About Still Forming

The tagline for this website reads:

We are, all of us, still forming. And it is in stillness, perhaps, that we form the most.

Over the last ten years, I have learned that so much mileage is clocked in our formation process in the moments we allow ourselves to be still. These are the moments when we quiet ourselves before God, allow our hearts to speak the truth, and allow God to speak his own truths back to us. In these places we grow in truly meaningful ways as we open ourselves to the transforming work of God in our interior places.

That is one reason I’ve named this site the way I have: “Still Forming” is a testament to what happens when we slow down.

The site’s name also holds a second meaning that has to do with the unfolding journey each of us inhabits each day of our lives. We are “still forming” — always in the process of becoming what we will one day be. We will become tomorrow what we are not yet today, and we are continually learning more as we go. 

In light of this reality, you will find here a place to form out loud. I will openly share with you many aspects of my journey, and I will invite you deeper into your own. As we form out loud together, let’s trust God to shepherd us toward the realities he wants for us to see.

About Christianne Squires

Ten years ago, I read a book called Singleness of Heart: Restoring the Divided Soul that completely changed my life. It helped me realize that I was doubly motivated in my life by a love for God and a preservation of self. It opened up to me the cavernous inner workings of the human heart and helped me see that I had zero connection to my own heart’s inner life.

I remember one afternoon when the book fell from my hands and I dropped my head down to speak what must have been the most true prayer ever to pass my lips up to that point: 

I don’t understand grace, and I don’t understand my need for Jesus. Please, God, help me understand.

It took a really long time to see anything that even resembled forward movement. That’s because for a while, it looked like I was either standing still or going backward. I stopped doing things I would normally do. I started doing things I thought I would never do. I rebelled against systems and chafed against rules. 

All of this was a slow, deliberate process to unlearn my belief that I could save myself. It was also my attempt to learn what it meant to be loved by God for who I am instead of what I do.

Eventually, In order to get to know the Jesus I didn’t understand I needed, I decided to spend some time in the Gospels. I watched Jesus touch lepers, dine with sinners, befriend prostitutes, and release an adulteress from her watchful and wrathful judges. I noticed that none of these people repulsed him. To the contrary, he genuinely loved them. He gave them his presence and attention. Eventually, he gave them his life.

All the while, I noticed that Jesus knew how to inhabit the middle ground, the gray space, the places that held both good and bad together. He talked often of the heart, the insides of us that are all mixed up and mashed up, formed and deformed in so many ways and yet needing and yearning for God. 

I’ve come to believe it is inside these messy realities of our hearts that we discover our need for Jesus and we uncover the meaning of grace.  It is inside these messy — yet beautiful — realities that we begin to encounter love and become set free to love others the way Jesus has loved us. 

Please join me as I continue to form out loud in this space. It is my hope that in these pages you find greater grace, love, and freedom to form out loud in your own journey and to move toward the realities God intends for you to find.