"Man Is More Manlike . . ."

While reading a book over the holidays, I came across this quote by G. K. Chesterton that has continued to stay with me: 

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.

— G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

I’ve known quite a bit of grief in my life. 

Some of those griefs are more obvious than others. Some made pricks with the tiniest pin at the time they grazed me, almost without my noticing, until the pain of it came cascading down in a torrent fifteen or twenty years later. 

For many, many years, such grief and pain were the major themes of my story. 

But that isn’t the case anymore.

I give full credit to the healing work of Christ’s love in my life for that. (I wrote about one of those threads of healing that happened in my life 10 years ago on the blog for Spring Arbor’s graduate program earlier this week.)

Here is something true.

There was a time I couldn’t fathom telling my story any other way than through its prism of pain. But I’ve since learned there is completely new and free and joy-filled life on the other side of sorrow, when we are met in the honest depths of our pain with love.

Such love brings about a life that eventually makes the pain small. It is a love that eventually helps us know joy as the main thing, and grief as the minor. 

Can you relate to either sides of this story — living inside the depths of grief, or emerging on the other side of it into healing’s joy? What have you learned through either experience?

It's Nature and Nurture

I was reading Psalm 104 earlier this week and deeply encouraged on so many levels — namely, with the recognition that it is nature and nurture that make us who we are. 

The psalm speaks mainly of the natural world — of oceans and mountains and all kinds of animals. Here is a portion of the text: 

You blanketed earth with ocean,
   covered the mountains with deep waters;
Then you roared and the water ran away —
   your thunder crash put it to flight.
Mountains pushed up, valleys spread out
   in the places you assigned them.
You set boundaries between earth and sea;
   never again will earth be flooded.
You started the springs and rivers,
   sent them flowing among the hillls.
All the wild animals now drink their fill,
   wild donkeys quench their thirst.
Along the riverbanks the birds build nests,
   ravens make their voices heard.
You water the mountains from your heavenly cisterns;
   earth is supplied with plenty of water.
You make grass grow for the livestock,
   hay for the animals that plow the ground.

God’s trees are well-watered —
   the Lebanon cedars he planted.
Birds build their nests in those trees;
   look — the stork at home in the treetop.
Mountain goats climb about the cliffs;
   badgers burrow among the rocks.
The moon keeps track of the seasons,
   the sun is in charge of each day.
When it’s dark and night takes over,
   all the forest creatures come out.
The young lions roar for their prey,
   clamoring to God for their supper.
When the sun comes up, they vanish,
   lazily stretched out in their dens.
Meanwhile, men and women go out to work,
   busy at their jobs until evening.

What a wildly wonderful world, God!
   You made it all, with Wisdom at your side,
   made earth overflow with your wonderful creations.
Oh, look — the deep, wide sea,
   brimming with fish past counting,
   sardines and sharks and salmon.
Ships plow those waters,
   and Leviathan, your pet dragon, romps in them.
All the creatures look expectantly to you
   to give them their meals on time.
You come, and they gather around;
   you open your hand and they eat from it.
If you turned your back,
   they’d die in a minute —
Take back your Spirit and they die,
   revert to original mud;
Send out your Spirit and they spring to life —
   the whole countryside in bloom and blossom.

— Psalm 104 

We’ve been talking quite a bit these days about the true self and the false self.

I would define the true self as the image God had in mind for us when he conceived to create us. It is a self connected to God and rooted in the reality of God’s good intention for our existence.

I would define the false self as anything in us that separates or disconnects us from God and our true self. This can include original sin, chosen sin, or simply the distractions and diversions that we seek out in an attempt to build ourselves up into an image we’ve created for ourselves, rather than the image already given to us by God that is deeply good and beautiful. 

In this passage above, I see so much that speaks to these dynamics, both in the ways we were created to exist (the true self) and the ways we can be de-formed away from that existence (the false self). 

Let’s begin with the way God created the earth and all that dwells within it.

In its serene, contented, intended state, all of creation responds to God and is given everything it needs by God. We see the plants and animals and livestock responding to their existence by simply going about it. They eat grass that never stops growing up for them, they build nests with endless supplies for the making of them, they trust God for their next meal. 

This is the intended existence of life: being who we were made to be, un-self-conscious about it, and trusting God for everything good thing. 

But then think about what happens to animals when they’re harmed. 

When I read this passage the other day, I thought about my lovely cat Diva.

Kirk rescued her as a kitten from behind an opera house (hence her name), but she was a matted, mewling mess. She’d been abandoned, and the elements had not been good to her. She weighed next to nothing, and she skitted away from human contact. It was only because of the immediate way Solomon took to her that day — Solomon, whom Kirk was also rescuing that day — as he began licking her all over, cleaning her fur, as soon as they were set down in a box together, that Kirk knew Diva was going home with him that day.

When it came time for me to meet Diva for the first time, about six years after she’d come to live with Kirk, he warned me she would likely run away and hide under a table or couch, scared. But instead she came near, smelled my feet, rubbed against my legs, allowed me to bend down and run my hand along her back quite a few times. 

Over the last seven years of my life with Diva, she’s grown. She still gets skittish, especially fighting against too much presence crowding her space if you hold her close to your chest, but she has a quiet confidence about her. She rests next to me on my desk each morning, content to simply be with me. She waits expectantly by my chair, staring up at me with an unending gaze of plaintive eyes, begging me to give her some affection and completely unafraid to ask for it. She has grown a very full and soft, downy coat of fur (and a little bit of a healthy-sized belly!). 

Nurture has affected her — both for ill (in the early days of her life) and for good (thanks to kindness and unconditional care).

We know this to be true of all animals, too. Those who’ve been abused become frightened or, sometimes, angry and abusive themselves. But the psalm shows the true, intended state of the animal kingdom to be that of peace and trust.

So it is with us. 

We have a seed of God in us — it is the presence of our true self. We also have the seed of the fall of mankind in us, as well as the seeds of all that has nurtured us toward health or harm. 

We are both. 

We Form by Degrees

I was talking to a dear friend of mine earlier this week who just finished her second half-marathon. I am so not a runner and can’t imagine doing something like that myself, but I absolutely admire and stand in awe of her for setting her mind and body to doing it and then accomplishing it. 

Because this was her second half-marathon, running has clearly been a part of her life for some time now.

I remember when she declared her goal to run a half-marathon the first time, and then I watched her join a formal running group and incorporate training runs into her weekly schedule. 

After her first half-marathon, she shared with me that she’s discovered running is most fun for her in the sweet spot of about 5-6 miles. She wasn’t sure she’d run a half-marathon again since she’d learned that about herself.

But then last fall, when she came to stay with me for a week, she’d recently made the decision to train for this second one.

I remember waking up one morning during her visit last fall to learn that she’d already gone for a 2-mile run in our neighborhood, having pulled up our address on Google Maps and mapped out what seemed like a good route for herself. And then I watched her sit at our farmtable in our front room that same morning and plan out her training schedule for the next few months, steadily marking an increase in mileage for each week that would get her up to the 13.1-mile race day.

When we spoke earlier this week about the race she’d completed over the weekend, it just struck me with so much force: 

“Katy,” I said. “It’s kind of amazing that you’ve become the kind of person who can run 13 miles in one go. All your training has led to you being someone who has that capacity now.”

She didn’t used to be the kind of person who could run 13.1 miles. But now she is. Her wise and intentional training led her there. 

It gets me thinking about spiritual formation. 

We are human beings designed for growth.

We grow in the womb, and then we proceed to continue growing outside the womb in so many different directions. In fact, it seems the nature of every living thing is bent toward growth. Animals do it, trees and plants do it, and sometimes I wonder if the growth element God seemed so keen on implanting in living things will continue somehow still in heaven.

And our growth always happens by degrees.

It’s so tempting to think of the ideal life of Christ — or even just our ideal notion of a Christian — and expect ourselves to be able to live like that once we have given our lives to Christ.

We forget, or perhaps do not even know, that life in Christ is about formation. We grow in Christlikeness over time. We grow deeper into our true selves over time. 

Growth always happens by degrees. 

In what places are you growing right now? What is it like for you to focus on this “next right degree” Christ is about forming in you, rather than an ideal, fully formed image of Christlike perfection?

The True Self, the False Self, and the Reality of Self

Sometimes I get tripped up when thinking about the true self and false self. Does that ever happen to you? 

It can happen like this. 

I’m aware of my true, created life in God, and when I’m living life from that place, everything within and around me becomes timeless. Everything holds a glow of beauty and perfection because God-in-everything becomes so evident in that place. Purity of heart, mind, body, and spirit abounds. 

Living in that place, I experience rest and hope and joy. I can breathe, and I can say with full conviction it is well with my soul.

But I don’t live from that posture of my true self all of my living, breathing moments. 

There’s also the false self.

This is the scrappy, stingy, worried, anxious, competitive, blaming, conniving self. It’s a distracted, consuming self. In its more tempered moments, it’s simply a shell of a real self. 

I don’t live all my living, breathing moments from this place, either. 

They’re both there.

I’m continually invited or compelled toward one or the other by forces outside myself and by habits built up within myself. On any given day, I’m an admixture of my true self and false self.

That admixture creates the reality of self. 

The reality of self is who I am in this very moment, living on this very earth, walking in this very moment deeper into my formation. 

Will I be formed more fully into my true self?

Will I be de-formed by my false self?

These are the living, breathing questions faced by the reality of self each day.

And this place of still forming — of reflecting on the reality of our formation in still moments and of acknowledging that we are forming, still, each day that we live — is one place those questions meet with our appraisal.

The True Self as Particular and Universal

I don’t know about you, but I’m finding our recent discussions about the true self so interesting and exciting. 

On our last post — which invited us to look at the moments we find ourselves restfully invigorated (if I might coin that phrase) and consider the question “What is it about that rest?” so we might gain greater insight into our true selves — a couple more thoughtful and insightful comments were left by our readers in response. 

Rebecca said: 

For me, it isn’t so much the actual activity, but Posture of my heart. For instance, I can come to the activity of bathing the children and putting them to bed with a grumbling, frustrated heart that is thinking about the DUTY and TASK ahead. When I do that, I find myself exhausted and joyless… Looking forward to just being done! But, when I come to it filled with gratitude for four healthy children, for being able stay home and care for them, with wonder at the miracle of love that I see blossoming in my very own home, the same task becomes a joyous event and I am invigorated instead of exhausted.

When I read Rebecca’s comment, the first thought I had was, “Rebecca’s true self is grateful!” It’s in a posture of gratitude that she finds that invigorated joy, which tells me that deep down, at her very core, she was made to be someone who lives in gratitude.

(Sidenote: I’ve been reading a book by Ann Voskamp called One Thousand Gifts, and it puts forth the idea that all of us find life, salvation, joy, and rest in this continual posture of gratitude. It’s a remarkable and moving book that I highly recommend, if you haven’t read it already.)

Then Leanne shared a bit more about her experience of watering the transplanted flower: 

I think for me it’s being present. Not thinking about what I’m doing next, or one step in front of the other, or thinking about what happened yesterday. Not thinking about the duty (about the guilt of not watering the rose the day before like I was supposed to), the responsibility like Rebecca said, the grumbling heart …

It’s weird but it’s being present, in the moment, and not being obsessed with myself or what others think of me. Self kinda doesn’t even come into it.

I got excited when I read Leanne’s comment because it made me think of a recent discovery I’d had about the true self, too: that the true self is un-self-conscious. 

I believe that in some ways, our true selves are particular — tied to the specific persons that we are, the unique personalities, talents, desires, and stations of our lives that God gave to each one of us to incarnate.

But this conversation, in which we’re beginning to reflect on the foundation of those “restfully invigorated” moments we encounter in our lives, may reveal aspects of the true self that transcend particularity. 

The true self may always be a self that is filled with gratitude. The true self may always be un-self-conscious. The true self may always be found fully immersed in the present moment.

The true self may be many things — universally, for all of us — that depend not on our specific particularities but simply on our bearing the image of God.

What do you think?

What Is It About That Rest?

Earlier this week, I suggested that our true selves bring rest into our being. Even while moving around in the world or going out and about our days, being connected to and living out of our true selves brings an invigoration and joy and peace that doesn’t include exhaustion. 

I invited you to look around your life for the places you find such rest. Where is your true self cropping up in your life?

One of the readers here, Leanne, shared the following response: 

It’s really hard to find that true rest. I like that you identify the false self being what exhausts us, but where I seem to find true rest is in fleeting moments (like this morning while I was watering the newly transplanted rose and just looking around), or when I’m on retreat at a monastery. Maybe I need to just look around more.

I love the contrast of these two moments Leanne shared with us about her places of true rest: a fleeting moment of watering a transplanted rose and the more sustained experience of going on retreat to an out-of-the-way place like a monastery. 

This comment made me want to push the conversation a little deeper with all of you. Let’s look at those places we experience rest and actually consider them.

What is it about those moments and experiences of rest that bring a connection to your true self? Why does that particular kind of moment or experience bring life and ease and even joy to your life, do you think?

Where Is the Strength in Your Life?

In the early days of dating Kirk, he shared something that really stuck out to me. He said:

“If you’re the strongest person in your whole world, you’ll get really exhausted.”

It’s so true.

Think about it. If everyone else looks to you for strength and you’re the one propping your own self up, when do you get to rest? Where is the place you get to go to let go of holding it all together? Where can you just be held in someone else’s strength? 

I’m certainly familiar with this paradigm. I spent the whole of my life being a strong one — both for myself and for other people — without even realizing that was my guiding compass for life. And once the lightbulb turned on and I realized my whole existence teemed with that unrelenting dynamic, I got really, really tired. 

It’s like I suddenly realized I’d been holding up the whole world, a self-chosen and self-made Atlas, and I really didn’t have the strength to do it for one more minute. 

Would anybody ever hold me?

Thankfully, I found Jesus. He now gets to be the stronger one in my life. 

And learning vulnerability with other people — trusting them to carry strength they can offer to me if needed, too — has been a saving grace in my life more and more these days. 

Even though I often slip back into earth-shouldering Atlas mode still today, it’s such a relief to realize I can let go of that burden once I realize I’m doing it and choose, instead, to find strength that holds up the world elsewhere.

Who or what is shouldering the strength in your life right now? Is it God, yourself, other people, something else? What is it like for you to live in that reality?

Where Does Your Self Rest?

I’m inclined to think that when we live in our true selves, we experience true rest. 

For instance, when I’m connected to my true self — living out of and aware of the self that is uniquely me — my entire being fills with rest and calm, even if I’m busy washing the dishes in the sink or picking up the mail at the post office or driving in heavy traffic. 

There is something about the true self that both enlivens and calms us, at one and the same time. 

This is a different kind of rest than the rest we gain through sleep. It is a kind of rest — a consonance of being, I suppose you could say — that we find in our living, waking hours. 

Conversely, I find that the false self exhausts us.

There’s so much self-management, self-monitoring, and worry found there. The false self exists in a constant state of self-preservation and self-promotion. We fear we will cease to matter or cease to exist if we let up our preserving and promoting. 

But the true self lives in a state of rest. A state of harmony and peace.

Here, there is no worry. Here, there is no fear of death.

Where do you find the rest of your true self in your life right now? How easy or hard is it for you to access that rest and that true self inside you? What do you need to access it more faithfully?

He Is Laughing With You

Today, in the place I am with Jesus, I see him laughing with me. 

And when I’m laughing with him in this moment, it’s on the shoreline of a beach. Sometimes we go into the water, get our feet and legs all wet in the surf and play around in the waves, but other times we’re standing on the wet sand, talking and laughing together. 

It’s that laughter that arrests me today.

He’s got such a beautiful smile. Joy is in his eyes. His laughter comes from the deep. His enjoyment of the present moment with me is full. He enjoys me, he enjoys the sand and water, he enjoys the sun, he enjoys himself, and he enjoys our laughter. 

Every little thing we notice together, he enjoys. Even the funny-looking sandpipers and seagulls strutting about in all their antics. 

What are you enjoying today? Where is laughter emerging? Will you allow Jesus to join in that laughing moment with you?

With You in the Storms

It seems everywhere I’ve looked in the last 24 hours, there have been reminders of storms.

But in each storm, God has been present to still and overcome them with his mere presence or a word.

For example, last night I recorded a lectio divina exercise for a small group of friends, and the passage selected for the exercise was taken from Matthew 14. This is the passage where Jesus walks on the water and then invites Peter to walk on the water, too.

Did you know that in that story, Jesus came walking on the water in the midst of a great storm? The passage says that it was an evening when the disciples were being “battered by the waves.” Also, when Peter walked out on the water to Jesus, it was a glance at “the waves churning beneath his feet” that made him lose his nerve and start to sink. 

Jesus reached out a hand to keep Peter from sinking further into the tumultuous ocean. And once he and Peter climbed back in the boat, the ocean became as still as glass. 

Here’s another example. Later in the evening, Kirk and I listened to the daily Pray as You Go podcast, which we like to do together as a devotional way to end the day. The sacred music selection for this weekend’s recording held the following words: 

Calm me, Lord, as you calm the storm
Still me, Lord, keep me from harm
Let all the tumult within me cease
Enfold me, Lord, in your peace 

And the Gospel reading for the podcast was yet another storm-related story — that of Jesus being asleep on a boat while a great storm came and assailed it on all sides. Here is another place where Jesus, once woken by the disciples in their fear, spoke a single word to the storm and made it calm. 

And then this morning, the psalms offered yet another encouragement concerning the presence of storms: 

Sea storms are up, God
Sea storms wild and roaring,
Sea storms with thunderous breakers.

Stronger than wild sea storms,
Mightier than sea-storm breakers,
Mighty God rules from High Heaven.

— Psalm 93:3-4

Our God is mightier than the storms. Though the storms may rage around us, turning us toward fear, the presence of God and a mere word from his lips is enough to slay them and bring back calm.

What storms do you face in life today? In what ways are you assailed and battered by waves? How does the near presence of Jesus or a mere word from his lips bring the size of the waves down to mere calm?  

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?