't conform to the normal mode most people knew for themselves, and our wedding and honeymoon didn't, either. Then we embarked upon a married life that we affectionately termed "bohemian" because, once again, our daily reality didn't conform to the normal mode of doing things that most people did.

In some way, Kirk is the consummate "P" on the Meyers-Briggs personality test. This means he's not one for minding all the little details. He likes to push up against the bounds of possibility, and he thrives on vision and the big picture. He doesn't need every single question answered, and he actually prefers to ask more questions than spend time answering any single one of them.

The person in me who had loosened her hold on the rules after all those years loved this. His fearlessness inside mystery and ambiguity created even more spacious room for me to breathe. As much as I'd learned to relax quite a bit on my own before I met him, it was such a relief in my life with Kirk not to have to work so hard to hold every little piece of life's puzzle in place. I didn't have to worry if things came tumbling down around me because Kirk helped me remember God was big enough to handle it. I didn't have to try to be God. I could just be Christianne.

It's funny to me, after so many years spent inside this grace and love journey that helped me relax and learn to trust and rest, to watch myself moving more and more back toward the life of a "J" these days. As I shared in the Meyers-Briggs post, a "J" likes to bring order, discipline, and resolution to the world around her. She likes structure and routine. She likes to have a way of doing things.

I was very much this way before the long interior revolution into grace and love years ago. I liked having ways of doing things, and I thrived on discipline and order. But you know what? I cared deeply about those things back then because I feared their opposite. I feared a loss of control. I feared doing something wrong. I feared losing the love and favor of God. I feared everything crashing down around me.

But now, on the other side of God's love and grace, when I know it is unswerving and indissoluble, I'm finding myself drifting back toward a care for order and routine and structure simply because I like it. I think about my planner video that I recorded for you a few weeks ago, and it makes me laugh. Two years ago, when I was steeped in our bohemian mode of life, I would have scoffed at such a diligent search for the perfect planner. But today, I love my planning life. I even need it. My brain needs a place to put its content (or else it will slip right out my ears!). My heart and mind need a measure of routine and expected rhythm to daily life in order not to become overwhelmed or feel swallowed up by all of the chaos out there in the world.

So I wake each morning and pad over to my desk in my slippers. I pull back the curtains and look outside at the quiet neighborhood and brick-lined street. I head into the kitchen and start the water boiling in the electric kettle before cleaning the dishes in the sink. I measure out and grind the coffee beans and steep them for four minutes in the french press. Then I pour the coffee into my green tumbler mug, mixed with a bit of cream and sugar, and walk back over to my desk. I open my Bible and flip its thin, papery pages to a chosen passage. I read it once, then read it again. I sit in the stillness and breathe deeply. I talk to God. I stare out the window. Eventually, I pull out my typewriter and compose several pages of thoughts. I put the typewriter and typed pages away and pull out my planner for planning the day ahead. And then, only then, will I open my computer and allow the chatter of the world enter my day.

This order . . . this routine? I find that it brings a new form of spaciousness and freedom to me, a spaciousness and freedom I crave and love and cherish.

Song for a Grieving Friend

in

Photo credit:

kirsten.michelle

Sing a song, oh my soul.

Sing of the girl, the woman,

the wife, the mother, the friend:

the one with a broken heart.

Sing of the love she has for her son,

love piercing deep with nowhere to go,

plunging deep, yet deeper still,

until it ascends to God.

Sing of the woman

whose heart has been broken,

of her tenderness, softness, and stillness:

these places in her that are new,

these places in her that are fresh,

these places in her that she knows

God needed to break.

This stillness, so hard-won:

common moments stopping time,

tears afresh and questions looming,

contemplation her steady friend.

This softness, so hard-won:

tearing all she thought she wanted (but didn't)

and all she truly did (but lost)

from her small yet delicate hands.

This tenderness, so hard-won:

its beauty glows amidst ashes.

In this place, a plea for mercy:

even this, dear God, redeem.

I'm Such a Halloween Grinch

in ,

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?

Tender Heart

in

Me, in a tender moment.

(This is also what I look like on the 

rare occasion I straighten my hair.)

Hello, friends.

I've been gaining more insights into this pruning year, which I look forward to sharing with you soon, but for now, because I've been feeling quite a bit of tenderness this week, I thought I'd simply use this space to share a bit about that tenderness with you.

Sometime in the mid-afternoon on Wednesday, I left the work office to drive home and found myself engulfed by a wave of sadness that would not let me go. It felt pretty inexplicable, this sudden sadness that landed on me as I drove toward home in my car, and it stuck with me for several hours that day.

That night, sleep did not come easy. I stayed awake for a solid two hours after Kirk fell asleep, unable to get tired enough to fall asleep myself. So I spent some time reading and some time puttering around online, and when I finally turned off the light to try and sleep, I felt an acute restlessness. I got up and stretched my legs for a little while, trying to push the restlessness out of my limbs, but it persisted.

Then, after a little while, I started to notice something.

Deep down, so deep inside that I only noticed it once I'd gotten really, really quiet, my spirit was praying. It was praying hard, and in a language I do not know.

This intense prayer that sometimes happens in a language I do not know is not new to me, but only on rare occasions does it begin to happen without my knowledge of its happening or my prompting for it to happen or my participation in its happening from the beginning. But that's what was happening that night.

Once I realized that was happening, my mind began to roam over the various people and concerns in my life right now. I thought about Kirsten, of course. I thought about my family members. I thought about some of my friends on Facebook. I even thought about our president and this increasingly crazy election season.

But nothing I thought of seemed to touch that deep-down place that was praying and praying and praying. So I let go of the attempt to figure out the reason and just began attending to the prayers, participating in them with my full attention and intention.

I stayed awake for a while that night praying for this reason I did not know.

The next day, the sadness was right there again, waiting to accompany me throughout my day. It kept following me around. I kept feeling the need to break down and cry at odd moments. At one point that afternoon, I sat on the couch petting Diva and said out loud (to myself, to Diva, to God), "I keep feeling sad . . . and I have no idea why."

One contributor to some of this sadness, I know, is the reading I've started this week for a new class in my graduate program. It's a course on spiritual formation and social justice, which I am very glad to be taking.

As part of the course, I've begun reading a pretty intense book by Thomas Merton called Faith and Violence, which is very good and has been on my "to read" list for quite some time. But it's also a difficult read, covering topics such as the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement with incredible perception and honesty.

Although I'm glad to be reading this book and have been learning so much from it so far, it has also stirred up so many ongoing questions I have about nonviolence, and it also can't help increasing my sadness about the ongoing state of our world. Some of the heaviness this week, I'm sure, has to do with all this reading and pondering. (And by the way, because of these persisting and preoccupying questions I keep having, I'm feeling pretty close to reopening the Journey Toward Nonviolence blog very soon.)

Then yesterday, I received a call from a dear friend who shared with me some pretty significant news. It is news that affects a number of people I know, and it concerns something we collectively cared about very much.

Even though this news doesn't affect me directly, it still affects me. It feels like it happened to me right alongside everyone else. So I shed a few tears yesterday at this news, and I sighed quite a lot through the rest of the day, and I kept asking God lots of questions about it.

Finally, in need of some relief (do you ever just need to give yourself a really good cry?), I snuggled under the covers and turned off all the lights and just watched straight through my favorite cathartic movie of all time, Sense and Sensibility.

There's more to be shared about all this, I'm sure, but for now it's enough to stop right here and say of this week:

Yes, indeed. There's been quite a bit of tenderness here. 

I just keep trying to move slowly and gingerly right now, then, handling my heart with care and with an incredible amount of grace and love. That seems to be what it needs most.

I Can Hardly Believe This Gift

in

A couple nights ago, I received a text from my mom. It was late, perhaps almost 11PM, and her text asked, "Are you available to talk about something important?" When I called a few moments later, worried that something was wrong, she said she needed me to get on my computer because she'd just sent me a link to something she wanted me to watch.

But first she told me the story.

On her way to work that morning, she'd pulled out a few old CDs for listening company. Once the above song came on, she said she started to cry, so she immediately turned it off (not wanting to be a puddle of tears by the time she arrived at work!). But on her drive home at the end of the day, she gave the song another try.

"I've heard this song so many times," she said, "but I've never really noticed the second verse. I want you to listen to this song."

So I clicked on the link she had sent, and it took me to the YouTube video posted above. I immediately recognized the band and said, "I own that album!" But I couldn't, just by seeing the song title, recall the song itself until it began to play.

I began listening through the first verse and came to the chorus:

You're holding her hand
You're straining for words
You're trying to make sense of it all
She's desperate for hope
Darkness clouding her view
She's looking to you


Just love her like Jesus
Carry her to him
His yoke is easy
His burden is light
You don't need the answers
To all of life's questions
Just know that he loves her
And stays by her side
Just love her like Jesus

When I heard these words, I began to lose it. I just started weeping right there on the phone. I knew one big reason she had sent me this song . . . it's everything I have shared about wanting to hold Kirsten's hand and just sit with her in her grief . . . and it's everything I have shared about not having words and not knowing at all what to say. Here was the reminder: just love her like Jesus.

Except the story continues.

There was the second verse she had mentioned never noticing before and that she especially wanted me to hear. You'll understand immediately the impact of these words:

The gifts lie in wait
In a room painted blue
The little blessing from heaven
Would be there soon
Hope fades in the night
Blue skies turn to gray
As the little one slips away

As soon as this second verse began, I immediately knew where the story would lead and the tears came harder and faster. I could hardly believe how perfectly this song captured everything inside my heart for my friend and everything just like their experience had been: the bedroom prepared, the gifts waiting there, the little one slipping away in the night before he'd ever been able to come home with them.

My mom said that when the song played in her car, she cried hard tears the whole way home and couldn't stop praying. She said she kept seeing me holding Kirsten's hand and just knowing I needed to be there.

"I'd like to fly you up to see her," she said. "I really think you need to go."

What?!

I could hardly believe it, and my immediate response was no. I could not accept such a lavish gift. I could not accept such kindness.

And yet even as I protested, even as I recognized my inability to receive this kindness, I knew I needed to receive it. You see, just a couple days previous, Kirk and I had spent our Sunday morning sitting on our bed listening to a sermon by Dan Allender about suffering the kindness of God. (It's an incredible sermon and totally worth the 45-minute listen!) The sermon talked about the difficulty of receiving lavish gifts . . . of the pride in us that causes us to refuse them, thinking we need to earn our worthiness of them, when all we really need to do is receive.

I could feel that exact same pride rising up in me when my mom offered me this gift. It was a pride that felt unable to receive this utterly free gift of love. I didn't feel worthy. I hadn't done anything to earn it. I just couldn't say yes.

But again, I had a feeling that was exactly why I should. I couldn't stop thinking of that phrase: suffer the kindness.

Plus, my mom also helped me realize this gift wasn't completely about me anyway. "It's not just for you that I want to do this," she said. "It's also for Kirsten, and for James. And also, it's a little bit for me, for wanting to help extend care to them, too, during this very difficult time. This is one way I can help. It's how I most want to help."

It's been such an amazing few days, holding this story in my heart. It still hardly feels real! And even though Kirsten and I have talked and the e-ticket confirmation has shown up in my inbox, it's still so hard to believe.

In just over a week, I'll be seeing my dear, sweet friend. She will meet me at the airport, and I will put my arms around her and not want to ever let go. I will touch her curls, rub her back, hold her hand, and be a physical presence and witness with her in her grief. I will look in her eyes and say, "I'm here. I love you. Whatever you need in these next few days is completely and fully yours."

So, so utterly thankful.

Thank you, Mom. You bless me more than you know. Kirsten and I are so deeply thankful for this gift of time and presence. 

A Place for My Heart to Rest

in ,

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

in ,

 

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.

Today : Begin

in ,

A screenshot of my MacbookPro desktop.

I'm taking a special class this week that I'd like to tell you about.

But first, I want to give you some context for how the class came into my life so that you'll understand why I'm doubly excited to be taking the class: because the class itself is amazing, but also because it seems evident I'm meant to focus on it right now.

So here's the backstory.

I've been following a great gal's blog for some time now. Her name is Marianne Elliot, and she calls herself a Zen Peacekeeper. (Isn't that a great name? That's also her name on Twitter.) I started reading Marianne's blog about a year or so ago, when I was relatively early in my exploration of peacemaking and nonviolence. At the time, she had a blog called Zen and the Art of Peacekeeping, and I voraciously devoured every single post in her archives when I discovered it. I loved learning about this remarkable woman who had worked in the Gaza Strip, in Afghanistan, and for the United Nations for human rights and who carried a fierce yet tender compassion inside of her.

I knew she had a lot to teach me.

Since that time, I've watched Marianne embrace yet another beautiful role for herself: that of teacher, and specifically a teacher of yoga. Sometime earlier this year she launched something called "30 Days of Yoga" that utterly intrigued me, as it was a class that customized your personal needs with a daily yoga practice Marianne created for you to do over the course of 30 days. It combined mindfulness, exercise, and community with a very personal touch, and I love the creative way Marianne found to use her expertise and experience as a yoga teacher to reach people all over the world in this personal and helpful way.

I've been wanting to take Marianne's "30 Days of Yoga" class for a while now, but the timing just never seems to work out right for me. And then last month she announced a very special edition` of the class she was calling the "Karma Edition." Not only was it special in its pricing -- you could pay what you wanted based on what you were able to do or personally thought the class was worth to you -- but 100 percent of the revenue generated by this version of the class in October would also be donated entirely to the Global Seva Challenge supporting people with HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

Perfect.

Except, no. Somehow with the trip to Portland and the flurry of activity due to my transition season, I totally missed the open window of registration.

Darn!

But it's all worked out okay because the next thing I knew, a new and increasingly dear friend of mine, Christine Mason Miller, was blogging about a class she was going to teach the week of October 13th and would be donating the proceeds from the class to Marianne's Seva Challenge, too.

Now, here is something special about what greeted me when I clicked on the link for Christine's course. Not only was I greeted with the course title, but I was greeted with the same image you see at the top of this post. Here it is again:

You see, many months ago, Christine made available for free download a desktop wallpaper. Its beauty and simplicity really spoke to me, and it's been sitting on my desktop for almost the entirety of the intervening months. Every once in a while, I completely clear out the windows from my desktop on my screen just so I can stare at the print. It creates a still point for me inside myself. I love that.

And that desktop wallpaper? It was the same image and title used for this course. Here was an opportunity to take a class with the creator of the print, someone who has also become a friend in recent months . . . plus, I totally got inspired by the course description:

Online ~ 2 Hour Workshop ~ $25

Participants will give a dream, a project, or a creative idea some time and attention, with exercises to create a working to-do list, make a commitment to taking the first step, and then create an inspiring piece of encouragement. The purpose is to explore all the things that are holding you back from taking the first step and to encourage you to create your own "perfect time" to begin, rather than continuing to wait for some other magic moment. 

First of all, does that not just sound wonderful??

Yes, I agree that it does. :-)

But even more than that, it meets me in a perfect place in my journey. I do have a creative idea that's been staying with me in recent months, and it is requiring a little faith, some intuition, some creativity, and a bit of space to outline what needs to be done to bring it to life.

It needs some space to just begin.

So, voila! I'm taking the course this week. It will require about two hours of dedicated time, and I look forward to carving out that time in the next couple days to give this new and creative and special idea some wings.

A Peek Into This New Life

in

This is pretty much how Diva and I get along on a regular basis.

Today was the first day of the first full week of my new full-time life at home. Last week this new journey began, but it was definitely a transition week. This week, it feels a lot more official.

I love the way I spent this first official morning.

As Kirk got ready and left for work, I made some coffee in the french press and settled in at my desk. It has been so long since I spent time on morning devotions, and that was my first priority today. I have a long list of Gospel passages on assignment for a leadership course I'm taking, so I started reading through the list.

There's something about the Bible that makes me want to read it aloud. Do you ever find that to be the case for you? Some of the passages on my list for today were quite lengthy, so I sat and read aloud at my desk for about 45 minutes. And typical to form, Diva showed up about five minutes into the reading practice . . . she proceeded to jump on my lap and listen to the words and stories of Jesus for pretty much the entirety of my devotional time. (I swear, this little girl kitty knows God.)

I remember last spring, in 2009, when I emerged out of a season of learning to rest, I came to a place of great contentedness in small, everyday chores for our household. Making the bed, folding the laundry, paying the bills, and doing the dishes became activities of great joy and peace for me, and honestly, I have been looking forward to resuming responsibility for these tasks in our household with my return home on a more permanent basis.

This morning, after the devotional exercise of reading Scripture and spending time in prayer, then, I did a few household chores . . . and just the exercise of doing them filled me up again inside. I like the way these little tasks make me feel like I am caring for our life at home together.

Then I settled in for several hours of work at my desk. I organized and filtered through more of my work orientation e-mails, and I began to put some plans in place for the upcoming weeks. I also started diving into my first big project, which I look forward to continuing to do tomorrow. Once all of this was done, I stopped for a lunchtime snack, checked personal e-mails and Facebook, and read some of my favorite blogs.

In all, it was a very peaceful day, and I am enjoying the opportunity to plan and execute my day in the ways that seem most fitting and best, given the things that most need doing.

As a note: I don't plan to chronicle each and every day's activity on this blog in the way I've just done here and have been doing in small snippets over the past week or so. In fact, over the course of the coming days, I expect to start sharing more of my heart's journey with you from this last year and how that led to my making this decision I did to embark on such a big life change away from full-time work in an office. I'll also be sharing some of my thoughts on this particular blog space with you in the coming days, in terms of why this space is important for me and how it is an important element inside my heart's journey right now.

I hope you'll continue to join me for the journey!

xoxo,

Christianne