Accepting Brokenness

My journey to find rest is now a journey toward wholeness.  A putting back together that includes broken pieces.

The journey of rest is leading me to recover all of my soul.  This peace makes no detours around reality.

~Finding Spiritual Whitespace

A couple of years ago I was presented with the idea of genuineness, authentic relationships and being accepted even in my brokenness.  It sounded wonderful.  I loved the idea of being accepted for who I was without being judged.  I loved the idea so much I even started to incorporate it into my vocabulary.

I really bought into the idea that this was the way to do church, ministry and relationships.  We needed to be willing to accept one another in our brokenness and to just be real.  Open and honest.  That was my new motto.

And then something happened.  I came face to face with my own brokenness.  In sharing that brokenness, my ideals of genuineness was challenged to say the least over an extended period of time and eventually the attempts to remain open and authentic became a little too much to handle so I retreated to the protection of my shell much like a little turtle.  And there I began to find the answers I was looking for so desperately.

One of the most important parts to having my brokenness accepted is learning to accept it myself.  So often as humans it can be easier to give verbal assent to something while not truly accepting it as reality.  When I'm busy filling my life as full as I can and I stay busy doing more and more I'm in reality hiding my brokenness behind the work I'm doing.  

The visual that comes to mind is that if you fill a pitcher with numerous cracks as full as you can get it with water and then proceed to dump it upside down releasing all of the water at once you never truly realize the magnitude of the broken nature of the pitcher.  On the other hand if you fill the pitcher full and allow it to rest on a table.  Still, not moving.  That is how you will discover the broken nature of the pitcher.  Over time with rest the pitcher will let water seep out of the broken areas that no longer have the capacity to hold it back.

That is how I discovered my true brokenness.  When God brought me to a place where rest was all I could do.  When I had to stop turning the pitcher that was myself upside down and emptying myself all at once then God could introduce me to the parts of me that needed healing and wholeness.  

Actually, I'm still there.  I'm still in the middle of journeying through my brokenness with God.  It's a journey that explores all of my soul.  Not just the places I'm comfortable with exploring.  Sometimes I don't like it so much.  It very often feels like physical therapy of my soul that stretches soul muscles I didn't know I had.  And I usually hurt a lot afterwards!  But I'm also learning that accepting brokenness doesn't mean just accepting the brokenness of others.  It means accepting my own brokenness and letting God journey with me through it to (as Bonnie Gray so eloquently puts it in Finding Spiritual Whitespace) recover my soul.  

I'm discovering that this part of the journey is much more difficult than merely accepting someone else in their broken place.  It means that I have to be real with myself in a way that so often I'd rather breeze past.  It means letting God into places that I've wanted to ignore myself, but am finding that in my quest for authenticity God is requiring deep soul searching so that He can step into my brokenness with healing and truth about how He sees me.

A Beloved Valentine

It's quiet right now as I write.  After a busy morning my husband has decided a morning nap is in order and evidently our 5 month old and all three puppies agree with him as everyone, but myself appears to be napping right now.  The silence is good though today.  It's given God the opportunity to give me His own Valentine's Day message.

One of my favorite stories to go to when I need to remind myself to protect my whitespace moments is the account of Elijah in the period after his moment of triumph over the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.  You would think that God's provision of rain in response to Elijah's plea as opposed to the complete and utter silence that followed the begging of the servants of Baal would put one on a fairly high note.  You would expect a certain calmness, confidence and poise to follow this success, wouldn't you?  

 That's not exactly what happens though.  After a powerful answer to his prayer, the next thing we see Elijah doing is running for his life from the kingdom's ultimate bully, Queen Jezebel.  His was a God who brought fire to consume an offering (that had been saturated in water by the way), but in that moment his God wasn't a God that could handle the threats of a woman.  

The truth is I've been struggling for a few weeks now.  Difficult decisions have become necessary for our family to make over the last month especially and to be honest I'm not really happy about them.  In my more positive moments I see them for what they are, necessary changes because we live in an extremely broken world.  However, it doesn't mean I like uprooting pieces of the life I was hoping to resume to start over parts of my life somewhere completely new.  

I'm an introvert so I tend to invest in relationships and I'm not really eager at the need to start the cycle over again.  I have moments that to be honest I get frustrated and even anger for a brief period at the fact that I have to move on while others are allowed to stay in the place I was comfortable at one time.  Of course then I realize that I really haven't "belonged" in that place for nearly a year now.  

I think those moments are the ones that make me come back to Elijah's story.  Today, evidently my constant reference to this particular part of Elijah's life has made my husband decide to read it because as I opened the Bible app on our shared iPad intending to look for some comfort in Psalms I instead find it opens to the part of Elijah's journey following his success at Mount Carmel.  I found myself rather than moving on to Psalms as intended reading Elijah's struggle and in that I found my Valentine's message.

This time I saw in the story the weariness that had suddenly consumed Elijah.  It very much feels like where I am right now.  Rather than just let me die, I actually said last night that I want to be able to settle for less.  I'm so tired and exhausted with this part of my journey right now.  I also noticed this time though that God provided rest and nourishment for him.  He sleeps, he's fed, he sleeps again and he's fed again and then strengthened by this he's able to journey on to the next whitespace moment God has for him.  

I think that the most impactful part of Elijah's experience though came in the part that I have spent weeks quoting.  I've spent a lot of time thinking about how the importance of spiritual whitespace is so aptly portrayed in this story as God does not speak through the wind, the earthquake or the fire, but he speaks in the gentle whisper that comes in the silence after all of the chaos.  What stood out to me this time was that the whisper only came after Elijah poured his heart out to God being real and vulnerable in his isolation.

"...and now they are trying to kill me..."

~1 Kings 19:10b

As I read that I found myself sharing with God that is exactly how I've felt for a while now.  Not that anyone is trying to physically kill me, but often times unintentionally those around me have tried to kill my heart.  It comes in ways that many times people don't even realize what they are doing.  It comes when I'm pressured to accept someone else's reality as my own when how I experience the events can't really be changed.  It just is what it is and that is my experience.  It comes when vulnerability is met with rejection.  It comes when isolation is magnified because people feel uncomfortable with what they can't fix.  

"Yet I reserve seven thousand...."

~1 Kings 19:18a

My dad was the first person to really bring this part of God's reply to Elijah to my attention over a decade ago.  I think though somehow I've always interpreted it as a reprimand from God for Elijah's lack of faith.  Today, however, it was my Valentine as His Beloved.  Rather than hearing it in this "stupid human, don't you know I've got more people than you over here on the sidelines" tone, I heard it today more like this:

"You're not alone.  I'm here, but I also have so many more kindreds that I want to share your journey.  If I leave you where your heart feels threatened you will only focus on the perceived danger.  That's not where you will do your greatest work.  Come and let me surround you with the ones you need for the experiences I have waiting for you.  You're My beloved and I take care of what is Mine,"

Versions of Me

I love the little girl in this picture.  She's serious, but at the same time looks happy and all ready to pose like the princess she thinks she is.  Sometimes I wonder what happened to her.  I don't really remember her all that well most of the time.  Somehow it feels like she's been lost over the years.

This little girl never seems to be bothered by the constraints of time or the world around her.  She always seems comfortable in who she is.  Never even considering for a moment that anyone would think there was anything wrong with her.

Somehow though the innocence that I see when I look at this picture seems to have disappeared.  The little girl that looks loved for who she is becomes lost in well meant attempts to mold her character and make sure she behaved in a certain manner and dressed a certain way.

Over the years whether it was true or not this little girl somehow started to equate being loved with being a "good little girl".  Her value in her eyes eventually was only there if she was able to be what others wanted her to be.  And so she became caught in a cycle of doing.  Constantly doing trying to earn the approval of others and even God.

"You can't keep her sealed off in the past anymore."

-Finding Spiritual Whitespace

Suddenly I find myself looking at this picture I've come to cherish differently.  Here is a little girl sitting quietly on a fence, all dressed up for no reason, holding a flower and letting the breeze blow her gauzy dress and hair.  I find myself realizing that this younger me actually has a very important lesson for the older me.  Rather than her needing to grow up and be like me, I need to learn to go back and be more like her.  

I need to remember that in choosing to invest in moments of spiritual whitespace I am choosing to live in the truth that I am valued.  I am special.  And I am God's beloved.  

In choosing whitespace I am choosing to live the extravagant life that this little princess personifies.  When I take that time to introduce quiet to the chaos of life I am making the decision to believe that I was made for beauty rather than just created to function.  And in doing that rather than consigning this little girl to the past, I bring her forward and embrace who she is in the present.

Reflections on My Journey to Whitespace

The white area over the window while it drove my husband crazy when it happened ended up being a daily reminder of the spiritual whitespace that God was calling me to.

Finding spiritual whitespace isn't about carving out an hour of time to escape the things that stress us.

It's the opposite.  It's getting away from everything we do to distract ourselves from all the hidden pieces---in order to nurture our soul.  It's getting away from  the lie that spiritual rest is something we have to work hard at in order to get closer to God.....   Spiritual rest is a journey of awakening our hearts to fully receive.

Finding Spiritual Whitespace by Bonnie Gray

This week has had me reflecting on my journey to spiritual whitespace.  I've shared in bits and pieces parts of what I've learned out of those moments of whitespace that I've learned to embrace, but my journey into whitespace came in a rather unexpected way.

In June of last year I was seeing a counselor related to panic attacks I had started having a year earlier and while we were working our way through dealing with them some life changes began to occur one being the discovery that my husband and I were expecting our first child.  Another being the loss of a job that I had come to care about a great deal more than I had even realized at the time.  

So my job officially ended at the end of May and somehow as imperfectly as I had managed to hold it together while finishing up my final weeks there when it was gone I found myself emotionally falling apart.  My panic attacks which had been manageable prior to the job ending suddenly began coming on full force.  Nearly every day I would find myself dissolving into uncontrollable tears.  

It was in this moment that God brought Bonnie Gray and her story into my life through her newly released book Finding Spiritual Whitespace-Awakening Your Soul to Rest.  As I read Bonnie's story about her battles with anxiety and panic attacks in her own life and the journey God had lead her on I felt like I had found a kindred spirit.  And so my  own  journey into spiritual whitespace began.  

Over the next several months I found myself surviving an extremely lonely and isolated pregnancy by learning to take the isolation and silence to listen to God.   It was so hard.  I spent a lot of time in bed feeling sick and exhausted and found myself often crying as in the silence God started to bring me face to face with my truth.   When I found myself focused on what I saw as my failures, God insisted on showing me that He loved me in my brokenness and isolation because in that I became more dependent on Him.  He showed me how much I needed to fall apart because that is where He could put the pieces back together in a way that no one else could.  It was in those whitespace moments that He could truly show me what I was to Him.  A thing of beauty that I honestly don't see in myself most of the time.  Someone that He created for a very specific purpose.  

So while it could be easy to look at spiritual whitespace as a chance to escape the busyness of stressful everyday life, it is so much more than that.  It's the opportunity to stop and shut everything else out just to give myself a chance to connect with God in a way that brings me joy.  Tonight it is a few stolen hours at Starbucks writing part of my story to share with you.  Yesterday it was taking a couple hours to sort CD's with a friend while our baby girls napped.  Sometimes it's a walk through the neighborhood I live in asking God what He plans for our family in the future here.  There are so many opportunities to connect with God in the everyday things that we so often don't slow down for because we are hurrying on to the next task to do.  

Bonnie Gray puts it best when she describes it as a concept taken from art and design.  She calls it something that breathes beauty and gives the eye a place to rest.  Something that keeps art from being overtaken by clutter.  When put in that context spiritual whitespace becomes what keeps our souls from being cluttered with the least important things and allows us to prioritize feeding and giving rest to our souls and in doing so having more to give to the important things in life.