Whitespace is Faithfulness

     

If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones....  Luke 16:10a

I think I'm in the middle of learning a lesson.   I have the bad tendency to push myself to the very edge of what I can tolerate before crashing.  Today happens to be a crash day.  The bad thing about a crash day for me is that when I crash I do it big.  Today I've moved from bed to couch to bed and back to the couch again.  My entire body aches and I haven't managed much more than taking care of my 8 month old.

The sad thing is I knew it was coming.  I knew yesterday that I was starting to crash, but I ignored the signs and did all of the things I was determined to do with my day.  I didn't take care of myself.  I didn't slow down and stop to focus on rest even though I knew I needed it.  And so I ignored one of the things God's been stressing to me the most lately.  That I need to be faithful in rest.

Faithful in rest.  Kind of sounds crazy when we are pushed in every direction we look to do more.  Take on more commitments at work, at church and in our community.  We don't really care whether we are good at said things, we just keep piling them on because we are asked to.  Never stopping to rest until our bodies completely and utterly let us down.

Today as I sit here, my body screaming at me that it needed to rest long before I gave in, the passage in Scripture came to mind where Jesus tells His disciples "If you are faithful in little things. you will be faithful in large ones.... Luke 16:10a (NLT).  I've read this verse I don't know how many times, but today I suddenly realize that the very first thing that God gave to my care I'm abusing.  I'm not always faithful in caring for my body.  I put it under stress it was never intended to endure and then I refuse to let it rest when it begs for it.  Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that our body's are a temple of the Holy Spirit.  Somehow right now I'm picturing the Holy Spirit looking very much like a homeless person if He's trying to survive in the mess that is my body today.  I'm pretty sure the roof is leaking and a few windows are broken.  Which is where the importance of investing in soul rest comes into play.

A scene from It's a Wonderful Life comes to mind in which George comes "home" to Mary the night of their wedding and the roof is leaking and there are posters hiding the broken windows.  There's no rest in a place where the roof and windows leak.  When something is allowed to fall into disrepair it effects the entire structure and those who reside in it.  I'm starting to realize how failure to rest my body and soul effects my life.  

Sometimes I think we might have been our smartest in some ways as children.  Before we knew we were suppose to abuse our bodies in the name of adulthood we invested in resting when we needed to and giving our all to the things we enjoyed.  Somewhere along the way we lost that approach to life. We crammed our lives with activities forgetting to set aside time to rest and invest in our souls.  After all we were adults and that was kids stuff.  And our bodies have suffered.  

So the lesson I'm learning today is that I haven't taken the time to invest in Spiritual Whitespace the last week the way my soul needed and I feel it both physically and emotionally.  I'm drained and so tired.  While my roof isn't leaking like a sieve, I'm pretty sure I have a cracked window that needs repaired, but with that realization comes the opportunity to restore this temple before it becomes uninhabitable.  And so today I discovered that to invest in spiritual whitespace is to be faithful in one little thing so I'm ready for the large ones.

Abandon

 

In architecture, space sculpts the soul of a building, creating places for people to relax and relate.

~Bonnie Gray

I've recently come across an Instagram account called itsabandoned that fascinates me.  It's pictures of places that have been abandoned by humanity.  Some of them are left in such a way you expect to see the former residents walk back in to take up their lives at any moment.  Others there is an almost painful beauty in the abandoned state.  The beauty comes by the space that has been vacated by some unknown force.  I've wondered more than once why this account holds my attention, but every day I find myself looking for the newly captured empty beauty by a random photographer.  

Maybe these photos capture my attention because of what they represent.  Something that was productive, useful and served a purpose, but now is left to the fate of falling into disrepair and loneliness.  Maybe they hold my gaze just a little longer because I feel like them.  Once useful and productive, but now nothing.....   

Maybe I look at them and see the dreams and hopes that existed in myself 2 years ago that now feel impossible to achieve most days.  Maybe I look at them and see the people that walked away from them seeing the upkeep as too much and see the part of myself that others have reacted to as too broken.  

And then I look again and see the beauty in their abandoned state.  They might have been abandoned by those with less vision, but someone came along and was inspired by what was left by the less astute. That gives me hope.  Someone saw these places that were left behind, lost and unappreciated by those who found their definition of beauty in the newer and flashier locale and redeemed their abandoned state by recognizing the beauty of their existence.  That gives me hope.  Hope that the parts of me that seem too broken for some do have a purpose and beauty.  It reminds me as God reminded Samuel that while man looks on the outward appearance and measures me with his finite knowledge.  God looks at my heart.  God looking at the heart is how David failed so many times by man's evaluation, but God saw in David a man after His own heart.  

My husband likes to talk about embodied energy when talking about the advantage of using an existing building.  I think I look at these pictures of abandoned places and I'm reminded that when God looks at me He sees embodied energy.  He sees what He's already invested in growing me, in the dreams He's given me and in the plans He has for me and once more I find hope.  Hope that much like these rejected places that have been captured in pictures for every time I'm rejected God has someone waiting to recognize what I can be and to join me in that journey.  

The interesting thing about abandoned things....  while some choose to abandon them it creates space and movement for the few that choose to appreciate them.  There is a certain freedom that comes with living in abandonment.  Freedom to discern what's most important and what's least important.  Freedom to say no, but also freedom to say yes.  Freedom not to be defined by the abandoned state, but to live with abandon.

The Clutter of Empty Nests

Have you ever paid attention to the trees this time of year?  The leaves are just starting to come in and most of what we are greeted with even in a forest full of trees are empty branches.  Lately as I've taken walks I've been noticing that the trees aren't entirely empty.  Somehow God keeps bringing the empty nests to my attention.  The remnants of one little family of birds old life.  This is a place that played a role in their history, but this year they will move on and build a new nest in a different location.   It's just the way things are designed to work.

Sometimes I wish I could be a little more like the birds that once inhabited these nests.  To be able to accept moving on as part of my journey, but somehow that's hard for me.  There are parts of it I excel at, but the moments that feel like I failed.  I have a little harder time moving on from the perceived failures.  I want a redo.  I want to redeem the experience.  In those moments moving on is excruciating.  

Lately it seems that God has been addressing clutter in my life.  The hard part.... He seems to be pointing out that holding on to relationships after they've served His purpose creates clutter.  That's hard for me to wrap my head around.  Intellectually, I can acknowledge that as we move into different roles in life that relationships change, but somehow as an introvert I hate losing those places I've invested my energy and emotions.  

Today as I wandered through a local nature park I kept noticing those empty nests.  As I noticed the space they took up in the branches just waiting to unfurl their budding leaves I found myself wondering what are the empty nests in my life that God is wanting to move so that I can grow more freely unfettered by those things that pull my attention and energy away from what He wants to use me for.  What is it that is keeping me from abandoning the old life of last summer to fully live in this spring?  I'm sure it's an ongoing evaluation, but I'm finding it a necessary one.