Maybe, Just Maybe, He Wants to Hold Our Cares for Us

It’s no secret this week has been a rough one for me. And if you read two posts I wrote in one of my other blog spaces this week, you’ll learn even more of the context for why that is. 

So this morning when I woke and still found myself battling “the heavies,” I sat down for a while in my small hallway — back against one wall, bare feet propped against the wall in front of me, and a heavy blue yoga mat adding cushion to my seat upon the hardwood floor. 

I sat in tucked in that little hallway space for a while, plenty far from the distractions of my computer and my cell phone, and just stared at the wall in front of me and prayed. 

Inside that prayer time, I could see Jesus and me at the beach.

We were thigh-deep in the ocean water, and we were smiling and laughing with each other. Every once in a while, I would spin myself around in the water, play-dancing with him a little bit, letting him delight in me as I delighted in the beauty and freedom of that present moment. 

There was such lightness and joy in that scene, and it seemed to be my true self at peace and at rest and so carefree in the presence of my Lord. 

And yet I sat on the floor in my hallway and told Jesus that scene just felt so far away. 

My true self was also nestled between the beadboard hallway of my house, heart-heavy and sad about the state of the world, of history, and of my own dark demons. 

The distance between here and there could not have been more poignant: one light and carefree and full of joy and laughter, the other heavy and burdened and full of sadness and grief. 

My true heart grieves. My true heart also trusts. 

The invitation from Jesus in that moment seemed to be not to carry it alone. He reminded me of this invitation: 

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” 

— Matthew 11:28-30

Maybe, just maybe, he wants to carry the truth of my grief. Maybe, just maybe, he wants to carry it while walking with me and talking with me about it. He doesn’t want to negate it is there. He doesn’t want to deny the reality of my cares. He gave me the cares that I have — he made my heart care for these things.

He simply wants to hold the weight of those cares as we walk and talk together about them.

And maybe, in the midst of all that, he also wants to let me play.

What Does He Say to Our Shame? The Benefits of a Reverse Perspective

God doesn’t like me right now. 

He doesn’t want to spend time with me. 

He’s telling me I better shape up.

I’ve heard these words fall from the lips of people I love in recent days, and my immediate response has been to call those words out like the lies from hell they are:

He always likes you.

His enjoyment of you never ends.

He always, always, always wants to spend time with you.

Those aren’t God’s words to you.

That isn’t his voice. 

Why is it so easy for me to see that truth so clearly when it comes to the people I love? It’s another story when it comes to me. 

Today is another day of discouragement for me, just like yesterday was. But it’s different from yesterday, in that yesterday’s heaviness had to do with feeling oppressed by the darkness of the world and the powers at work in it that make the light and love that I have inside me feel so small. 

Today’s discouragement has to do with me.

Barking, snarling voices in the back of my mind tell me everything I’m doing wrong. They yelp about all the ways I’m falling short and failing. They diminish me. They make everything and everyone else feel so big, almost monster-sized.

They make it hard for me to reach Jesus — to see him or hear his voice or even sit still enough to let him find me.

Thankfully, I have the experience of a really good friendship that has taught me a thing or two about how to receive love in moments when I’m feeling particularly unloveable.

This friend and I have been gifted with many moments of realization in the years of our friendship that the love and acceptance we feel toward the other person might — just might — be the same love and acceptance they feel toward us.

It’s always a healing aha moment when we can turn the tables on ourselves in a particularly heavy moment and offer ourselves this kind of reverse perspective:

Hmmm. If you told me that you feel about yourself the way I’m feeling about myself right now and that you feared I would feel that way toward you, too, I know without a doubt that I’d feel the exact opposite than what you fear.

So perhaps — just perhaps — you feel the opposite toward me right now than what I fear you feel. 

Reverse perspectives can be so helpful and such a gift. I think every time I’ve exercised a reverse perspective in a friendship, I have been set free from my heaviness and fears. I’ve been able, thankfully, to accept the possibility of love and open my heart to receive it. 

So today, just a little while ago, that is what I did with God. 

In the midst of all those snarling voices barking at me, I remembered those responses I’d shared the last few days with people I love who have voiced to me their dark beliefs about God’s perspective of them. 

He always enjoys spending time with you. 

He always wants to be near you. 

He never grows tired of you. 

He does not condemn you.

And I turned those words back on myself. 

It really helped. Those snarling voices faded away, seen for the lying dogs they are, and the light of God’s truth shined brighter and brighter still. 

Today, I’m going to keep moving toward that light. I’m going to keep advancing toward Jesus and the truth he speaks over me.

How might a reverse perspective help you in the midst of your own feelings of shame or discouragement today?

My Prayer for You Today

Sometimes I become overwhelmed at the state of the world and all its tragedies and ruin. Today has been one such day. I have been filled with such heaviness of heart today, despair looming close and near, and so I practically crawled to the noonday eucharist at my church. I needed to be reminded of the hope that we have in Christ. 

There, we were reminded of the feast day of the conversion of St. Paul — a man who persecuted the early Christians tirelessly, dragging them before authorities and overseeing their deaths in the name of religious fervor and zeal.

And yet, one day, he was converted in an instant to Christianity. As he writes in his letter to the Galatian church: 

“God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me … “

— Galatians 1:15-16

The story of St. Paul’s conversion brought me a much-needed reminder of hope today.

Most especially, it reminded me that God is the one who calls us and is pleased to reveal his son to us at just the right time. He knows when it is time for each one of us to encounter the risen Christ in a way that will change us forever. 

And so my prayer today — for you, for me, and for all of this big wide world — is that God would indeed call us to himself through his grace and be pleased to reveal his son, the Christ, Jesus, to each one of us.

How Grace and Truth Relate

I mentioned in a previous post that the first thing I learned in my long journey of coming to understand grace and my need for Jesus was the reality of grace — that grace is the aspect of God that invites us closer to him wholeheartedly and without a single reservation. It’s about our full acceptance and welcome in the presence of God, no strings attached.

This was a pretty huge paradigm shift for me. 

I knew my whole life that God’s love was unconditional and that Jesus created a way for us to have full access to God — but really, that idea lived mostly in my head. I didn’t really understand unconditional love and acceptance because I’d lived most of my life inside rules and conditions.

So the journey into grace was about learning to breathe and receive my love and worth before God. And it took several long and searching years for me to find that path, let me tell you.

But I’ve come to believe it is this foundation of grace that prepares us for the truth of God. I’ve come to believe that no matter how long it takes or how hard-won the journey might be, it is the most essential reality God desires us to receive through our life with Christ.

When we look at Jesus, we are told that he is “the fullness of grace and truth” (John 1:14). What does that really mean? 

It means that somehow, in love, grace and truth peacefully coexist and belong together. 

But without a foundation of grace firmly rooted inside us first, without knowing in a visceral, very real way our full welcome and acceptance with God, then words of truth — and particularly words of correction — only strike us as harsh and shaming. All we hear in words of truth is that we’re going the wrong way and need to go the right way, as though going the right way is more important than who we are.

At least, that has been my experience. Has that been yours?

But once we are in a relationship of full acceptance and embrace, knowing that nothing we do wrong will remove that full embrace and that standing invitation of welcome, we can read these words that David wrote in the psalms …

Train me, God, to walk straight;
   then I’ll follow your truth path.
Put me together, one heart and mind;
   then, undivided, I’ll worship in joyful fear.

— Psalm 86:11 

… and give thanks and make them our prayer.

In a loving, grace-filled relationship, the truth that teaches us to walk straight becomes a gift. It becomes a gentle and loving guide intended for our good. It becomes an object of hope, rather than a ruler of judgment. It becomes something for which we give thanks.

What is your experience of grace and truth? Where in the journey into either do you find yourself today?

Pulse Check: What Is Bringing You Joy?

Earlier this month, I announced the start of a periodic new series here called Pulse Check. Every once in a while, these posts will crop up and invite you to take a look around and assess a particular aspect of your life. The first installment of the series asked the question, “How is your relationship with God?” 

Today, I’d like to invite you to consider the presence of joy in your world right now. 

Stop for a moment and consider: 

What is bringing you life? What’s bringing a smile to your face? What’s making time stand still? What’s making you laugh from that really good, full-of-hope-and-life place within you? 

Here’s my answer to the question: 

• A continued sense of connection and deepening love for Kirk
• A chance to immerse myself again in the autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. 
• My little girl kitty, Diva, who always loves to sit with me at my desk in the morning
• The birth of a beautiful baby girl to one of my dearest friends on the planet
• Participation in the life of our church
• Jesus
• The anticipation of a very full + vibrant year ahead

What about you?

Our Burden Really Is Light

Normally I have no idea what I’m going to write here in this space until I sit down and spend time in the quiet with Jesus each morning. But I’ve known since yesterday that I was going to write this post today, when I was in the process of writing that our role is simply to say yes. 

What I want to share with you is something that totally changed everything for me when it comes to understanding what we do and what God does in our process of formation. 

Yesterday, I wrote that our role is simply to notice God’s activity in our lives and then to say yes to it. Our role is to say yes and to embrace his work. I wrote that God does the hard work — all we do is choose to participate. 

But what does our participation look like? What does it mean to say yes? 

Enter the principle of indirection. This is something I first discovered about three years ago, and it completely blew my mind. 

The principle basically says this: 

We do what we can do (something within our power to do) in order to provide an opportunity for God to do in us what we cannot do for ourselves (something outside the scope of our power). 

Usually this means choosing something tangible to practice intentionally and regularly for a season — something it is not difficult for us to exert our will to do — and doing it with the trust and intention for God to do the hard work of changing our character in the places he wants it changed. 

That’s what I mean about him doing what we cannot do. We cannot change ourselves; only he can. But we can participate by acknowledging that we’re aware he wants to work in us and by choosing something small to practice as an acceptance of that work.

This is the idea that backs up Jesus’ words that he came to heal the sick, for the sick cannot heal themselves.

It’s the idea that backs up what Paul promises about how God, who began a good work in us, will be faithful to complete it. It’s the idea that backs up what is told to us about Jesus washing us and then presenting us clean and perfect and pristine before the throne of God in the end.

It’s the idea that backs up all those passages I quoted from Romans 3-5 yesterday about God’s role and our role in the life we share with him.

Our burden really is light because our participation — our saying yes — simply means choosing to do something that is safely within our power to do, trusting that God will supernaturally use it to change our very nature. 

This is not onerous work. It is not meant to be. But it is meant to be intentional. And it is meant to be done with the trust that God is the one who changes us.

Hat tip: I actually wrote about the principle of indirection here about three years ago, when I first learned about it and was starting to have my mind blown by the concept. If you’d like to hear some specific examples of what the principle of indirection can look like in an ordinary life (my own), check out the original article that shares the way I began to practice it from the beginning. 

What simple, faithful choice might you adopt to enter into the acceptance of the work God is about in you right now?

Our Role Is Simply to Say Yes

I’ve been reading the book of Romans lately, and I keep getting stuck at chapters 3-5. These are pretty mind-blowing chapters that teach us so much more than I can even wrap my head around about what God does and what we do. 

These chapters say things like this: 

God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness. 

God sets right all who welcome his action and enter into it. 

Abraham entered into what God was doing for him. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own. 

It was by embracing what God did for him that Abraham was declared fit before God.

This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does.

We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us.

God is the one who does the work. Our job is simply to say yes — to receive and enter into what God’s doing.

I look at my life and see that I may participate in the burnishing and refinement process of my life — the hot fires that make us pliable as he forms us into the image he has always had in mind for who we are — but God is the one doing the actual molding all along. He is the one who conceived of the original image he wanted to create in me from the beginning. He’s the one who went about working with conditions and creating new conditions and then molding and forming me through those conditions into the image he wants in me.

All I have had to do is allow it to happen. 

But let’s be truthful: this “allowing it to happen” isn’t always easy.

It pushes against what we’ve learned so far in life and how we normally operate. It can bring us face to face with pieces of ourselves that aren’t so pretty, and we’d much rather look away or brush them under the couch or push them into a corner closet and then close and lock the door. We may be scared to death of what God’s doing or wants to do because we can’t see the outcome, because it means relinquishing control, and because we’re not (yet) so sure he’s worth trusting with the reins of our lives.

But this, too, is something true: God’s original image of you is brilliant. Glorious. Beautiful. Perfect.

It may take hot fires and great discomfort and courage to live into that original image, but nothing else on earth compares to the result.

Where in your life is God inviting you to say “yes” to his touch right now? 

The True Self is Un-Self-Conscious

I was laying in bed this morning, contemplating the words my spiritual director wrote on my Facebook wall for my birthday today.

She called me her friend “who adores Jesus.” 

First of all, I love that she knows me so well — knows that I am indeed in love with Jesus and that I find my life revolving around him more and more with each passing day.

But it also got me thinking about my session with her last week, in which we discussed the true self and the false self. In that session, she had recalled for me what my true self really looks like. I was reminded that my true self walks and talks and sits with Jesus. I remembered that my true self twirls and dances with Jesus. 

And I realized this morning: my true self is not self-conscious at all. 

I could see so clearly that in those places where I walk and talk and sit and dance and twirl with Jesus, I’m not focused on myself at all. I don’t care what I look like, nor am I judging at all what I’m saying or doing. I’m aware of those things, obviously, but not focused on them.

I’m not the main thing. Jesus is. 

He is the focus of my attention, the one of whom I can never seem to get enough.

What he looks like, what he says, how he looks at me, what his gestures are like, how he smiles, what he looks like when he’s thinking or when he’s listening, the ways he teaches and guides or corrects me … all of him captivates my attention.

In this place, there’s no need or room to be self-conscious. 

It’s a wonderfully relieving place to be — not to be preoccupied with myself, but to be concerned fully, instead, with him.

Have you ever experienced un-self-consciousness? What was that experience like for you?

Oriented Toward Encounter, No Matter the Circumstance

“I remember a time when I used to be much godlier. It was sometime in junior high and my room was clean. It must have been beautiful weather outside because the lighting was very nice in my room where I was reading my Bible every day and feeling really good. It was quite clear to me that my sanctification was progressing very well. …

But God took me out of that life and threw me into the rock tumbler. Here, it is not so easy to feel godly. … Here, there is very little time for quiet reflection. … The opportunities for growth and refinement abound here — but you have to be willing. You have to open your heart to the tumble.”

— from Loving the Little Years, pp. 13-14

I’ve connected with a few friends recently who are in the soul-sanctifying work of motherhood every day.

One of them shared with me that no station in life has presented her with the reality of her sinfulness so much as motherhood. Another shared that life is an absolute sprint from the moment she wakes until the minute she falls asleep. Still another shared a glimpse into the tension between loving one’s child and one’s God — putting their needs and desires above her own — and the reality of emotions and desires and hormones and personal needs. 

I heard that nothing has so fulfilled these women as being a mother — I saw the joy in their faces and heard it in their voices — even though they have found it to be the most demanding and humbling work they have ever done.

I also heard these friends share that intentionally connecting to God in this place is difficult.

How is stopping to orient one’s self and connect to one’s inner heart and an intangible God possible in the middle of a full-out sprint that involves Fruit Loops, spit-up, sibling rivalry, and getting everyone cleaned, dressed, fed, brushed, strapped in, scooting around town, and eventually sleeping safely in their beds every night?

There is bewilderment in this place. What does connecting to God look like here?

I am sure these friends of mine could answer that question much better than me. I am not a mother, and they are. They are the ones presented with the question each and every day who are finding their way through to the answer the best way they know how.

But I share these stories and ask these questions to draw our attention to this: God is here. 

Ours is a God who met a childless woman each and every year she came to the temple and did not fail to hear her prayer (Hannah). Ours is a God who met a king in the midst of his sin and called him to repent (David). Ours is a God who wrestled with a man so strongheaded that he bulled his way into every reality he wanted to create for himself (Jacob).

Ours is a Jesus who knew exactly how to speak to an adulteress, a blind man, a remorseful fisherman, a traitor, a thief, a mother weeping over her son, a government official, a leper, a pair of sisters, a man throwing Christians in jail, a prostitute, a man sneaking off to talk with him in the dead of night, and the list goes on and on.

If the Scriptures teach us anything, it is that ours is a God who knows how to connect and relate and speak directly to us, no matter the situation or circumstance in which he encounters us.

As the quote at the top of this post declares, finding God in the rough and tumble (the author speaks to motherhood, but I would expand this sentiment to include any and every station we might live out) simply asks of us an orientation toward encounter.

Openness. Awareness. Receptivity. 

Are you open to God meeting you exactly where you are? What might encounter with God look like for you today, right here and right now, in the midst of your exact circumstances?

How Do You Connect to God Right Where You Are?

In the last several months, I’ve noticed a theme crop up in numerous conversations with friends, acquaintances, and strangers. That theme has, at its root, a question:

What does it look like for me to connect to God in my specific life station or personality type? 

This has a lot of bearing on the work done here at Still Forming, and I’ve begun to take this question seriously.

For instance, the foundation of this site is a week-daily invitation to a moment of stillness in your day. But what if moments of stillness rarely exist in your world? What do you do if quiet reflections of the heart are a luxury you can barely fathom?

Or, what if you’re an extrovert? What if you’d rather be outdoors than sitting quietly at your desk, reading the scriptures? What if you need to see and hear and touch God to know he’s real, rather than use your intuition?

In other words: 

Is there room for me and God to connect, no matter where I am in life or how I’m made? 

My response to that question is yes. And I’ll share more of my thoughts on this here with you as I continue to explore and consider the question. (Some of my thoughts on the question have been previously written here, here, here, and here.)

But for now, I’d like to open up an opportunity for you to share your input. 

Where is God where you live right now? How are you finding God in the midst of your current life station?

How do you connect to God through the way you’re made? How does he make himself uniquely personal to you and the person that you are?

Living in the True Self

I was in a session with my spiritual director yesterday, and we talked quite a bit about the true self — the self God created when he created us, the self into which it is his ever-continuing intention to form us throughout our lives. 

There was a moment in my time of prayer during the session when I could see three selves inside of me, two of them false and one of them true. 

The two false selves exist on the extremes of a pendulum.

On the far right is the self that wants and seeks to be super-human. This is the self that wants to create magic, to be the irreplaceable part of other people’s lives, to be the savior for another person’s quandary. It’s the self that exists under extreme pressure to live up to some ideal of perfection and shininess in order to be needed and wanted and utterly indispensable to others and to this world.

On the far left is a completely opposite self. This self exists in the shadows, behind a heavy curtain, cloaked in shame. This is the self who walks with eyes downcast, ashamed to meet other people eye to eye. It is the self who shrinks from being seen, the self who lurches into coffee shops and grocery stores and the post office and drives down the road with a sense of unworthiness and fear. It is the self who apologizes all the time for merely existing.

Neither of these selves are true.

And I’m so thankful for long-standing relationships, like the one I have with my director, Elaine, that can be a place of reminder. Because of our long-standing relationship, Elaine was able to remind me — through concrete examples — of the true self I have come to know and embody and embrace through my relationship with Christ.

This is the self who walks on the beach with Jesus regularly. It is the self who took a four-month journey through the woods with Jesus, even though I didn’t know what would transpire in those woods or what would emerge on the other side of them. It is the self who eventually came upon a village with Jesus and who sits on benches and rocks and walls and front-porch stoops with him. 

It is the self who knows Jesus and is completely free and strong and fully alive and full of joy in his presence.

There is no shame present at all in my true self, and no need at all for magic. Just being.

The true self lives in honest and glad surrender to these truths: Jesus alone is the one who holds and offers and is the magic. And with Jesus, there is no evidence or place for shame.

Have you met your true self yet? What is that self like? When do you most often inhabit and live inside your true self?

Are you familiar, as I am, with the pendulum that swings from one false self to another? What is your false self (or selves) like? What does your false self seek? How might companioning with Jesus help bring you back to center, to living in the rest and assurance and joy of the true self he created when he created you?

He Makes It Beautiful

All Sons and Daughters, “Brokenness Aside,” run time 6 minutes, 15 seconds
If you can’t see the video in your e-mail window, click here. 

—-

Today’s been an interesting one so far. I’ve cried three times! (That’s not usual fare for me.) And each time, it’s because the beauty of God and the preciousness of Jesus have moved me to tears.

God is just so beautiful. And I want you to know and see that beauty, too. 

It’s difficult to know how to describe it, though. Words are so vastly insufficient. 

But in the midst of so much insufficiency (on my part), this song above has kept ringing over and over inside of me. It’s a song that builds upon the previous post written here about God’s grace giving room for you to breathe. It speaks of God’s all-encompassing welcome of you, no matter what the state of your wretchedness might be, and how he — the beautiful One — makes us beautiful, too. 

PS: My apologies for the advertisement that plays before the video begins! This really is the best video rendition of the song that I could find, but you might choose to mute your speakers during the 30-second ad spot. That’s what I do, at least. :-)

Room to Be Yourself

I’ve shared here before that my path to an authentic relationship with God began with an honest confession that I really never had come to understand grace or my need for Jesus, and that this confession was followed by a prayer for God to teach me both. 

That was 13 years ago, and my life has been an ever-winding journey toward the answer to that prayer ever since. 

I’ve learned some things since then — about God, about myself, about the nature and intent and process of formation — and the very first one has to do with grace.

Grace is that aspect of God that invites us in wholeheartedly and without a single reservation. 

This is what Jesus makes possible: full access to God. 

And not just access but welcome! We are ushered in with the unending invitation to draw nearer and nearer and nearer. 

My reading yesterday morning in the psalms affirmed this truth with these words: 

You’ve always given me breathing room,
   a place to get away from it all.
A lifetime pass to your safe-house,
   an open invitation as your guest.
You’ve always taken me seriously, God,
   made me welcome among those who know and love you.

— Psalm 61:3-5 

Love is first full of grace. Of welcome. Of invitation and full acceptance. 

Can you receive this gift of grace from God today? What is it like for you to receive an irrevocable invitation into the safe-house of God, a place that offers you unending breathing room, a relationship with One who always takes you seriously?

Pulse Check: Your Relationship with God?

Hello there, friends. 

Today is the first official day of the new year for me, as we traveled for three weeks and just got stationed back inside our home and normal routine this past weekend. I’ve stocked the refrigerator, paid the bills, run some errands, and am sitting back at my favorite place in our home: my desk. 

All feels right with the world again, and I’m ready to start afresh. How about you?

At the start of this new year, I thought I would institute a new occasional feature here on Still Forming, called pulse check. This will be an opportunity for us to stop and take a look around at our personal worlds and consider some things: how are we doing in certain areas of life? what do we need? what are we noticing?

Every once in a while, it’s helpful to stop and look around. Don’t you agree? 

So today, let’s take a pulse check concerning our relationship with God.

What is that relationship like for you these days? Is God present? Absent? Talkative? Silent? Are you finding yourself connected in new ways to God right now? Is something different, puzzling, exciting, or particularly hard? How would you describe that relationship right now?

Here’s my answer to the question, and feel free to share yours in the comments.

Although I absolutely love to travel, I am pretty much a homebody and incredible creature of habit. I need my quiet, my familiar environs, and the sacredness of my morning routine. These are things that help me connect to God, to find a still point and center from which to live out my days, and to sit in the stillness before Jesus and learn what he wants to offer to you here in this space.

So traveling, as much as I adore it, always takes a bit of a toll on me, and these last three weeks away are no exception.

Today was the first day in quite some time that I opened my Bible and spent time reading and reflecting on its pages. It was the first time in quite a while that I closed my eyes, met with Jesus, and asked him what he wanted to say. It was the first time I’d opened my mouth to sing a few hymns out loud in the silence and solitude of my little corner of our home. It was the first time in ages that I pulled out my prayer mat and knelt and then lay face-down on it to pray. 

Since I’ve been out of practice at taking this extended time of quiet with Jesus, it was a bit harder than usual or expected to quiet my brain and really focus on him. The ticking of the new clock on my desk distracted me to no end, and my mind kept flitting to to-do-list tasks and what to make for dinner, among other things.

But eventually — through a line of the psalms that jumped off the page and landed in my heart, echoing my own prayer; through the incredible stories of Peter and John in the early chapters of Acts; through the story of Elijah throwing his cloak over the unsuspecting Elisha; and through the glorious imagery and victory of the last chapters of Revelation — my focus began to return. 

I’ve missed my connection to Jesus these last few weeks. Even though we’ve been connected in more everyday ways these last few weeks — in conversations I carried with him in my heart on our car rides and plane trips, in conversations I carried with Kirk and with others about spiritual matters, in prayers offered from the bathroom tile floor when I was sicker than a dog, and in a regular sense of his presence carried with me as I drove around town or walked the aisles of a grocery store — it is really the quiet, extended routine at my desk each day that keeps me connected in meaningful ways to Jesus right now in my life.

I’ve missed him, and I’ve missed this routine, and I need it. I’m so glad to be back at home.

What about you? If you take a pulse check of your relationship with God right now, what do you find? Feel free to share your reponse in the comments. xo

Where I've Been . . .

Hello, friends.

It’s been weighing on my heart to write a note here, sharing where I’ve been and why there was no registration announcement for the Look at Jesus course earlier this week, as promised. 

I mentioned in my previous post that we went on vacation for the holidays to visit my family in California. I wasn’t sure how much time I would have to write here, or how much internet connectivity I would have to write even if I wanted to. And it turned out the opportunities were scarce. When I did write, it was mainly to share some reflections on my personal blog about the spiritual retreat we took at the beginning of the trip (you can find those reflections here, here, and here). 

But there wasn’t much room for the kind of contemplative writing I bring to this space. I just had to trust that was going to be okay.

Then, toward the end of our time in California, shortly before the new year turned, I kept noticing that I didn’t feel ready to open registration for the Look at Jesus course. This bothered me, and I struggled to take my hesitation seriously — mainly because I had voiced the registration and course dates to you here, and I wanted to be faithful to my word. 

But the closer the registration date loomed, the less and less confident I felt that the course was ready to open again in January. There were several reasons for this, but some of those reasons had to do with commitments cropping up on my calendar that would have made teaching the course with faithfulness in January and February a bit difficult. This was problematic to me, because I like to give my courses my full attention when I teach.

So I’ve decided to postpone the course for a short while, and I hope to have an update on course dates for you soon. 

As it happens, I got dreadfully ill over the New Year’s holiday and was unable to share the registration postponement plan with you when I had hoped to do so. Thankfully, I’m all better now. Thank you so much for your patience!

Now I’m back home in our cozy home after nearly three weeks away, and it feels so great to be back. I look forward to returning to the regular weekday posting schedule here in the coming week.

xoxo,
Christianne 

Who Is This Jesus? (Part 7): One Who Changes Us

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I was at the noonday eucharist service at my church this week, and the Gospel reading for the day was the passage where John the Baptist’s disciples come to ask Jesus if he is really the Messiah that has been promised. Jesus tells them: 

“Go back and tell John what you have just seen and heard: 

The blind see,
The lame walk, 
Lepers are cleansed,
The deaf hear,
The dead are raised,
The wretched of the earth
have God’s salvation hospitality extended to them.” 

— Luke 7:18-23

I started thinking about the testimony Jesus gave here about himself. He was, in one sense, declaring himself to be the fulfillment of prophecy about the promised Messiah. But in another sense, I saw that he was declaring himself to be someone who changes the people who come in contact with him. 

When I reflect on my own life and journey with Jesus, I see that he is indeed one who has changed me. I am not the same person I was ten years ago, five years ago, one year ago, or even last week! The more I spend time with Jesus, getting to know him and being in regular relationship with him, the more I notice that I am becoming a new person. The process feels like something happening to me, rather than something I direct myself.

In this sense, it really is Jesus doing the changing in me.

How has Jesus changed me? He has softened my edges. He has placed compassion in my heart. He has given me a greater ability to hold seemingly contradictory truths at one time without feeling the need to resolve them. He has increased my patience and my love for people. He has strengthened my desire to love and serve others. He has helped my life to become less about me. 

Above all else, he has made me fall more and more in love with him. 

What about you? How has Jesus changed you as you’ve lived your life with him? Or what change does he seem to be about in you right now?

—-

Postnote #1: My apologies for the lack of consistent posts here in this space this week. We’ve been preparing to go out of town for the holidays! I will be posting here while on the road over the next couple weeks, but the posting schedule will be altered from the usually intended “five posts per week” to a schedule of “as our travels and wi-fi connectivity allow.” Thanks for your understanding.

Postnote #2: I will be offering the Look at Jesus course again in the new year! Registration will open on January 2, and the course will begin January 16. If you’ve found the posts in this series on Jesus meaningful, perhaps the Look at Jesus course would be a fitting next step for you. More details to come once registration opens on January 2!

Who Is This Jesus? (Part 6): One Who Calls

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I find it interesting that Jesus calls each person to follow him but that each call is particular.

Following Jesus can take a multitude of forms, but each life that follows Jesus involves a true encounter with Jesus, a mutual knowing of the truth of who we are before him, and an ability to hear and respond to what he asks or invites of us from there.

Zacchaeus was a tax collector, for instance. (See Luke 19:1-10.) He was the chief tax collector in his town, in fact, which meant he was very rich at the expense of everyone else. The tax collectors were notoriously crooked, demanding greater taxes than the state required so as to line their own pockets with the difference. 

He was not very popular, to say the least. 

But when Jesus called Zacchaeus, it made a difference in the specific way he lived. He determined to give half his riches to the poor and pay back those he had wronged financially four-fold. 

Then there’s Peter.

Peter was a fisherman all his life. Fishing is what he knew best and how he made a living. And when Jesus called Peter to follow him, it affected Peter’s life: “From now on you’ll be fishing for men and women” (Luke 5:10). And then later on, Jesus shifted Peter’s work again, telling him he would now become a shepherd: “Feed my lambs … Shepherd my sheep … Feed my sheep,” he told Peter (John 21:15-18).

What did Peter know about sheep-tending? He had been a fisherman all his life. 

But since that initial call to follow Jesus, he had learned more about what that following meant. He’d followed Jesus around for three years. He’d listened to Jesus teach, watched Jesus heal, witnessed so many miracles, and encountered the resurrected Christ. He’d been humbled and forgiven. And now it was time for Peter’s specific way of following Christ to become more particular to the person he’d become since that first call, so he was now being called to be a shepherd. 

The gospels are filled with stories like this. Each person, each encounter, each question, each search … every story is the encounter of a particular person coming in contact with Jesus and receiving an invitation to a particular call.

For someone who encountered Jesus in the midst of a particular sin, the call was to go and sin no more. For someone who’d been paralyzed their whole life, the call was to take up their mat and walk. For someone who was a social outcast because of their lifestyle and avoided contact with others at all costs, the call was to go into the town square and proclaim what had happened to everyone there. And, like Peter, the more we follow Christ, the more our particular call shifts as we continue becoming the people Jesus is continually making us to be.

Jesus invites us to follow him, and he tailors the call of that invitation to the place we currently are.

What does it look like for you to follow Jesus in this very moment? What is the particular call from him, right where you are?

Who Is This Jesus? (Part 5): One Who Sees the Truth and Gazes On It With You

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Henri Nouwen talks about prayer of the heart being a way of prayer in which we “descend with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all-seeing, within you.” 

Imagine that: going into the very truth of yourself and seeing what is there, while simultaneously knowing Jesus to be there, too, gazing on what is there with you. 

You may find this terrifying. And I think I did for many years in my life with God, too. We are often scared of the truth of ourselves, and inviting the God of the universe to see that truth with us can seem like a purely crazy thing to do. 

Unless our view of the truth and our view of God with us in that encounter of truth changes.

I really love noticing the way Jesus encounters people in the pages of the gospels when considering this.

When Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, he’s fully present to the conversation. He listens and genuinely responds to everything she says to him and asks of him. And then, in the midst of this conversation, he speaks the truth of her life to her: she has had five husbands and is now living with a man who isn’t her husband.

First she finds out that all this time he’s been talking to her, he’s known this truth about her and still continued the conversation. And then, when he speaks this truth out loud, he does so in such a measured tone.

There’s no condemnation in his words, only the spoken truth. 

And what’s more, even after he speaks this truth to her out loud — the truth that made her an outcast in her community — he goes on to continue their conversation. 

This must have totally turned the woman’s world upside-down.

Not only did someone speak to her without flinching or castigating her for the thing that made her a social pariah, but the person behaving this generously toward her, she soon came to find out, was the long-awaited Messiah. No wonder she ran into the village and started telling everyone she met about him!

And then there’s the example of the woman caught in adultery.

When the Pharisees dragged this woman before Jesus, his eyes don’t blaze in fury, nor does he hurl her from his presence in disgust. Instead, he kneels down and begins to write in the dirt with his finger — so calm and unobtrusive a response — while continuing to listen to the badgering crowd.

Then he makes a calm-as-can-be comment to them, straightens up, and asks the woman where her accusers have gone. 

Just like what happened with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus has a direct encounter with this woman who was standing before him in the naked, unhidden truth of her sin, and his response was not to flee or rail or turn away in disgust or cast her from his presence. Instead, he calmly and quietly asked her a question as they hold the truth of her life out in the open between them. 

There is a calmness to Jesus in these encounters that teaches us so much about what it is really like to encounter the truth of ourselves with Jesus, too. 

Jesus is not afraid of the truth of your heart. He will not turn away from any of the truth that you encounter there. He will not minimize it or pretend it isn’t there, either. He will look at it, and then he will look at you, and then the two of you will look at it together. 

And then you’ll talk. And you’ll continue to talk. And his posture toward you will never change.

Who Is This Jesus? (Part 4): One Who Removes Our Shame

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Today I’m going to share with you a part of my story I don’t write often about. It has to do with my having been married before sharing my life with Kirk.

In 2004, I went through a divorce. 

We had been married 6 years, the last year of which was spent with about six states separating us, and the marriage and divorce are among the most difficult parts of the journey I have lived.

I can look back now and see the whole of it through a lens of healing and forgiveness — both of which were quite hard-won — and I can also see that neither of us knew much about what we were doing in our life together but were doing the best we could with what we had.

Today, I want to talk about the impact the divorce had on me and how it affected my life with God and my understanding of Jesus.

I remember how precious that year of separation and the first six months of my divorce were in my life with God. I was living on my own for the first time and had rented a tiny guesthouse in the historic district near my hometown. Every day, I would go in and out of my little guesthouse, conscious that I was learning what it meant to be the bride of Christ instead of someone else’s bride.

I was learning through that time, too, what it meant to be feminine and lovely to God, and so I began to wear clothes that deepened my ongoing awareness of that reality: pants in pastel colors of pinks and greens and purples, with various textures like velvet and corduroy and appliques like satin sash belts. I wore layers of blouses and jackets, too, and enjoyed the detail of ruffles and pearl buttons and chiffon overlays of my clothing.

And almost every night before bed, I would settle into my little twin bed inside that tiny guesthouse and read the words of Psalm 139 over and over again.

In all of this, I knew that God was teaching me my value.

But even still, underneath all that tender engagement with God, there was a seed of shame. 

No matter how much I had fought against divorce, still here I was: divorced. I was divorced without having chosen to be so, and I could do nothing to change it. Divorce seemed like the worst possible outcome for my marriage, and I couldn’t imagine the depth of God’s disappointment when he looked down upon me and saw that blight upon my life. 

I felt at a loss for how to hold this, and so at some point, I sat down with a pastor from my church to talk about it.

We sat on a planter outside the church after one of the services, and I told him how ashamed I felt. I told him that it seemed like the whole of my life going forward from here was counterfeit, since I was walking a path God never would have chosen for me.

God was in Plan A, but the divorce had averted me to Plan B — so now what worth could my life have to God?

I’ll never forget what the pastor said to me that day.

He looked at me and said, “Christianne, when God looks down from heaven at you, he doesn’t say, ‘There’s Christianne, my divorced daughter.’ He says, ‘There’s Christianne, my daughter.’ He doesn’t see your divorce. That’s what Jesus died for.” 

This was the first time what Jesus did on the cross really clicked for me. 

So much of my life, as I’ve shared before, had to do with perfectionism and performing well. I had sinned, definitely, and had asked forgiveness for my sins. But since everything I did was driven by a motive to outshine every possible standard, my heart never really got in touch with the depth of my humanity or sinfulness.

What’s more, the especially difficult sins in my life were practically invisible to me — I couldn’t hold the truth of them because that truth was too painful to admit. 

This is why I couldn’t understand grace. And that is why, in that single conversation with my pastor, I understood grace for the very first time. 

The reality of Christ’s death on the cross removes every single mark of shame upon our lives. Because of Jesus, we can now live in pure, unadulterated, enjoyable communion with God.

This is something that makes me amazed and in awe of Jesus.

Who Is This Jesus? (Part 3): One Who Made & Delights in Us

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I mentioned earlier in this series that I was just about to enter my junior year in college when I came face to face with a truth about my lifelong faith: I didn’t really understand it in a personal way. One of the most true and heartfelt prayers that I’d ever uttered up to that point came out: “God, please teach me my need for Jesus and for grace.” 

This took me on a very long journey. 

Through the reading of that book and the realization that I really didn’t get what grace really was, I started to examine so much about my life — the way I felt, the way I thought, the way I acted, and what was underneath all of that feeling and thinking and acting. 

I became quite overwhelmed with the realities I encountered inside of me. For about two years, I went deep inside myself to learn what was there. And what I learned — which I’d not really grappled with before — was how much everything I did was rooted in perfectionism and performance. Everything — and I mean everything — was tied to an urgent need to do things perfectly, to shine, and to be loved in all that shininess. 

This bled into my life with God, too. 

Once I saw that my life with others and with God was based so wholistically on performance, I put on the brakes. I stopped doing. I stopped performing. I stopped going, going, going. I barely went to church. I stopped connecting to God in the usual ways I’d always done. I let myself curse out loud for the first time in my adult life, and I contemplated what it would be like to take up smoking. (This may sound silly, but it’s true.)

All of this was part of a lived prayer: God, show me that you love me beyond my performance. Teach me what it means to be unconditionally loved by you. 

Two years into this journey, I graduated college and started working full-time. Pretty quickly out of the gate, I was working two jobs — one full-time and one part-time — and I came face to face with the reality of my anxiety struggle. 

I think I was made acutely aware of my anxiety struggle at that time because I’d spent the previous two years realizing how performance-based my entire life had been. I was in the midst of trying to learn God’s unconditional love for me instead — how to be loved beyond my functions and accomplishments — but was suddenly working 60+ hours every week and trying to learn how to be a professional for the very first time.  

Cue anxiety and struggle and pain and turmoil and fear. Every. Single. Day.

One night, I spent an evening with a group of female college students. They were enrolled in the honors program for which I was the adjunct faculty director of the writing program. They were hosting a discussion night with all the female faculty of the program, and each of the faculty were invited to bring one of our favorite books around which to host a small group discussion with the female students. 

At the time, my favorite book was Denise Levertov’s collection, The Stream and the Sapphire, so I photocopied a few of my favorite poems from the collection and headed to the event. The female population of the program were milling about, chatting with each other and the other faculty, and I could feel the anxiety in me begin heighten. (I really am no good at small talk events.)

Then, shortly before the event was set to begin, one of the student coordinators approached me and asked if I would be willing to share my discussion group with another faculty member’s group, as only one person had signed up for my group. 

Ouch. That was a humbling moment. 

Another humbling moment came in the midst of the actual discussion group. The other faculty member had been able to generate with seeming ease quite a bit of discussion around the book she’d brought, even though no one in the group had read it before, but the discussion of the poems I had brought, despite having brought several for us to look at together, seemed to fall flat. 

I left the event feeling so much shame. 

On my drive home down the 5 freeway, I cried so hard.

I yelled at God: “What do you want from me? How do I do this? You say that you love me unconditionally, but I don’t know what that means. All I feel is failure and embarrassment. I don’t feel like I’ll ever be good enough. I don’t know how to get outside of this performance struggle.”

And somehow in the midst of all those tears and verbal explosions, something new happened. 

I can’t explain how it happened, but suddenly I was in the middle of an invitation to consider all the ways that God had made me — unique and creative and particular-to-me ways of being. 

My care for people. 

My ability to listen well. 

My love of writing. 

My enjoyment of sushi.

My fear of spiders. 

All of these particularities about myself started coming to mind, and I realized consciously for the first time: God made me this way, and all these particulars — no matter how big or small in size — delight him to no end. They’re what make me uniquely Christianne. 

When I exited the freeway, I pulled into a fast-food parking lot, dried my eyes, and marveled at this new realization. God loves me for who I am.

Scripture tells us that Jesus is the origin of all creation. It says that everything came into being through him and that nothing came into existence without him (see John 1:3 and Colossians 1:15-18).

We were created by and through Jesus. And what he created in us — who we simply are — delights him endlessly.