The Reflection in the Cross

Today I stopped.  

Exhaled.

And for a few stolen moments I allowed myself to walk through a nature park.  

In doing this, taking this time, I realized how much I push this to the back of my list even though I know I desperately need it.  I need that time alone to hear from God.  Somehow I convinced myself over the past few weeks that because I was at home with no one around that I should have been getting my soul fed by solitude.  However, there is something that I have discovered in the past few years about time alone in nature that draws me closer to God and irrevocably changes me.

Today, as I started my walk my head was full of white noise.  The what if's and what should I do's of life that clamor so loudly for my attention.  As I moved into the park I was greeted by the waterfall that has been created by the run off from the lake into a little creek.  While it was the sound of water moving through it's natural environment it had a loud sound that mimicked the sound of the white noise I had brought into the park with me.  

As I followed the path I had started on the loud sounds of the waterfall, moved to a gentler sound of the babble of the creek that ran to my left.  Less noisy, but still a busy sound that while quieter than the rush of the white noise and falls, it still carried a busyness with it.

As I moved a little further down the path, I arrived at the edge of the lake that creates a centerpiece for this little nature preserve.  It had a stillness, a quietness that was so beautiful it demanded emotion.  As I just listened though, I heard the slightest lapping of the water as the breeze skimmed across the otherwise still surface in front of me.  

As I stood there I recognized the need that my soul had been begging for the moment to experience the gentle brush of the breeze that is God's presence.  It has been begging me to move away from the waterfall of white noise and even the distraction of the babbling creek of activity and just be still.  

Introvert or extrovert, I am completely convinced that there moments when we can only truly connect to God in moments of stillness.  When we find those moments to stop the busyness that we choose to engage in that we fill our lives with and just let God show us how he sees us.  

When we run through life from one thing to the next, we fill our seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months and even years with the white noise that sends us to look to others for our reflection.  When our life is the rushing waterfall or the babbling creek it is impossible for us to see our reflection as God intended us to see it.  We will always see a distorted version of ourselves that leaves us believing we are less than who we were created to be.  

We have entered the season of Lent.  

The time we remember the events leading up to Christ death on the cross.  

Have you ever stopped to reflect on the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, went away in solitude prior to the events we remember on Good Friday and Easter?  

Even Jesus needed a moment of silence, some relief from the white noise, an opportunity for whitespace before he could assume the burden of the cross.  

Today, on my walk I was struck by all of the burdens we take on ourselves.  The crosses we take on and carry.  Church work, children's activities, charity commitments, small groups and the list goes on.  Activities that are well intentioned, but do we actually stop to ask if they are the crosses God wants us to carry?  

Jesus went to Calvary with one specific cross.  It was the cross that God had planned for him from the beginning of time.   Even with that one cross, Jesus needed someone to help him with that particular burden.  God had also planned the exact person, who would help him carry that particular cross.

It makes me ask of myself, how many crosses have I tried to carry that were not mine to pick up?  Was I less than successful because they were never mine in the first place so that one person who I needed to help me with them was not there?  It makes me think that sometimes the moments we experience failure can be because we have picked up something we were never meant to pick up and it is impossible to find the reflection of what God sees in us through that cross.  Since God never intended it for us, there is no reflection of who he is molding us into represented there.  When we fail to find that we look to others for the reflection we hope to find and then we begin to become distracted by the babble of the creek.  When we carry the cross we were not intended to long enough, the babble turns into a waterfall of white noise and we then exhaust ourselves trying to find the reflection that can only be found in the stillness of the lake where God's breath can be felt.

Is there a cross that you are carrying that you might not have been intended to carry?  Are you in a place where you are overwhelmed by the waterfall of white noise?  What steps do you need to take to introduce the stillness of the lake where you can feel the breath of God so that you carry only the cross meant for you?

The Exhale in Our Journey

There comes a moment in every journey when the one traveling must exhale.  

On a hike it might be so you can crest the next hill.  You draw in a deep breath and push through to the top.

In life it often feels like the need to exhale comes before moving into a new phase. A new place of being.  Out of necessity we find ourselves driven to release something from the past so we can move on.  

It feels like I am at that point of my own journey.  I am feeling this need to exhale.  To let go of the voices that try so overwhelmingly to silence my own voice.  It is funny, but up to this point I had not realized how many people and influences I allow to silence my voice.

Somewhere inside I let a lie take root that various people over the course of my life have spoken into in a way that made me believe it as truth.  A lie that said my words do not hold the same value as another's.  The lie that said I was not good enough in a particular position.  The lie that said because I happen to be female my voice should not be heard as much as someone who happens to be male.  

I look at my journey and realize that as far as I have come and as much as I have grown, I still have pieces of the lies that have been spoken into my life that influence how I use my voice.  I move slower toward what I know to be right because voices with authority in past parts of my journey have convinced me that they hear God's voice for my life better than I could.  It makes me hesitate and think that God speaks to them differently than he does me because I hear a different message from him.  It convinces me that what I hear has to be wrong. 

Right now the need to exhale at this part of my journey feels so strong it is almost tangible, like I could reach out and touch it.  

Exhale.

The word is like a breath of fresh spring air wafting through the open window.  An invitation to forget the death and cold of winter and the past and an opportunity to welcome and embrace new life and new beginnings.

Exhale.

It is an invitation to rest in the present moment of our journey.  To welcome God into the very second we are in and to experience his truth in a completely new way.  It is an invitation to be still, to hear the still small sounds that we ignored in the busyness that has been our past.

What does that look like for you today?  How does it change your present to say yes to the stillness that allows us to hear most clearly from God?  

Living Today

How often do we fly through our day, making our way through the to-do list and rushing to get the kids to the next event they have committed to?  We talk about wanting time, but how often do we intentionally make time to let life happen rather than allowing things to dictate our actions?

I know you're already thinking, if you only knew my life.  It's a season of busy.  While I understand that seasons of busy happen, I am also learning that those seasons last much longer than they should when we continue to just let life happen to us.  

Do you know what I notice when I browse the "Christian" book section in any given book store?  The current popular books for women all have a theme.  They are instruction books on "Breaking Busy", giving "The Best Yes" and overall how to incorporate rest into our lives.  Why is it so hard as women to actually limit what we do?  Why do we need our children to be involved in multiple extra curricular activities simultaneously?  

As mother's we often talk about impact in our children's lives, but do we ever stop to question the lessons we are teaching when we over book our own schedules beyond what we can humanly sustain?

Last year for the first time I created a mission statement for life over the next five years.  Where do I want to be?  What do I want life to look like?  How do I make that picture happen?  

My reality?  I have been hearing God tell me over the last couple of years that he wants our family to live more intentionally.  I have heard and tried to incorporate different things into our lives that will move us that direction, but the reality is that most of those things have managed to fall into place prior to last year without planning.  It has kind of been dumb luck that we have managed to embrace parts of intentional living.  

Last year, thanks to author and blogger Ruth Sokup,  Living Well Spending Less, I discovered the concept of setting goals and breaking down life into smaller chunks of time.  While as with most things when you first try them, there are parts I was not completely successful on completing in her suggested list of ways to accomplish goal setting, what I did find is that I met all 5 goals for the year by December 31, 2015!  It's an amazing feeling when you can look over the year and see what you accomplished despite the varying challenges that we face over the course of a year.  

So I met with success in goal setting last year.  Setting goals should have been something I focused on prior to January 1, 2016, right?  Nope, I was sooooo busy.  There was always something else begging for attention so I spent the month of January operating in survival mode always putting off what I needed to do for what was in front of me demanding my attention.

This weekend as January came to an end, I took some time to pull out that 2016 goal setting workbook and filled out those little spaces that made me focus on what the rest of 2016 needs to look like.  Do you know what I realized?  When I take the time to calm myself, separate from the chaos and put some effort into planning, the life of our family begins to settle down.  Rather than letting life happen to us, we begin to intentional decide what happens.  

As a result of my taking the time to decide what needs to happen this year to move our family toward that goal I set for 5 years from now, we are moving forward with purpose.  Once I put down on paper that I wanted to get our kitchen remodel done by a certain date, I began to realize if we break it down into small manageable projects, it moves toward a reality rather than just being something we "want" to do (and not even a week later 90% of the wallpaper that covered our kitchen floor to ceiling is down).

When I live today in survival mode, it effects my entire family.  When I live today intentionally, with a plan, well, then the reality is our family has more time than we imagined possible.  That wallpaper that came down in the kitchen since I set some goals, that has happened while my husband and I still take time to play crazy with our little girl nearly every night and manage the other household tasks along with school for me and work for him.  Oh, and did I mention that we both are volunteer staff members at our church?

Life has moments it gets overwhelming.  Whether we live in the overwhelming moments or pass through them is entirely up to us.  If you have never tried goal setting before I encourage you to try it!  It gives you a purpose, something you are moving toward.  Set dates on those goals for the year.  You'll find some of them you accomplish way before their due date and others need to flex to later dates in the year because life happens, but being able to look at where you have been at the end of the year is an amazing feeling.

Don't know where to start?  Check out Living Well, Spending Less for a great starting point.  She has a free Goal Setting Workbook via email that she offers when you sign up for her email.  She has lots of other amazing resources on her site that she has made available as well.  

When we live life running from commitment to commitment we are never giving the best part of ourselves to anything, including our families.  When we chose to actually begin to be selective at what we say yes to, well then we are able to give the best of ourselves to multiple things, most of all our families.  We give ourselves the ability to live in today rather than being overwhelmed by tomorrow and the things left to do from yesterday.

Choose to live in the today, this moment, with the people you are with right now.  Choose to stop the crazy cycle of letting life happen to you and create intentional moments and memories today.

The Rest of Exhale

Exhale.  

My One Word for 2016.  

Just a few short weeks into the month and I have already started to find myself challenged by the word.  Have you ever stopped to realize how quickly our calendars attempt to fill themselves up?  It kind of makes them sound like they are living beings, but often I think we fail to remember that they are inanimate objects that can be of great use or they can become the albatross around our necks.

A calendar can be the thing we look at to create space in our lives.  Or it can be the thing we fill to the max in an attempt to find our purpose and passion in life.  I have been so guilty of doing the later.  Feeling like I need to be doing to be productive.  It makes the moments when I am not experiencing forward movement feel like moments of failure.

Exhale.

Have you ever stopped to just observe your breathing pattern?  It is an exercise that both of my counselors have needed to remind me of occasionally as a means to manage my anxiety and panic attacks.

With my word for the 2016 being exhale, I have found myself this week doing that exercise not because of panic attacks, but because it serves as a reminder to rest in the moment.  

When I take a moment to exhale while purposefully grocery shopping it makes me observe the flowers that will add happiness and emotion to my living room.  

When I exhale while struggling with the varying moods of a 16 month old. who is still trying to figure out how to communicate what exactly it is she wants, I find myself seeing pieces of myself in this beautiful little girl.

In a world where we are surrounded with the latest medical journals, available with a mere click of the mouse, how do we miss that the most basic function of our existence is dependent on the act of exhaling?  We do it every day without thought as we breath in and breath out, but in our mental and emotional worlds we continue to push ourselves to the extreme trying to be productive and discover ourselves.  

Somehow in those moments I think we lose ourselves the most.  We lose sight of who God created us to be.  God creates some of us with amazing energy and drive, but if we focus only on that we lose endless opportunities to be present in the moments and with the people that surround us.  

Exhale.

Rest.

When we exhale as a physical function it provides our lungs the opportunity to rest.  We then have the ability to run marathons, climb mountains and if you're me.... Chase a 16 month old around the house.  These things are only possible when our lungs have that split second of rest.  But think about it.... How much resting do our lungs do in one day by the mere act of exhaling? 

In contrast, how often do we rest ourselves, our emotions, our bodies, our minds?  God creates our bodies with endless reminders that we were made to rest.  God begins the story of Creation by resting on the seventh day.  

One of my favorite stories from the Old Testament is the moment Elijah is hiding in a cave when this happens:

The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

(1 Kings 19:11-12)

Wind.

 Earthquake. 

Fire.

All of these are high energy, driven occurrences, but those are not the moments when God chose to speak to Elijah.  God spoke in a soft whisper.  And when Elijah hears that soft whisper and responses, God is able to use him to do amazing things!  It's in the moments of silence and stillness when God has the space to speak the strongest into our lives.  

So whatever your word for the year might be, I encourage you to think about how it looks when you add the component of rest to that word.  

Reflections on 2015 and My One Word 2016

It's been months since I've posted.  I debated whether to even bother with it.  I'm pregnant, a mommy to an extremely active toddler, a wife and an adult college student.  All of those combined make life feel really overwhelming at times.  It's not really extreme busyness, but all of them combined mean that posting on a blog that isn't accomplishing a school assignment has fallen off of the radar for me.  

I suppose that all of that led to what has become my One Word for 2016.  2015 was full of choices made by myself and with my husband that definitely lived up to my word/s for 2015.  Recklessly Abandon.  In one simple year with only the agreement to follow God wherever that phrase led I find that it's been a year filled with change and challenges for both myself personally and for our family. 

Following God with Reckless Abandon means that you are challenged on whether you will do the things that do not make sense to anyone around you.  For us it meant leaving the church we were part of and over the next few months joining our lives (however painful slowly it might seemed to have taken) to a church plant 30 minutes away because God says "that is where I want to grow you".  It means reaching out to someone you've admired from a distance and risking rejection by asking "Will you mentor me?"  It looks like starting school when it hardly makes sense as you are no where near being in the career field that this degree will qualify you for and it means saying "yes" to God when He says you are finished with the job that is helping pay some of the bills.

For the past two years, I have chosen one word to live out through the year.  To be honest, the first time was largely driven by the fact the church I served at on staff decided to do a series on One Word and as part of the staff I felt a certain amount of pressure to perform and felt I should chose a word.  I find it funny how God can take something that you do out of a sense of duty and make it something that redefines your life.  That first year my word was Pieces.  I don't think I will ever forget that year...  It literally felt like my life fell apart.  I lost the one job I had that made sense to me and felt like it was suppose to be in line with my calling.  I experienced an isolating pregnancy and went into the end of 2014 depleted, alone and feeling extremely broken.  Coming into 2015, I had a certain amount of trepidation at choosing another word, but this time the challenge came from a blogger and author I had come to love and respect so I decided I would once again try the word for a year.

Entering 2016, I once again wondered if I really wanted to chance letting a word define my year and my answer came as I listened to a song that had come to my attention over the past few months.  Plumb's Exhale.  

Exhale.  It's a word that speaks of letting go.  Getting rid of the toxic things that hang over our lives and moving toward the grace, freedom and love that God offers us.  One of the things I have learned about myself is that as a relational introvert, I can have a tendency to hang on to relationships long after they have outlived their purpose in my life.  What I'm finding in this season of my life is that I have less capacity for things so I am going into the New Year knowing I have to be intentional with my time, energy and resources.  It means choosing wisely in what I hold on to and what I let go.  

Exhale.  

Let go. 

Somehow I already expect 2016 to be painful in some ways, but I have also learned out of two years of words that proved painful that in our greatest pain, God is doing some of His most powerful healing in our lives.  He is growing and stretching us because He knows what we are capable of becoming.  We become the one's to halt our own growth when we let fear dictate our lives and decisions.  What about you?  Have you ever tried One Word for a year?  Is this the year to try it?  I'd love to hear if you do!

Musings on #nospendOctober

So we are past the halfway point of our #nospendOctober.  We're surviving it....  Although we did discover that due to some unexpected things we had to alter it after the first couple of weeks.  We discovered that for some crazy reason, I wasn't able to study quite the same way if I didn't have my study sessions at Starbucks.  So we decided to add that particular luxury back in.  The scramble to try to do the studying in the house all of the time was just too much.  The library didn't seem to work very well.  Crazy, right?  I think I might get distracted by all of the other books begging to be browsed there so studying becomes difficult. 

I haven't been very successful at accomplishing all of the cool little organizational and cleaning challenges that Ruth at Living Well, Spending Less put together as part of the #31DaysLWSZ challenge.  I had to give up on that after the kitchen!  While I dream of organizing Myka's room, clearing out paperwork and cleaning out the bathroom closet, alas those items will have to wait until another time.  

Another thing I discovered last week is one way I tend to take some Spiritual Whitespace for myself is to grab lunch out on my lunch break once a week and go to the park.  After about 2 weeks of not doing that, I crashed.  I got to Friday last week and wanted to disolve into tears!  We decided that this was an acceptable compromise to the dining out budget, since eating at work can be a little challenging.  

My husband is much better at this no spend thing than I am.  That said I'm pretty sure he's planning a flea market binge November 1st....  In one way I'm glad we tried it.  On the other hand I'm ready for it to be over.  I haven't started counting days, hours minutes, seconds (mainly because that's math and it gives me a headache....), but I'm ready to be done with this particular challenge.  While it has helped us reset priorities, I'm quite tired of asking the question of does spending this money violate our no spend agreement.  I'm even questioning whether it has the same impact it does for us that it does for others since I hear us saying a lot of "we'll get it when #nospendOctober is over".  

I don't think I exactly regret this trial month of no spending, but I do think I expected different results when we started.  Maybe trying it when you are in school, are actively working through some heavy "stuff" in counseling and have a 1 year old presents a different set of challenges that make it just a little more than I think I care to take on again anytime soon.  Don't get me wrong I think it's an amazing idea.  But it's difficult in different ways from what I expected.  In retrospect I think I start to see this challenge as a great way to deal with our need for things.  I think maybe part of the reason this challenge is different for us is that we don't really have the ties to material things the way we did at one time.  We like to purchase the furniture, home decor and things that make our house uniquely ours, but we were already taking the question of do we genuinely need it?  Do we have a place for it?  What do we need to get rid of if we buy it?  before taking the challenge.  I think in that respect the challenge hasn't served the purpose intended.  So while I don't see myself jumping on board to do this challenge again anytime soon after we finish this month out, one thing I have learned is about extending myself grace.

When I was the one we needed to make exceptions for I felt like a failure.  Like somehow I was the reason this wasn't going to succeed.  After my time with God on Friday though, I came away with a different perspective.  In choosing to eat out that one time a week so I could go spend my lunchtime with God, it changes that lunch hour from something inward focused to using the resources around us (even if it's Burger King) to allow God to draw us closer to Him.  Rather than grabbing food because I'm running crazy, we chose to allot resources to provide an opportunity for some Spiritual Whitespace.  Can I share that after a two week absence from the trail I like to walk on my lunch, I cried?  In the "rules" of our #nospendOctober my heart had taken a huge hit.  I was following the rules so well that I had ignored for two full weeks what my heart was begging for.  I kept pushing through trying to do the task perfectly, not letting my heart be heard.  

I think that's the danger of challenges, church programs and all of the activities we use to fill our lives.  We are so busy trying to do all of them perfectly and not fail at any of them that we miss hearing our hearts beg for what they need.  So can I ask you to join me today?  Take some time out.  Say no to the craziness of life and let yourself hear your heart.  Take more than just five minutes away from the activity and let your heart hear from God in the stillness.  Introvert, extrovert, we both need those moments of stillness for our hearts to hear our Father.

Living Life Differently

I find myself wondering lately when did we buy into the idea that overextending ourselves and filling our calendars past the bursting point was acceptable?  When did we decide that if we could spend just 5 minutes in the morning letting our Father fill us that we could make it through the day?  When did we start to believe that it's normal and okay to live like our lives are a fast food restaurant doling out the minutes of our lives to all of the various work, church, charitable and family commitments that clamor for their share of fractions of seconds of our lives?

I've noticed an overwhelming amount of my friends that seem desperate for a few more hours in their day. a few more minutes to their week or even just one more second to the month, just to get everything that life is demanding from them.  I'm starting to form a theory about this pattern that I recognize creeps up even into my life after nearly a year of consciously choosing to work on changing those patterns in myself.  I fully believe that all of those "good" causes are ways the Enemy chooses to distract us from being the best possible version of ourselves we can be.  

I mean face it....  Work is something we do to sustain our families so it's not exactly something we can just decide not to do one day, but it takes a huge amount of courage to ask if the job that demands so much of our time is really the job we need at this moment of our lives.  And church and charity...  Who is going to dare say that maybe you should turn down that request to provide a meal to a family in the need or say no to the latest suggestion that maybe you should volunteer in yet another ministry that is beginning to form?  And I think it goes without saying that we can't exactly leave our children and spouses to survive on their own and expect those relationships to survive unscathed....  So how are we suppose to manage all of the things that demand our attention and drain our lives of the vital resource of time?

For myself I'm finding that it requires that I break the cycle.  It means that the word "No" has become vital to my vocabulary.  Now it doesn't always come out of my mouth that way, but learning to recognize and verbalize that something doesn't work for me right now is key to my survival in this current phase of my life.  Giving myself permission to "just say no" has been invaluable.  It's changed how much and how often I feel overwhelmed and over-extended.  

By their fruits you will know them.

Matthew 7:16a

I think about this verse and wonder what people see in my life as compared to the life of Christ?  Do I value the same things that he did?  Do I show it by the choices I make?

Out of this line of thought have come some life changes for me.  Through my search for what I value, God has brought some amazing women into my life through books, blogs, conferences and a church who's motto I've adapted and adopted as my life motto.  Let me introduce you briefly to these inspiring women and the lesson each taught me.

First into my life in the middle of some hard life changes came Bonnie Gray, a blogger (Faith Barista) and author, who introduced me to the concept of Spiritual Whitespace.  This idea of stopping my life and letting God share His truth about me was life-changing.  It meant that rather than living in the middle of anxiety and panic attacks I could begin to live in the truth that I was God's Beloved.  It didn't matter that I wasn't good enough for certain jobs or roles in other people's eyes, God had a plan and saw me as something to be cherished.

Next God built on that idea of Whitespace by introducing into my world yet another author and blogger, Ruth Soukup and her book and blog, Living Well, Spending Less.  The idea that stuff can be distracting isn't really a new concept, but Ruth shared her own story in such a way that one of the changes I've implemented into my life this year is working toward living life more intentionally and living with only the things we need.  It's a work in progress, but I find the more I say no to stuff the easier it is to say no to the things that attempt to demand my time and energy.

Following the idea of Living Well, I was introduced to Jennifer Dukes Lee, at a women's conference.  As I began to say no to those things that vied for my time and attention I've noticed that the fear of what other's think always hides in the recesses of my mind.  Who would be offended if I posted this very real thing in a blog post?  What will they think when I say no to this event?  And the list goes on.  Through Jennifer, I was given the perspective of I don't need others approval.  I've been Pre-Approved by God!  He loves me just as I am.  I'm a work in progress and that's ok.  

Three women with very different messages over the past year have helped give me some traction in how to adapt the motto from a church that has come to hold a special place in my heart over the past year and a half.  This church has the motto of Doing Church Differently, while staying true to the message of Jesus Christ.  I love it!  It permeates everything they do as a church from their services to their businesses to their community involvement.  I find myself taking the spirit of that motto into my personal life.  I want to live my life differently, while sharing the message of Jesus Christ in every choice I make.  

Living life differently for me has begun to mean, purging the stuff that hangs out in my house demanding time, attention and energy to organize and clean it.  It means carving time out for Whitespace in the middle of a world that says doing more looks productive.  It means learning to live without the approval for others.  I know their are so many more things that will continue to go into living life differently, but this seems to be the foundation of a good start..... 

Kindred Cravings

Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: "What! You, too? I thought I was the only one". 

~C.S. Lewis

Remember kindergarten?  When you had been turned loose for the first time in a room full of other little kids you didn't know.  Your mom and dad nowhere in sight.  

Just you.  

Alone.

And then it happened.  

From across the room another little human much like yourself smiles and waves and suddenly you've found your best friend forever!

Wouldn't it be awesome if all of our relationships happened with the ease that those early childhood friendships tend to develop?  Sadly, as we get older and wiser, we learn to guard ourselves more and it becomes much harder to have those moments where you find those kindred friends.

I don't know about you, but I've gotten really good at being friendly without letting people close.  You see I tried it and I'm still recovering from the pain that came out of letting others see the real me.  It makes me reluctant to reach out again and share myself with others.  I know it's how God wants me to live my life, but the truth....

I'm afraid.

I'm afraid of being rejected again.

I'm afraid of feeling once more like the kid that no one wants on their softball team.

But at the same time I crave friendship.

Not just having people I can bestow the title friend on, but kindred's who get me.  Kindred's who are willing to accept me with all of the flaws that I bring into the relationship.  Because I don't need someone to point those out to me.  I know they are there because God and I are working on them every day.

And then somehow in the middle of the pain that remains in what use to be my authenticity, I find one of those people that make me say, "What! You, too?  I thought I was the only one...."   I thought that I was the only one to struggle with following God when what He asks of me doesn't make sense.  I thought I was the only one to feel rejected when people can't comprehend why I make the choices I do.  

And out of that recognition of a kindred comes the courage to send an email, a Facebook message or make a phone call.  Somewhere I find the bravery to reach out to that other figure that reminds me of myself.  Maybe it becomes a kindred relationship.  Maybe it's only purpose is to remind me as God reminded Elijah so many centuries ago, that He has 5,000 others waiting in the wings.  

Whatever it is and whatever it's purpose I suddenly feel the stirrings of a hope that soul deep friendships really do exist.  

That there are people following God's leading to a path similar to mine.  

And I desperately need that hope.  

Because I crave friendship.  

I was made for relationship and not just with God, but with others as well.

And so for tonight at least, the fear is conquered and the hope of a friendship glimmers in the future.

And the thought remains that where there is the hope of one, more surely await....

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.

Whitespace is Freedom

So I'm excited to share this week that Sunday our little family of three actually made it to a church service in Indianapolis!  It might not sound like a big deal to many, but for us it was huge!  After months of struggling with anxiety, panic attacks and  nightmares, I was able to get ready and go to a service and worship.  It feels like it's been forever since I was able to do this without leaving town.  

The awesome thing about this experience was that God had just the message I needed to hear waiting for me when we got to the school where the church holds service.  The even more amazing thing is the message didn't come from the pastor.  It came from someone who's story reflected mine in some significant ways.  It came from someone who was genuine enough to admit her struggles and doubting God at times.  I have to admit that the thought occurred a couple of times that these are my kind of people.  Broken and trying to heal from their own hurts, but willing to share their story with others even in the middle of figuring that story out.

I think my experience of Sunday has me finally believing that what my kindred, Bonnie Gray shares in her book Finding Spiritual Whitespace is true....  "Whitespace is movement".  For so long it's felt like I've just been in limbo waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting.  

But the truth is that in taking time out for soul rest.  In saying no to the things I'm not yet ready to take on.  It saying no to unhealth and setting boundaries, I've been clearing the clutter from my life that makes it so hard to hear God sometimes.  

What I am learning is to celebrate the visible movement.  Even if I can't make the next service, I made this one and having accomplished that I know I can do it again.  It's funny how when you are walking through wounds you learn to celebrate the little things.  A year ago I was leading worship on a regular basis, not allowing a service to be missed and feeling guilty if I was sick and couldn't be there.  Today I celebrate the moments I can step foot into a church service and celebrate even more if I can stay for the entire service and not leave due to panic attacks.  I thought for so long it was backward movement, but now I'm recognizing it as creating space for me to embrace who God made me to be rather than living up to other's expectations.  

Whitespace creates freedom.

Respite

Without whitespace, we become emotionally disconnected.  We cannot be touched, nor can we touch anyone.     ~Bonnie Gray

This week I've been operating in exhausted mode.  Last week everyone in our little family of three managed to be sick one right after the other.  This week my husband had meetings and overtime galore and by yesterday I found myself hitting a wall.  I had forced myself along as much as possible, but desperately needed something to bring me joy.  Something that would delight the little girl inside me and so my husband arranged a date night taking me to see Cinderella.

I'm not sure I even realized how much I needed to feel again.  In just coping with the daily demands of life without stop I had become numb to the world around me.  In contrast today as I've taken time to feed my soul I've managed to feel the day I'm going through.  Rather than rushing through the immediate demands of the moment, I've been able to enjoy the funny faces my 7 month old makes as she continues to  adjust to the new texture of her baby food.  We've celebrated her consumption of the entire tiny jar of pureed peas for the  progress it is.  We've had fun matching up her Supergirl onsie and Daddy's Captain America superhero shirt.  I've actually taken the time to taste and enjoy my lunch rather than just swallowing  it as fast as I could to move on to the next item on the list.  

I'm starting to realize how much I do that.  Hurry through one thing to move on down the list.  Not really stopping to experience the moment.  I suffer for the moments I do that, but as I realized this week, slowing down to feel also means I feel the painful memories a little more.

One of the things I've realized with the season of life I'm in right now is that I feel isolation more acutely.  One of the fears I've had since a little girl is the fear of being forgotten, being alone.  When I was 7 I changed schools.  We didn't physically move, but my entire world changed.  While from a distance I saw my little kindergarten friends move on over the years, I always believed that while I remembered them, I was no more than the face they'll never put a name to in a single class picture from 1986.  While most people tend to think children are resilient and will get over things like that, it doesn't seem to have been the case for me.  My belief of that experience has impacted me for decades.  It has made me stay places I should have moved on from longer than I needed to be there.  It's impacted how I leave jobs and churches.  As far as I'm concerned I always believe I'm the most forgettable person in the room.  

This week that belief was challenged.  As I stopped for lunch in the middle of a day full of errands, I heard my name.  As I instinctively looked up and around I recognized a face I hadn't seen in 4 or 5 years.  The first person to befriend me after my move to the Indianapolis area, the first person to call me friend in this new place.  Someone, who I had lost track of in the busyness of life, was sitting at the next table.  Not only was she sitting at the next table, but she remembered me!  After spending some time catching up and exchanging current contact information we parted ways.  As I walked to my car and through the rest of the day I continued to hear the words "you're not forgotten".  

As I get to the end of my week I find myself realizing how much I miss hearing from God when I'm in the busyness of doing.  When I'm not taking the time to care for my soul by resting I get stuck in my head and the lies I've believed about myself for so long.  As I take the time today to embrace the rest that God has for me I am reminded that God designed us for rest.  God created a world, animals, humans, plants and so much more, but even He rested.  

Rest....  It's not something we earn.  It's not something we are worthy of.  It's something we were created for.

So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God.  For all who have entered into God's rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world.

~Hebrews 4:9-10

Rest...  It's how we are suppose to connect to the God who created us.  It is how we hear the message we are the Beloved.  

Rest.... It might not change the fact that the now 35 year old adults that I once attended my early years of school with probably don't really remember me.  It doesn't change the pain of feeling forgotten in more recent relationships that seem to have moved on past me.  But what it does do is reminds me that where it's important I'm not forgotten.  But it does remind me I'm so very loved by Someone who will never forget me.  

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.

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.

Feeding My Soul

I find myself struggling with this particular post tonight.  A few weeks ago I decided to respond to an invitation by author Bonnie Gray to write weekly posts based on prompts that she would post.  The first one was easy enough when the prompt was to share about your One Word for 2015.  The next one however was an invitation to go a little deeper.  Share what feeds your soul.  

Honestly, I've tried to not ask that question too much.  It feels like its just too painful.  You see what feeds my soul often ends up being the thing that brings me the most pain.  I realized tonight as I listened to the house around me while taking time out that in the kitchen my husband was playing Gregorian chants while in the nursery my little diva who cannot settle for any "normal" baby music had the soundtrack from Sense and Sensibility playing that the two complimented one another very well.  Just listening to the blend of the two I began to relax.  You see I love music.  I took piano lessons for years, taught myself to play the guitar and to balance the stressfulness of nursing school I took voice lessons.

When I was younger I knew the exact song to pull out when I needed to literally pound on the piano to relieve frustration and I knew the selections of songs that would "make everything better" when I was sad  Music was the way I relieved stress, the way I celebrated, the way I connected to God.

  Unfortunately, music isn't really much of a part of my life right now.  I'm hiding from it right now because it hurts.  I don't play anymore.  I haven't touched an instrument since last April.  On occasion I'll sing, but it's kind of rare. 

I think tonight as I reflect on that question: What feeds your soul?  I find myself struggling to be honest about why I'm not allowing my soul to be fed.  The truth, I look at a keyboard and hear the voice in my head reminding me that I'm only ok at playing the piano.  I look at the guitar and hear another voice reminding me I never took the first lesson.  I think about the stacks of music that I own and keep myself from singing by the voice that says you're ok, but not even close to the best.  

The funny thing about the power of words is that they can become your reality.  What I hear in the words of the past is that I'm not good enough, others are better and in my head if that's true then God doesn't want my less than acceptable offering and He certainly doesn't want that to be what feeds me so I look for something else.  I suppose in a way it makes me a bit like Cain.  I know that you created me to be fed in this way, God, but here would you settle for making this work?  I'm more comfortable with this one.  

Of course when I'm trying to convince God that this other way is how my soul needs to be fed, I'm working really hard at that.  Working hard when Jesus invitation is "come to me and I will give you rest".  On the other hand if I can learn to embrace the way my soul is fed, I get to experience that rest.  It's an inviting thought and maybe embracing it comes in small steps starting with Gregorian chants and soundtracks to Jane Austen movies. 

Rest

What does it mean to live intentionally?  In the past I've often thought that it meant filling my calendar as full as I could and then when I thought I had every possible moment of the day filled to add those last few activities in, penciled in the margins because the rest of the space on the page of my life was stuffed to overflowing.  But have you ever noticed that God doesn't really ask us to have overflowing calendars?

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."         ~ Matthew 11:28-30

In fact, Jesus called the weary and burdened to him and promised rest.  He told us to learn from Him and we would find rest for our souls. 

Rest....  It's a tantalizing word, isn't it?  Can't you almost taste it like a rich creamy chocolate just begging for you to try it?  But then reality hits and like the diet that keeps us from enjoying the chocolate, our busy calendars keep us from enjoying the rest that God invites us to join Him in.  

Have you ever stopped to think though that every time we say No to rest we are saying No to God?  We become so caught up in the "ought to's" of our calendars that we sacrifice the necessities because we convince ourselves that it's just our sleep or our moment of quiet that we are missing, but in reality is something much bigger.  We find it impossible to say no to people, but we say No and make God wait every time we refuse to take those moments of rest for ourselves. 

In her book Finding Spiritual Whitespace, Bonnie Gray describes those moments as whitespace that God uses to reawaken our souls with rest.  Isn't that a magical thought?  The idea that God cares about us so much that He wants us to take those moments for our soul.

Whitespace has actually become part of our vocabulary at our house since I was introduced to the idea.  We have chore time, family time, dinner time and whitespace time.  It's time that we set aside to invest in ourselves.  It's our moments to connect with God.  It's something that has to be done intentionally though or the hours of the day fill up and we've missed that chance to commune with God in a way that brings us joy.

I should probably warn you though before you start thinking that sounds great!  Time just for me to do whatever I want.  Spiritual Whitespace while a wonderful addition to our lives has also meant we open ourselves up to what God takes those moments of rest to show us about ourselves.  You see, slowing down and just being means that the white noise in our life stops.  The busyness that I can hide behind every other hour of the day isn't there when I stop and let God start to speak through the silence that can be whitespace.

Whitespace moments are the ones that I learn the most about myself, who God wants me to be and the parts of me I still struggle with accepting.  In entering into that relationship where He promises that His yoke is easy and His burden is light, God asks me to let go of the burdens I've taken upon myself to carry.  My faults, failures, other's opinions of me,  He asks for them all to be handed over so He can start to lighten my burden by changing my perception.  It can be a hard and painful process because you see, my yoke has left some chaffed and reddened areas and as with any healing there is pain involved, but then something amazing happens....  I discover one by one as I hand them over that God doesn't have nearly the expectations of me that I had thought....  Oh He still has a lot of things He wants me to do and to be honest some of them scare me, but the difference becomes that He takes so many things off of my plate because He knows what He created me to be.  He doesn't want that overflowing calendar.  He wants me doing a few things that He designed me for well rather than an overflowing calendar full of things that I'm only able to half invest in.

So to answer the question, what does it look like to live intentionally?  For me it means intentionally taking those moments and even hours of whitespace time.  Allowing God to clear my calendar and filling it with those things that He calls me to.  It means saying Yes to God and No to other things that might seem good, but aren't God's best for me.  It means intentionally investing in myself so that I have more to give to others.

So what about you?  Will you allow God to introduce you to the rest that He wants you to know?  Are you willing to introduce whitespace into your calendar so that He can make you into the work of art he designed you to be?  Are you willing to live intentionally?