Jesus Rescues Me

Sunlight on greens

One of the hardest things about getting down to those last three items on my body and being unable to give them over to Jesus was that it meant we just stood there and stared at each other, neither of us moving, for what seemed like forever. Occasionally, I would bend my elbows and lift my palms in an attempt to indicate my desire to surrender, but that was all I could do.

He just kept looking at me, and I just kept looking at him.

I never felt shame from his gaze. Rather, his gaze held truth. He looked at me and knew the full truth of me. He wasn't pushing or prodding me to do anything differently or be anything different, but he also wasn't hiding from the truth of who I was. We both knew the next step that was needed, but he was content to wait with me until I was fully ready to take it.

I loved that in his gaze, I never felt pressure or shame or disappointment, just truth and love and infinite patience. I had experienced that same reality about him in the woods earlier in the journey, such as when I didn't want to leave my cohort group to venture into the woods with God, or when I encountered the three humiliations that landed me on the ground and in the grave for five days. It wasn't just in the hard places that I experienced that infinite patience of his, either. It was also found in the moments I wanted to savor great joy and love inside me, such as when I stood up from the grave and basked in the sunlight and the fact of my love for him.

With Jesus, there is always time for whatever needs to happen. No rush or hurry, ever. I love that so much. 

Ivy crawling the fence

So as I stood before Jesus in my eyelet slip dress that day, my wedding ring on my finger and the sapphire and diamond earrings in my ears, I saw him just continuing to hold the space and gaze at me with eyes of truth and patience and love.

I felt disappointed in myself, though. As I shared earlier in this story, I drove down to Captiva Beach with my love for Jesus overflowing and overwhelming my heart. I desired to give him everything. I thought nothing stood between me and that desire coming to life.

But that was clearly not true. And I didn't know what to do next because it seemed I could not move. I felt stuck and helpless.

I love that light green wandering vine, don't you? 

When I spoke to my retreat director on that Wednesday morning that I could not get out of bed, she helped me talk to Jesus a bit more about what was happening. I told him I felt helpless and didn't know what to do. I told him I was embarrassed. I told him I needed his help.

And I can't even explain how the next thing happened. All I know is that we were standing in the woods, facing each other, neither of us moving, and the next thing I knew, we were sitting next to each other on a low, beige brick wall in the sunshine. The woods were nowhere to be seen. Rather, it was like we were sitting on a wall outside the yellow house where I was staying that week.

Our knees were turned toward each other, and Jesus was looking at me with the biggest smile on his face I'd ever seen. His eyes danced as he looked at me, and it was like perpetual laughter and enjoyment and playfulness emanated from his being continually toward me.

Again, there was no shame. Only enjoyment and welcome.

Sun-kissed

I could hardly believe this change of environment. It was like he knew I was stuck in the woods and needed a completely different scene to disarm all that was stuck. I was back in my outfit of a purple corduroy skirt and small blue jacket. My hair was back on my head, long and curly like it had been years ago.

I felt like I was seeing my true self, the way he sees me all the time, totally and completely loved and free.

I just wanted to savor that image for a long, long time, so when I hung up the phone with my retreat director, I got out of bed and went to sit on the couch in the front room of the house.

I sat there for six hours.

All that mattered to me the entire rest of the day was sitting and holding that image with Jesus. At first we just sat in pure enjoyment of the moment and each other, him laughing and smiling at me. I could feel there was no pressure to do anything or say anything at all. We could just be together. But I felt so comfortable with him on that wall in the sunshine that I shyly asked, pretty soon after that image emerged, if he wanted to talk about the earrings . . . and the ring . . . and the slip.

He stopped laughing and held my question with seriousness, knowing it was a big step for me to broach the subject. And then he said yes.

And so slowly, slowly, over the course of those next six hours, we talked about each one of those objects. And in the next installment, I'll tell you what was said . . .

I Just Couldn't Get There

I love these pink flowers. Don't you?

My 5-day silent retreat lasted from Sunday through Thursday. On the drive down to the beach house on Captiva Island on Sunday, I began to get in touch with my expectations for the week, and on Monday night, I kneeled on my bed and sought to offer Jesus everything I had. 

But on Tuesday, I faced the hardest of days.

I shared in my last post what all the items left on my person symbolized and why I couldn't give them up. When I talked with my spiritual director about my inability to give these items over, she sat with me in the quiet as I sought to talk to Jesus about my lack of trust in handing those items to him. I stood there on the path in the woods with Jesus, facing him, wearing only my cotton, knee-length, eyelet slip dress, my wedding ring, and those beautiful diamond earrings in my ears.

As I sank into that moment with him on the path, I told Jesus about my inability to give him all I had left. I guess I didn't know how to live that fully surrendered life in the end, but would he maybe show me how? He said of course, that it was his desire for me to live that way as it was, and so of course he would show me how.

By the end of that prayer, I thought I had moved forward in the image, thought I had reached a point of giving Jesus the last of what I wore -- or at least one of the items -- but after the call with my retreat director ended, I realized that I hadn't. Only then did I realize that I was no more near doing so than I had been before we talked.

The rest of that day -- Tuesday -- was so, so difficult for me. I watched Jesus and I stand there, facing each other, neither of us moving, with those three items still sitting on my body. As we just stood there, I couldn't stand it. So I avoided the image that day. A lot. I got up and made some lunch. Then I went back to the couch, and suddenly all the research books I had brought with me to work on my capstone thesis project for grad school were the most interesting books in the room. I picked one up and read most of the way through it. Then I picked up another and read deeply into it, too.

The plethora of books

Over the course of that day and evening, I read most of several of the research books I had brought with me. I found it ironic, even before I left on retreat, that my chosen subject matter was the interplay between spirituality and digital connectivity. So there in the quiet and disconnection of that silent retreat, I read books and books about the "loudness" of the internet. Irony. But on that day when I could go no further in my journey into the woods or surrender with Jesus, it was the only thing I wanted to do. I threw myself into research that day.

Every once in a while, I would check in with Jesus in the woods to see if anything had changed. But, no. There I stood in my knee-length cotton slip dress, staring at him. And there he stood, staring back at me.

That was the only night I felt incredibly tempted to break the silence. I wanted to call several people in my life: Kirk, my friend Barb, or my friends Sara and Kate. I wanted to text message them, just to feel a connection. I also wanted so badly to access Netflix on my iPhone that night in order to watch an episode of Grey's Anatomy! Instead, I played an abacus word game on my phone, telling myself it wasn't cheating.

When I went to bed that night, I checked in with Jesus again. Nothing had changed. Still I stood there facing him, and still he stood there facing me. He said nothing. I said nothing. I willed myself to move, but willing myself to do it accomplished nothing. He stood there, looking at me with eyes of truth yet waiting, not making any movement to advance further along on the path with me. We were in a holding pattern.

I fell asleep defeated and sad. When I woke in the morning, I couldn't get out of bed. Every morning at 11 a.m., I would call my retreat director to connect for an hour by phone about the progress of my retreat, and every morning until then, I had woken early to make coffee and sit on the couch in the morning sunlight, just reading and praying in the quiet.

But not that Wednesday morning.

That morning, I stayed in bed until the clock on my phone turned over to 11 a.m., and then I called her, still in my pajamas and not moving from bed, barely able to move just to hold the phone up to my ear. It was the most difficult place I had been all week, and I didn't know what to do. I had zero energy and felt myself in a really bad place.

Stay tuned to hear what happens next . . . 

We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Program . . .

A sweet decorative art girlie that sits on my desk, 

created by KRR, who inspires me

Hi there, friends.

I've been slowly (slowly, but surely!) making my way through the story of my 5-day silent retreat and where it took me on my journey through the woods with Jesus. There are just a couple more installments to that story before I'll be ready to catch you up on all the goodness and life and light that has been happening in the more daily details of my world over here. I'm looking forward to catching you up on the current happenings!

But for now, I wanted to pop in with a little note that shares some words that deeply inspired and encouraged me deeper into my life's path today. They come from Kelly Rae Roberts, an artist and lover of life, who wrote these words on her blog today:

Recent gratitude . . . for being witness to other people standing in the center of their gifts and serving those gifts up to the world for our taking, our nourishment, our inspiration, our transformation. There is nothing more inspiring or moving to me than being witness to another who has found their truth, is living that truth, and offering it up for another in the spirit of serving, inspiring, changing people's lives.

Kelly Rae wrote these words about an artist she'd witnessed over the weekend, but as I read them, they lifted and encouraged me to keep going deeper into my own path right now. Because the truth is, I believe I have found the path I'm meant to walk now, and it is more deep and true than anything I ever expected to find.

It has to do with unashamedly speaking my love for Jesus. It has to do with writing daily contemplative blog posts over here for those who want to go deeper into their spiritual and inner landscapes. It has do with creating a course that invites anyone who wants to know Jesus better to come and take a look at who he is.

I'm going deeper into my truth these days, and it's an exhilarating and terrifying ride sometimes. Yet it's also the most at-home I've ever felt. Every time I lean deeper and deeper into it, I know it's a reflection of who I really am and my deep heart of love made as an offering to others.

It's so encouraging to hear that others find such standing in one's truth and offering it up for the benefit of others to be a needed, inspiring service. Thank you, Kelly Rae.

xoxo,

Christianne

What the Three Items Symbolized

Self-portrait

Spring 2011

On the second night of my silent retreat, when I knelt on my bed and offered Jesus as much as I could of what I wore, I got stuck. As I shared in my previous post, I got to a point where I'd given him everything but three items on my person: a lightweight white cotton tank slip, my wedding ring, and a pair of diamond and sapphire earrings that sparkled so brightly in my ears.

The next morning, when I met with my retreat spiritual director, she asked if there was any significance to those three items. Did they represent anything specific?

They did. I knew very clearly what each one meant.

The wedding ring represented my marriage . . . my way of being with Kirk, the way we relate, and how the specialness of what we share makes me scared sometimes to rock the boat and disrupt our idyllic union. I shared recently on my journey through the woods about the three humiliations I encountered rather early in the woods journey. One of those three humiliations was my relationship with Kirk and how I'd come to realize ways in which I'd been holding parts of the truth of myself back from him in order to preserve what I thought was our perfection.

That wedding ring on my finger was related to that. Would I give it to Jesus, allowing God and his truth-telling to become more important? Would I allow God to use me to not only make Kirk happy but also, perhaps, to make him more holy by being willing to be honest and say the hard things that might need to be said sometimes? Would I allow God to be more important to me than Kirk? Was I willing to make God my Lord?

I really hesitated with those questions, which is why I couldn't remove the ring.

The earrings came as a surprise to me. First of all, I don't own earrings like the one I wore in the image, but I saw that they were a perfect complement to my actual wedding ring, which is a large round diamond encircled by sapphires. The earrings in the image were the inverse of my ring -- they were large sapphires in the center, circled by diamonds -- and they were absolutely, stunningly beautiful.

But they were also a surprise to me because of what I knew they represented. I could tell very clearly that Kirk had given those earrings to me, and somehow they represented all the grand dreams and plans and hopes for the future we have shared. Over the years that we've shared our lives together, Kirk and I have voiced many dreams aloud to each other, and our hearts and our hopes and our desires are so much in line with each other. We often dream of the experiences and lifestyles and ministry opportunities and work we hope to enjoy over the course of our life.

Those earrings represented all those hopes and dreams, but they also represented more. They represented a desire for comfort. By wearing those earrings, I felt as if we'd made it -- we'd become financially secure and free to pursue the hopes and dreams we've always hoped to share. Was I willing to let go of those hopes and dreams? Was I also willing to let go of my hope for a financially secure future?

I wasn't sure I could. Those hopes and dreams were embedded so deep inside. I couldn't remove the earrings quite yet.

And lastly, there was the simple slip dress. It was plain cotton, made of eyelet material, and I liked its purity and simplicity. Just the thought of removing that slip sounded all kinds of warning bells inside of me. Just imagining myself removing it made me feel the need to cover myself.

Once I realized that reaction in me, I knew what the slip symbolized. It was covering my shame . . . I couldn't fathom removing the slip and exposing what felt like all the deep-rooted shame inside and outside of me.

So I was stuck. Stay tuned to read what happened next . . .

In Which I Attempt to Disrobe Before Jesus

Learning from a master

Most of the days of my silent retreat, I moved between two books by Thomas Merton that speak to the life of silence and contemplation. While the books, as a whole, said many helpful things that made me think, a couple quotes in particular made me put the books down and let them work on my insides to change me. 

The first quote to have this effect on me is here:

To be one with One Whom one cannot see is to be hidden, to be nowhere, to be no one: it is to be unknown as He is unknown, forgotten as He is forgotten, lost as He is lost to the world which nevertheless exists in Him. Yet to live in Him is to live by His power, to reach from end to end of the universe in the might of His wisdom, to rule and form all things in and with Him. It is to be the hidden instrument of His Divine action, the minister of His redemption, the channel of His mercy, and the messenger of His infinite Love. 

-- The Silent Life, p. 3

Hmmm. Sounds a bit like learning to be hidden, doesn't it? That's how it struck me, and it brought me back to that prayer for hiddenness that I had prayed in 2009 and which had eventually brought me to the journey through the woods with God.

The second quote I read in the Merton books that impacted me was this:

But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him I am meant to embody, I shall be full of His actuality and find Him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere. I shall be lost in Him; that is, I shall find myself.

-- New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 37

This, too, got me thinking on that original prayer for hiddenness, but it also got me thinking about surrender. If we are emptied so that God completely fills us up, that implies a full surrender of ourselves. But what does it mean to be fully surrendered? Do we even know when we've done it? How do we really know when we've surrendered everything to God? Can we ever really know?

View through trees

This brought me back to the woods. And this, my friends, is where the story gets pretty interesting.

I was laying in bed on the second night of my retreat, reading these words of Merton's and dwelling on the nature of surrender, and eventually felt moved to sit up in bed, face the wall, get on my two knees on the bed, and hold my palms up before me.

It was a sign of surrender to God, but it was also a posture of holding my hands open for whatever he might choose to place in them (if anything).

And there I was, in my mind's eye, standing in the woods with Jesus again. I could see that we had stopped on the path and had turned to face each other. In the image, I was holding my hands out before me in that same gesture, offering him my surrender.

But as I stood there facing him, I still wasn't sure how I would know I had really surrendered everything to him. Sure, the intent and gesture might be there, but would that surrender really get down deep inside me and be true?

And so I began to give him everything I had on my person.

That's right. I took off my shoes and gave them to him. I was wearing a watch around my wrist; I took it off and handed it to him. I had some kind of leather band around my waist with a pocketwatch attached to it; I unbuckled the leather band and handed it to him. I gave him the necklace I was wearing, too.

Then I reached up and felt my hair. Suddenly, I knew that I would allow it to be completely shorn off for him, so out came the scissors. I dropped all the sheared tendrils and masses of hair down at his feet and stood before him, shorn.

In the image, I was wearing a purple corduroy skirt, and I pulled that off, too, and handed it to him. I was also wearing a small blue jacket, and I shrugged it off and handed it over. This disrobing of my clothing wasn't sexual at all, of course . . . just an attempt for me to get at the root of my surrender, to see that I had given Jesus everything I had.

There I stood, nearly bare, wearing only a knee-length cotton slip in the shape of a light tank dress. At least, that's all I thought I was wearing. But as I looked closer at the image, I saw that I was also still wearing my beloved wedding ring. And shining in my ears were a pair of sapphire and diamond earrings.

I simply couldn't take them off. These three items -- the slip, the wedding ring, and the earrings -- stayed fast on my person, and I couldn't seem to lift a hand to remove them. Not one single finger. My body seemed immobilized.

So there I stood before Jesus, attempting to disrobe and disown all that was mine in order to make myself fully his . . . and I simply couldn't bring myself to go any further. I couldn't give him these final parts of myself. I just couldn't. I knew I was still wearing those three items, and he knew I was still wearing them, too. I just stood there in silence, staring at him, and he kept staring back at me.

Stay tuned to hear what happened next . . .

On Expectations

Pink-tinged stones

June 2011

Before leaving on my 5-day silent retreat, I remember telling a number of people that I had no idea what to expect for that time away. I'd never done an extended retreat of silence before, and I'd heard numerous stories of people who had done it and came away fully surprised by what emerged during their time of quiet. I wanted to remain open to whatever God wanted to do.

But still, I had some ideas in mind for what God and I might talk about.

The timing of the retreat coincided well with a transition season in my life. I was coming to the end of two programs that had been equipping me for the work of ministry, and I wanted to talk to God about next steps. I have a small little business in which I do a number of contract and freelance projects for various companies and organizations, but I know all the education and training in ministry I've been getting these last 3-4 years are for a purpose other than just those projects.

But still, other than suspecting God and I would talk about next steps and dream ahead together vocationally, and other than the handful of books I'd brought along with me to do some research for my final graduate project, I had no sense of expectation for the week.

I really didn't know what would happen, and I felt okay with that.

Every path leads somewhere

June 2011

Then, as I shared in my previous post, I drove down to Captiva Island on the first day of my retreat and began listening to Kari Jobe's worship album about 45 minutes before landing at my destination. A greater sense of expectation emerged as I listened to one of my favorite songs on the album, called "Joyfully," that depicts such a relationship of love in the song for Jesus. It expresses well my own love for Jesus, and I listen to it often and sing it aloud, too, as a declaration of my love.

But then I noticed that when "Joyfully" ended and the next song began, it, too, declared that love relationship with Jesus . . . as did the next one . . . and the next.

So there I was, driving along, feeling like my heart was starting to bubble over with greater and greater love for Jesus with each passing song, and I started to feel like I could not get enough of him. I felt myself becoming so abandoned to him in worship as I drove along inside that car.

It felt like a wonderful way to begin my retreat.

And nestled inside that feeling of abandonment to Jesus came a new expectation for the week. I told my retreat spiritual director the next morning that I felt an expectation of greater boldness emerging.

I shared with her there are places in my life where I feel quite at home in my own skin as a person totally in love with Jesus and that people know that truth in me. But there are other places where I feel more shy about that truth. These are places where I expect my love for Jesus won't be welcome, where I might be pre-judged to be a certain way once someone learns I am a Christian, and where people I respect and really feel a sense of kinship with might not return or even discover that sense of kinship because they'll think it is not possible if I'm a Jesus lover.

Does that make sense?

Taking the path

June 2011

Anyway, that feeling of bubbling adoration that emerged on my drive to Captiva reminded me of a conversation I'd had with a friend the previous week in which I'd realized this fractured sense at work in myself: the places where I am truly myself and the places where I guard and hide who I really am because I fear someone's rejection.

In the conversation I'd had with my friend the previous week, I'd come to declare: I'm in love with Jesus. That's simply who I am. Any attempt to stifle that truth or subdue it simply isn't genuine. It makes for less of me.

So as I held all this -- the conversation with my friend, the bubbling adoration that emerged in the car on the way down, and the first conversation I shared with my retreat director -- I began to wonder if the retreat week ahead would carry with it a greater emboldening. Perhaps part of what God wanted to do was set me and my voice free.

Possibly.

But the truth is, I really had no idea what would happen. I was, however, about to find out . . .

So, Here's What Happened . . .

Inside peek at my new Mini. Isn't that fun?!

Hi there, friends.

So, I'm going to start chronicling for you the story of what happened on my 5-day silent retreat in May. In some ways, it's a simple story with a very clear focal point. But in other ways, it has layers.

Accordingly, I think I'm going to tell the story in short installments, first as a way to mark out the high points and small moments for myself, but also to "take you along on the journey" that I experienced along the way. Sound good?

So, here goes.

Since this was intended to be a silent retreat, that meant there was intention going into it for there to be no talking, no human interaction, and no internet or TV distractions during my time away, save two exceptions. The first exception was a daily, one-hour session scheduled with a spiritual director in order to talk through how the retreat was going for me, where God was being present (or not present) to me, and how I was responding to that. The second exception, since I was traveling alone and staying alone in a location five hours from home, were nightly text messages to Kirk letting him know I was still alive and okay. :-)

As for where I stayed, I have a good friend named Jenni who owns the yellow beach house on Captiva Island where we took Kirsten and James in January when they visited us from Seattle. During vacation season, the very cute and comfortable home functions as a rental for people coming to stay on the island. But Jenni's greatest hope and intent for the house, beyond its vacation rental use, is for it to become a place of ministry, healing, and retreat for others. She and her husband were so gracious to allow me to stay there for the purpose of my retreat. Such a wonderful gift and treat!

So on the first day of my retreat, a Sunday, I loaded up the car with my supplies for the week and began the 5-hour southwest pilgrimage over to Captiva Island.

On the drive there, having decided in advance the silence would not begin until I arrived at my destination, I blared Paramore from my stereo and sang loudly along. :-) I could feel the slow disconnection from any other obligation descending as I drove. It felt a bit scandalous to be releasing myself from any other concern or task or duty than simply sinking into this time away with God and what emerged between the two of us.

And then, about 45 minutes out from the island, I popped a Kari Jobe album into my CD player and began to prepare my heart. Stay tuned to hear what happened next, especially as it concerned my expectations for the week . . .

One of Those Kind of Days . . .

Getting out my watercolors to try my hand at 

art journalling for the first time.

Today was one of those days where I didn't get anything done that I'd planned to do but got lots of things done that weren't on the original agenda.

For instance, Kirk and I got to talking about our financial plans. Yesterday I completed my exit interview for my grad school financial aid and learned the total balance of student loans I'll be paying back for a very long time to come. That's what happens when you've been in school for four years straight, I guess!

Anyway, that got us talking and thinking and planning around our financial picture, which led to the creation of a truly geeky budget spreadsheet, complete with color-coding and formulas and easy ways to track where we're going over budget or turning up "found money" in different areas every month.

If you're familiar with the language of Dave Ramsey, I'm ready to go "gazelle intense" on this, baby. :-)

My first watercolor, inspired by a revelation last night.

Next, I sat at my desk and stared at my to-do list for the day. On the facing page of my to-do list were three words I'd written last night after standing at my kitchen counter and having a lightbulb moment. Several different thought currents I've been mulling for a while collided at once, and I found God conversing with me about the work he's given me to do, the specific part I play in the body of Christ, and the way I'm to approach and do my work.

None of these realizations were anything new. I've known them about myself and my life path for quite some time. But there was something about these several different strands of thought coming together all at once that made me feel like it was a moment of revelation.

Seen and heard. 

Those three little words mean so much to me. They speak of the way I want people to feel when they're around me. They remind me of my part in Christ's body as his eyes and ears. They reinforce the path I'm taking to do more and more of my life's work online, seeing what people write in these spaces and hearing the heart and perspective behind the words that are shared.

The next thing I knew, I had turned the page of my journal to a clean sheet and began pulling out my brand-new watercolor set. (I was inspired to purchase a few art supplies recently in order to give art journalling a try when revisiting Karen Walrond's words and images about her lovely journalling process.)

The image above was the first result. Seen and heard. I want to remember that.

It reads: Suffused with grace

When I finished the first watercolor painting, I got to thinking about the Gospel immersion experience I'm creating for the Still Forming community this summer. Earlier this week, I met with my spiritual director and talked with her for almost the whole session about my heart toward this online course. One of the things I prayed during our time together was that God would walk step-in-step with me through the creation process and then the execution of this course.

The second watercolor painting, pictured above, started out with the image of a blue spiral. I was thinking about the course and my prayer for God's help in its creation, and then I began to paint simple blue spirals all over the page in different sizes and shapes. After painting several of them all over the page, I noticed they all spiralled around in the same direction: clockwise. The next thing I knew, I was cleaning off my brush and dipping its tip into the red basin so I could paint red spiral after red spiral all over the page, too, in the opposite (counter-clockwise) direction.

I knew from the start that the blue clockwise spirals represented all those who will end up joining the course. They each have a different journey, story, experience that will bring with them into our time together. The red counter-clockwise spirals, conversely, were the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit interjecting and encountering each person there. (God always disrupts and disarms, doesn't he?)

Then I added some green bursts here and there to represent growth and new life springing forth. And then I washed a bright yellow sheen over the whole of it, suffusing the whole process with the light and grace of God.

All of it, all of it, God reminded me, will be suffused with grace. 

What gift.

The watercolors appear . . . yet again.

Later in the evening, after dinner, I sat at my desk once more and began brainstorming and planning for the Gospel immersion course. I turned to a clean sheet in my journal and listed out all the pieces of the process that need to be determined to make it go, such as the pacing of the material, the various media elements to include, the login and registration process, and even the course name. 

I didn't concretely work through any of those items at this time, but that did get me thinking about what all this means to me. I'm moving toward greater and greater opportunities for meaningful work right now, for pouring my whole heart, mind, and self into what I do, for giving God the work of my hands as he then works through my hands to reach into the hearts and lives of others. 

I'm moving toward my life's work now. I can feel it. And it feels so very vibrant and good and invigorating and challenging and engaging.

Reflecting on that started me on yet a whole new painting kick, which led to the creation of two more pieces in my journal. :-)

I'm not an artist by any means, but I am turning more toward the truth these days that I love and need images and beauty. They light me up, and they make up a great part of the way God and I communicate. Words are my greatest home and always will be, but color and image and shape and line speak into even greater depths of me sometimes. They set me free in new ways. 

So that's the story of how my day turned out nothing like I thought it would. I am finding that to be a very good thing.

Saying Hello

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

A Time to Celebrate

Hello, friends.

I have been looking forward to sharing with you about my 5-day silent retreat, and there is quite a story to share with you about that. But for now, this is a weekend of celebration for me . . . I'm graduating from my graduate program this weekend!

It seems impossible that three years have passed since Kirk and I considered moving to Southern California and chose instead to stay in Florida. As a result of that decision, I enrolled concurrently in a graduate program in spiritual formation and a certificate training program in spiritual direction. I'm graduating from both programs in the span of just a few short weeks, and this weekend is the first of those graduation ceremonies.

Kirk and I are on a layover right now, en route to spend the weekend in Michigan with my cohort group for a special ceremony with our department and a few days of which I am sure will include lots of stories, tears, and a whole lot of laughter. Can't wait! I'm especially excited to have Kirk present with me for this special occasion.

I'll write more when we return. Until then, be well.

xoxo,
Christianne

PS: I was going to post a photo of Solomon and Diva here to offer you a warm hello from all of us, but my iPhone browser isn't letting me post photos for some reason. Just imagine a big black cat totally chilling out on his favorite recliner chair and a petite little calico with beautiful blue eyes perched next to him, both of them holding down the fort and wishing you well from all of us in the Squires household. xoxo

Walking and Talking with Jesus

An image of the woods

New Hampshire, October 2008

After I stood up from the ground and basked in the brilliance of the sun with Jesus by my side, I knew what Jesus and I were going to start doing together. We were going to walk and talk. I was going to share my heart with him, and he was going to talk with me and share his own heart, too, especially as it relates to the heart of himself that he has placed inside me. I sensed there would be an ease of conversation, an honesty, a care, and a mutual understanding of partnership as he prepared me to offer himself to others through my life.

I didn't expect that the humiliations were over. We weren't yet out of the woods, and I didn't know what else our time in the woods would hold. I only knew that something about this walking and talking was different than it was before. It held a subtly different quality to it than the ways I had walked and talked with Jesus before. This walking and talking was more about learning to bring each area and decision of life before him, making him my primary object in view. It was going to be about real hiddenness in Christ -- that initial prayer I prayed in July 2009 that took me on an almost-two-year journey of twists and turns to arrive here in this exact moment, learning how to truly live in him and make him my life's essence and source in each moment.

On the first day of walking and talking with Jesus in this new place, I noticed that it was like a floodgate of thoughts and concerns had opened up in my mind and I could not get my mouth to stop telling Jesus all about it. I talked to him about the way he made me and how the current pace of my life runs counter to that native way of being in the world. I talked to him about my graduate research project, as I was in the midst of choosing a subject and saw that there were many different directions I could go in the selection of my topic. I talked with him about my upcoming silent retreat and the questions I'd considered holding before him during that time. I talked to him about all the many questions I had about how various aspects of my work life and home life fit together in his mind.

It felt a bit like talking to a best friend who wants to know every single thing you're thinking and feeling and carrying around in life with you. He just listened and listened and listened. And I found it interesting that so many words tumbled out of my mouth in a jumble of energy on that first day of walking and talking after having kneeled in silence before him for so many days on the ground. There was a sweetness to this walking and talking for me, knowing that through it, I was going to be learning more and more how to make him my whole existence.

I had such a strong sense as the walking and talking started that he was the place to bring all my decisions now. And when I was initially presented with some concrete opportunities and decisions to make, I noticed an awareness in me to stop, slow down, and take the decision to him. However, I wasn't faithful to this each time as it began. On two separate occasions, I can remember saying yes to specific projects with a full awareness that I needed to first take the time to talk to Jesus about them but moved forward with saying yes before having done that.

That was hard. I'm still on a learning curve.

I've been encouraged as we continue to walk and talk on this path in the woods together, though. I've noticed how much stillness is a necessary component to living a hidden life in Christ. I've noticed, too, how much living from this place that makes Christ my focal point of direction and decision removes all the difficulties and obstacles I used to face when holding those directions and decisions on my own.

I'll share more about these two discoveries -- the helpful quality of stillness and the relief from the burden of carrying decisions on my own -- in my next posts in this series.

PS: I'm leaving Sunday for a 5-day silent retreat and will not be accessing the internet while I'm away. I look forward to returning here to share more of this story and what emerges in my time away. Until then, take care. xoxo

After the Storm

Bend an ear, God; answer me.

I'm one miserable wretch!

Keep me safe -- haven't I lived a good life?

Help your servant -- I'm depending on you!

You're my God; have mercy on me.

I count on you from morning to night.

Give your servant a happy life; 

I put myself in your hands!

You're well-known as good and forgiving, 

bighearted to all who ask for help.

Pay attention, God, to my prayer;

bend down and listen to my cry for help.

Every time I'm in trouble I call on you,

confident that you'll answer.

There's no one quite like you among the gods, O Lord,

and nothing to compare with your works.

All the nations you made are on their way,

ready to give honor to you, O Lord,

ready to put your beauty on display,

parading your greatness,

and the great things you do -- 

God, you're the one, there's no one but you!

Train me, God, to walk straight; 

then I'll follow your true path.

Put me together, one heart and mind;

then, undivided, I'll worship in joyful fear.

From the bottom of my heart I thank you, dear Lord;

I've never kept secret what you're up to.

You've always been great toward me -- what love!

You snatched me from the brink of disaster!

God, these bullies have reared their heads!

A gang of thugs is after me -- 

and they don't care a thing about you.

But you, O God, are both tender and kind,

not easily angered, immense in love,

and you never, never quit.

So look me in the eye and show kindness, 

give your servant the strength to go on,

save your dear, dear child!

Make a show of how much you love me

so the bullies who hate me will stand there slack-jawed,

as you, God, gently and powerfully

put me back on my feet.

(Psalm 86, The Message)

I stayed in the grave five days. Five days of kneeling on the ground in the woods, the dirt digging into my knees, unable to look up at God standing next to me so quietly and patiently. Five days of tears streaming down my face into the dirt. Five days of silence as I went deeper and deeper into my grief and surrender.

I knew the entire time that God would not deny my broken and contrite heart. That was not my fear. I couldn't get up because I wanted to experience the fullness of the contrition and repentance turning and turning inside my heart. I wanted to know, deep within, what was happening in me and to stand when it was really time to stand, when the turn of repentance had been fully realized.

On the fourth day in the grave, I read the above psalm. I read it several times, and it met me in that place of being bowed over on the ground before God. It spoke of being a miserable wretch and needing God's help and rescue, and the end of the psalm gave me hope of his kindness and mercy, of the gentle way he would lift me up from the ground and hold my hand as we kept walking down the path in this woods when I was ready.

Also on that fourth day, shortly after reading the psalm, I listened to the song embedded above by Mumford and Sons, "After the Storm." I'd only recently purchased the album that held this song, and I'd not noticed this particular song much until that fourth day in the grave. But on that day, the song met me right where I was, and both the song and Psalm 86 became the cry of my heart on the ground in the woods.

The next morning, the fifth day in the grave, I sat at my desk and read Psalm 86 again and again. I listened to "After the Storm" on repeat, too, and just let both of them wash over me and penetrate my heart more fully. I sat with the words of the psalm and let them be the cry of my heart to God. I must have listened to the song on repeat at least twenty times that morning!

I was moved by the song's words about one's head being lifted, about being taken by the hand and walking into a new land with grace in one's heart and flowers in one's hair. I could see that eventually, not just after I got up off the ground but also after continuing to walk with God further through the woods, I would eventually see that new land. I would come upon that village, and grace would be full inside my heart. A smile would be wide upon my face, and small yellow and purple wildflowers would be laced through my hair in a simple crown of joy and freedom when I arrived.

But right then, on that fifth day in the grave, my heart was broken. It was broken at seeing my sin, but it was also broken because of how I love Jesus. I wanted to give him everything. I wanted him to make in me a pure heart. The ongoing prayer of my heart were these words from the psalm:

Train me, God, to walk straight;

then I'll follow your true path.

Put me together, one heart and mind;

then, undivided, I'll worship.

Standing up in that place, I knew, was about agreeing to walk with Jesus everywhere, about learning how to make every movement a movement with God in Christ. It was about learning to walk straight on God's true path with one heart and one mind, undivided in worship. It was about making him my everything, my whole existence.

On that fifth morning of reading that psalm and listening to that song over and over, it happened. Somehow, in the midst of it all, I crossed over. I noticed, once I became aware of my love for Jesus, that I began to focus on a different portion of the psalm. A smile crept over my lips, and I began to worship at these words:

All the nations you made are on their way . . . 

ready to put your beauty on display,

parading your greatness,

and the great things you do -- 

God, you're the one, there's no one but you!

I sat there that morning at my desk with my eyes closed and a smile beginning to fill my face as these words became the focus of my worship. I began praising God in my heart.

In this place of worship, I saw myself stand up from the ground in the woods and take the hand of Jesus. We faced the path forward again. We didn't take a step forward yet, but I knew that time would come. For that moment, we just stood together, hand in hand. I reveled in what it was like to stand up, to bask in the goodness and kindness of God, and to simply hold his hand and let his grace wash over my repentant heart.

It was absolutely wonderful to stand up and stand next to him, eyes closed and face upraised, and let the sun shine on my face through the trees above me. Jesus was standing next to me, holding my hand and with a smile on his face, too, as he watched me turn my face to the sun, eyes closed, just basking in the sun's warmth and radiance. There was no hurry in this place, just full acceptance and enjoyment.

There I stood, by the grace and kindness of God.

Five Days in the Grave

Back when I entered the woods and encountered almost immediately the first humiliation about myself in relation to community, I saw two realities at work within me. There was a secure place inside me that had learned and come to believe with joy that all I have is from God and belongs to God. This place inside me knew at that time -- and still does -- that I am a mere instrument who has been given gifts that God uses in the lives of others.

Listening is one of those gifts. I could see that God had placed listening into my open hands and that he could even decide one day to take it out of my hands and replace it with something else. This place inside of me was secure in that possibility, knowing that the gift of listening is simply given to me by God for his use as long as he deems it useful. He gets to decide that, and I simply receive and respond.

But there was another place in me that I saw at that time. It was the false-self place, the part of me that wanted to be the savior for others and to have everything they needed securely locked inside of me. It was a yucky place, but it was there. And this was a part of me that focused on the gifts themselves and on myself and would get caught up in other people's estimation of me and need of me.

When that first humiliation happened, I could see myself standing in the woods with God. We had just entered the woods, and my cohort group was just back beyond the bend where we had just come from. I turned to God and said, "This is one reason we're here. This is perhaps why you've called me apart from them."

I could see God and I standing on the path, turned toward each other there at the beginning of that path around that first bend in the road, and I had pulled something out of my pocket. It was a small white sphere, like the cue ball used in billiard games. I had pulled it out of my pocket and held it in my open palm between us.

This was my ego.

I knew we were going to look at this cue ball of my ego here in the woods, that we were going to talk about it and that, eventually, God was going to ask me to give it to him, to place it in his hands to do with what he wanted.

This was hiddenness. This was dying to self. This was what I had been praying for God to teach me.

At the time, I didn't feel any pressure from God to hand over that white cue ball of ego right then. I felt only his presence with me as we looked at it together, as I came to realize it had been in my pocket and was now sitting there between us in the palm of my hand. I knew I wasn't ready to give it over to him, and I didn't feel any impatience or disappointment from him for that. He knew I wasn't ready. That was why we were here: to create in me the conditions that would make me ready to give it over to him.

So we kept walking and talking, and I slipped the cue ball back inside my pocket.

And the humiliations continued to happen as we went. It was so hard and difficult to discover this false self of ego almost everywhere I turned in those days.

And then finally, as I mentioned in my last post about the three humiliations, I reached a point of ultimate defeat and surrender. It began in my kitchen on a particularly pressure-filled day, where with hands raised and tears streaming down my face, I called out to God, "I give up. I can't do this anymore."

That led to five days in the grave. Five days of kneeling down on the ground in the woods at God's feet, turned away in remorse at the reality of my superhuman ego self. I couldn't move. I saw God standing next to me on the path, quietly receiving my surrender and waiting for my next move. At one point I tried to listen to what he might say to me as I knelt in this posture at his feet. I heard the words, "Peace. Be still. You are utterly loved."

It was such a grace to receive those words, but still I seemed to need to remain in that posture of contrition and surrender for however long it took. I didn't know exactly what I was waiting for, only that I couldn't yet move. Contrition and repentance were happening in this place.

I slowly realized this was the place of my handing to God the white cue ball of myself. To be continued . . . 

The Three Humiliations

An image of the woods

New Hampshire, October 2008

I've been struggling to write this post, not because I don't want to share what it's about but because I'm not really sure how to put all that it contains into words. So please bear with me as I try.

First I'll say that when I use the word "humiliation" in this post, I mean it in a classical sense. Think of it as "a means God used to humble me." I don't mean that I endured an embarrassing, shame-giving moment from God, but rather that God used a series of three very visceral experiences to turn a mirror upon my soul and let me see what's really there.

He humbled me, and he did it for my good.

That being said, the first of the three humiliations happened almost immediately upon my entering the woods, and it had to do with myself in relation to community. Because of the emotional break with the community of my cohort that came from saying yes to God's invitation into the woods, I felt myself on the periphery of the group as we continued learning in our coursework together. I completed the assignments and interacted in the forums as required, but mostly I watched the conversations happen around me rather than feeling myself a part of them. I think that was as it should be, since I had been invited to a measure of solitude by entering the woods with God.

But I noticed something through this experience of emotional distance. My cohort friends taught each other new things. They helped each other along. They encouraged one another. They challenged each other's thinking. They ministered to one another's hearts.

All without me.

And I realized: they didn't need me in order to grow. I have to say, that humbled me. I realized over the course of watching this happen how tightly I cling to the need to be necessary, how much I want to be the one who is wanted and essential, how much I want to be a part of everything major happening in another person's life. It's not pretty to say this, but I was a bit dismayed to see how fluidly the group kept moving along and learning together without me.

So, that was the first humiliation, the first means God used to humble me when I entered the woods.

The second humiliation happened in my most intimate relationship: that of my marriage. One evening, Kirk and I were having a conversation that started out normal enough, only to discover several minutes into it that there was a big chunk of my heart I'd been withholding from him for quite some time. It was a big, confusing mess for both of us to stumble upon together in that moment, and it led to many big conversations and sifting moments over the course of the next several weeks.

Through that process of sifting, I realized some things about myself. I realized how much of this happened because I'd allowed an image of perfection to become more real than we were. In a big way, this all came down to a matter of allowing Kirk and myself to be human to each other, to make mistakes, to let each other down, and for that to happen and everything still be okay. I have been learning through this process that intimacy lives and grows in truth-telling moments, when two people don't have to be perfect for each other but are willing and invited to simply be who they are.

Then, in the midst of all this, a third humiliation came in the context of my work. Besides my regular part-time gig that I do for a local publisher, I have a freelance writing and editing practice that kicked into high gear recently. It's been exciting to see this business of mine grow, and I've enjoyed working on a number of fun projects, but for a span of about three weeks last month, I took on quite a bit more work than was healthy for one solitary individual to complete.

It was so strange to see it happening, but it was as though I was physically unable to say no to each new project that came along. I wanted to do all of them, and so I kept saying yes. And I kept watching myself say yes, even after I realized I needed to start saying no.

This all culminated at the end of a three-week stint with me standing at my kitchen sink bawling my eyes out, raising my hands to the ceiling in a sign of surrender to God. "I give up," I told him. "I can't do it all. I give up. Please help me."

Through the course of these three humiliations, I've spotted a singular thread: my tendency toward the superhuman. Instead of being one part of the body of Christ in community, I wanted to be the entire body of Christ so that I could be everything to everyone. Instead of giving Kirk and myself the room to be human with each other, I held to an image of perfection that prevented our intimacy from growing in truth. Instead of preserving self-care and creating boundaries around my work life, I strove to do everything that came my way, even if it brought personal harm to my mind, body, and spirit.

When I came into the woods, I knew God would show me things about myself that I needed to see. But I didn't expect it would come in the form of three such visceral humiliations in three very core areas of life: community, intimacy, and work. Nor did I expect that it would happen so swiftly and so soon.

In my next installment, I'll share with you what happened on the heels of this revelation . . .

Kindnesses Nudge Me Forward

I've mentioned before that God speaks to me in images a lot. It started about 10 years ago and is such a helpful part of my life with God. When the images show up (I don't control whether they come or not), they often bring a greater awareness of the current growing edges of my life with God. They also provide an ease of language for my conversations with God in that place, too.

Perhaps at some point I'll share the story of how these images began and my thinking on how they integrate with a theologically grounded spirituality. But for today, I'll share that sometimes I get self-conscious about it. And in an image-rich time in my life with God like the one I am experiencing right now, I sometimes wonder: how do I share what God is doing without sounding insane? 

When the image of the woods emerged, and with it the awareness of departure from my cohort group, I met with my spiritual director. On that day, I was a bit of a mess. I'd only just realized this journey into the woods meant emotional departure from some of those I love, at least for a time, and I couldn't fathom saying goodbye.

There I sat, sharing these images and what they meant with Elaine, tears dripping down my face and cries catching in my throat. And instead of thinking me weird, Elaine invited me deeper. She asked, Do you know where the woods is leading, or what's on the other side? 

No, I didn't. I hadn't even considered that question. All I could see was the woods before me, God beside me, and my cohort group behind me.

Then she asked, Do you want to ask God what is on the other side? 

Hmmm . . . okay.

In prayer, then, I told God about my fear of saying goodbye. I told him that as much as I was honored by his invitation, I didn't know how to depart. Furthermore, I wasn't sure I wanted to.

I told him that he didn't owe me an explanation, that he didn't have to tell me what was going to happen inside the woods or how long we would stay there. He didn't have to tell me where we were going, either, or what would emerge on the other side.

But if he was willing, would he?

I sat there quietly for a while after speaking these things to him, waiting, not really sure what would happen.

Then yet another image emerged.

I could see a new land on the other side of the woods that I had never seen before. There was sunshine there, and it opened up to the wide expanse of a farming village. There were oxen pulling hay. There was a man shoeing horses. There was a blacksmith. There were children running around in peasant clothes. There were so many people, all living in community with one another in a simple village, and I saw that God was giving this village to me and Kirk. He was inviting us to live in this community with these people, to get to know them and let them get to know us, to give and to receive life with them.

But first, before I could get there, I saw that I must go through the woods. I must first experience this aloneness with God. I couldn't reach the village otherwise.

That night, over dinner, I shared all of this with Kirk and received from him several incredible gifts. First, Kirk just offered me his presence by listening to what I shared about the image of the village that had emerged in my time of prayer during my direction session that afternoon. Second, he reminded me of something I'd not remembered in quite some time: that an image of the woods had cropped up earlier in our life together -- an image of me and God in a church in the woods, which was a place Kirk had always said was my special place to be with God alone.

I hadn't thought about that church in the woods in a really long time. Kirk found the above image for me by doing a Google image search that night, and this image of the church in the woods has since become my desktop and phone wallpaper as I journey through this season.

Finally, Kirk brought his laptop into our bedroom that night and played for me the opening scene of the Fellowship of the Ring (from the Lord of the Rings trilogy). Have you ever seen it? In that opening scene, we get to know life in the Shire -- a farming village full of simple people doing life together. That scene looked exactly like the image of the farming village I'd seen in my prayer time earlier that day, and it was such a gift for Kirk to share it with me. (You can watch a mash-up version of the opening scenes of the film by clicking on the link; unfortunately, I was unable to embed the video here.)

These gifts of kindness -- two people close to me holding the image of the woods with me and inviting me deeper into it -- brought about my discovery of the village on the other side of the woods . . . a new image that gave me the courage to say yes to God.

More on what I've discovered since walking into the woods with God in upcoming posts . . .

The Unexpected Goodbye

A short clip of my cohort group -- a

ren't they great?

Bus ride to the Getty Museum, 

January 2011

At first, I was excited to go into the woods. A private audience with the God of the universe? He wanted my undivided attention? He wanted to give me his? It seemed too amazing to believe. I was ecstatic and humbled.

But then, after a couple days of noticing this invitation -- of carrying this new image of God and myself standing at the edge of the woods, his arm around me, inviting me forward -- I noticed something more about the image.

Just behind me, to my right and out of my line of sight, was my graduate program cohort group.

For the last three years, I have been learning, sharing, and growing alongside a truly remarkable group of twenty individuals in a spiritual formation master's program. This group of people risks vulnerability with each other, challenges each other, confesses things to each other, and celebrates and mourns together the significant moments of life.

They are my community. I cherish them.

And in about two months, we will conclude our three-year journey together and graduate. Almost the whole of our group will gather in Michigan and mark this special occasion with ceremony and time together. We will then move into the next phase of our lives without the structure of class syllabi, discussion boards, and yearly residencies to hold us together.

And there they were, standing behind me as I faced the woods with God.

They stood in a group, clustered together outside a wooden structure, laughing and razzing each other and getting ready to eat what seemed like a great, hearty meal of barbecue pulled pork.

I wasn't with them.

And I wasn't invited to be with them. Instead, God had invited me to come away with him into the woods. He had some things to teach me. Some ways for me to learn and grow . . . separate from my community for the time being.

This wasn't okay with me. I stopped in my tracks once I realized this was one outcome of the invitation into the woods. And as wonderful as that invitation into the woods with God had seemed, I wasn't ready to say goodbye to my cohort group yet. I told God it was too soon. Already I'd anticipated a difficult time saying goodbye in May at graduation . . . but that was several months away. It wasn't time to say goodbye yet.

Was it?

I began to feel even more poignantly the loneliness I had just begun to notice in this place, and I wasn't sure what I would do. Would I accept God's invitation into the woods? You'll find out in the next installment . . .

"Come Away With Me . . . "

I shared in a previous post that God speaks to me in images a lot and that, for a period of several months, he and I carried the image of a red glass that eventually transformed into a chalice. The glass and chalice represented the way God and I were learning to live together inside my soul. He was -- and still is -- teaching me communion.

I carried the image of the chalice with me for a few weeks, until a new image began to emerge in my prayer life. It was the image of a woods. God and I were standing on a dirt pathway leading into the woods, and he was putting his arm around my shoulder and inviting me to walk into the woods with him.

When I first received that image, I knew that the time in the woods with God was meant to be a time for just him and me. I knew that it was his intention to bring me apart from everything else so that he could have my full and undivided attention. I knew that he had some words for me to hear, some secrets for me to receive, some things for me to learn.

"Come away with me . . . "

This image of going into and through the woods with God has become hugely significant in this season of my life. It has become a major touchpoint in my prayer life and in the way I notice and appropriate my daily life. It frames my understanding of the season I inhabit in my life right now, and it gives way to some understanding of the next season awaiting me up ahead, once I'm ready.

I will share some facets of this walk with God in the woods with you in upcoming posts. But for now, I'm just introducing the image and sharing this song by Norah Jones. It's a song that runs through my mind quite often these days. Every time I think about where I am with God in the woods right now, this is the song that speaks that truth.

Companioning Henri

Bricks at

Leu Gardens

February 2011

I've been studying Henri Nouwen for a course in my graduate program these last eight weeks, and it's been a great way to bring the program to a close. (I have just one course left -- a capstone thesis project -- before graduating in May.) I say it's a great way to bring this program in spiritual formation to a close because Henri, for me, embodies the essence of lived spirituality. He's been a great mentor and soul friend to me throughout the years through his books, and I know I am just one of thousands who feel this exact same way about his writings.

I'm not one to often enjoy reading books about a person. Biographies are much less interesting to me than memoirs or autobiography because biographies often feel so clinical, theoretical, detached, and fact-based. This is why, conversely, I love Henri Nouwen's books so much: though he wrote about the subject of spirituality throughout his life, he almost always wrote from the vulnerable vantage point and context of his own experiences. Most of his books are like reading memoir.

I say that I don't much enjoy reading about a person, but I will concede that one of the books written about Henri that I'm reading for this course has made an impression on me. If you're going to read a book about Henri Nouwen, perhaps to get a sense of his life in a comprehensive snapshot, I recommend you choose Wounded Prophet. It gets underneath his life and persona in a (for me) surprisingly substantive way and is filled with many first-hand anecdotes from people who knew Henri well. It offers an honest but compassionate look at his whole life.

I love Henri Nouwen's journals most of all. They take me on a journey into his life and heart, and it's a marvel to me that he not only journaled so prolifically but offered them up as windows for others so they could get a glimpse into what it looks like to live honestly and introspectively before God. I feel myself companioning with Henri as he goes when I read his journals, and I often find that his journeys in those pages often mimic and speak to my own journey in some way.

For instance, when I first entered my summer of solitude to study nonviolence and peacemaking in June 2009, Henri's Latin-American journal Gracias! was my very first companion that summer. The first many pages of one of my solitude journals from those summer months is filled with reflections on how the Gracias! journal spoke to me, taught me, and broke my heart for the abundant brokenness and violence in this world. At another point in time, Henri's Genessee Diary also became a true companion in my spiritual life.

I've found my affinity for Henri's journals to have remained true throughout this course I'm taking. Interestingly, my closest book companions during this course weren't even on the book list. I've been reading small portions of Henri's most raw and personal journal, the Inner Voice of Love, most mornings while sitting at my desk, and most evenings before going to sleep I take care to read several entries in another one of his journals, The Road to Daybreak.

The Daybreak journal, in particular, is speaking to right now. It chronicles Henri's journey toward being called to live among a mentally handicapped community, a life choice that ended up marking the last 10 years of his life. This journal is speaking to me as I contemplate my own vocation beyond the bounds of two programs that have equipped me for ministry these past three years and are both coming to a close in the next few months. Henri is companioning with me as I hold my own questions of calling and vocation in my heart before God. He is helping me learn how to do that, and that is especially meaningful to me, as I've not ever asked God about a specific next-step call on my life as intently as I am doing right now.

One thing I noticed today while doing some research for the final integration paper for this course that I found quite encouraging was how much God uses us and teaches us no matter what path we choose to take in life. He always is with us, no matter where we are. I've had this impression before, but it became even stronger today as I read some passages in Wounded Prophet that talked about Henri's struggle to integrate into the handicapped community at Daybreak that first year after he'd answered the call to make his home there. He never seemed to question his call there, but others surely did. For instance, one acquaintance said:

[Henri] told me that he was going to live in a community where people didn't know how famous he was, among those who couldn't read his books. I found that absolutely admirable in one way, but I wondered how natural it was for him to do that and whether he was making an enormous statement about something. The way he talked about it struck me as being rather like a pose or a statement; it didn't seem to come from the heart. I felt that if he really meant this, he wouldn't actually have told anybody. He would have just done it. 

What I find interesting about this is not the question of whether Henri was actually called to that community or not, or whether he had misjudged the purity of his intentions and was led to go there by some wounded or broken place inside himself that needed to do something grandiose and different, rather than a pure calling by God. Rather, what moves me is how much Henri's commitment to the Daybreak community forms a solid place in our minds when we think about his life. After teaching for many years at several Ivy League colleges (Harvard, Yale, and Notre Dame), he gave up the academic life to live among this handicapped community, and that is a solid feature in his story when we think of the life of Henri Nouwen.

He went and lived among that community, and when he was there, he was truly there. He stumbled his way through much of it, especially at the beginning, and he struggled at times to balance his life there with the demands of life that his fame brought to him. Yet God used Daybreak and Henri's commitment to living there to form Henri more fully, to love others through Henri, and to teach Henri more about what it means to love and be loved by God and others.

In short, it doesn't really matter whether Henri was right or wrong in his intentions to live there. What matters is that God used it for the betterment of Henri and others, period.

This takes some of the pressure off me to find "just the right answer" to my question of specific calling after graduation. It helps me to settle in and trust that God is with me and forming me and using my life, no matter where in the world I am. He may lead me to a specific place once I leave these graduate and equipping programs, or he may simply use me wherever I am, in whatever I'm doing.

There's something simple and pure in that notion . . . one for which I give thanks.

Marking an Important Day

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

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