What Role Are You Being Invited to Develop?

I remember when I first realized I had a call to ministry. 

It was about six years ago, and I was halfway through a 13-month program for my master's degree in business, completely up to my ears in financial spreadsheets and questions about manufacturing and general plans and details about the business idea I had gone there to create.

I remember the realization one afternoon that all this planning and development was taking me further and further away from the central care of my life: people and their stories. Being at the helm of an organization that would require leadership and financial solvency and ongoing oversight of things like manufacturing and distribution would keep me far from the people this business was meant to serve. 

"I don't think I actually have a call to business," I slowly realized. "I think I have a call to ministry." 

I knew in that moment that once I finished that degree program, I'd be enrolling in another — one that would equip me well to serve the needs of the soul. 

I could name to you so many moments in the past six years that served as continued waymakers for me in the confirmation of that call: the discovery that I already owned five of the six books on the book list for my first course in that next graduate program; the way I felt like I'd come home when I started my training as a spiritual director; the experience I had one day while visiting a Catholic church of God standing behind me and placing his hands on my shoulders.

To name a few. 

I can see how my life has been about preparation and equipping for that call and being faithful to it since it came. And as my therapist, Debbie — whom I have described as being an amazing blend between Brené Brown and Moses — would say, there's been a lot of deep and intentional development of the "prophet" and "priest" roles of my identity and call. 

But perhaps, she said, it's time to further develop the "queen" role of it. 

(I'm speaking here of the threefold ministry of Christ — prophet, priest, and king — which various Scriptures confirm we are meant to exercise as well.) 

Queen? Yikes. I confess hearing that made me nervous. It felt scary. Exposed. Big. Even today, the thought of it makes my breath catch in my throat. 

And yet since she suggested it to me, I've not been able to shake the image of a territory in my mind's eye. It's lush green and surrounded by water on at least three sides. Its capital city is on its southern tip. I know people live inside its borders — people I love and want to serve well.

What do the people who live here need? How would they describe the experience of being one of this kingdom's citizens? What do they love about their life here? What do they fear? What does it mean for me to be its queen? 

These are big questions I'm pondering right now. It feels like an invitation to own the leadership of this land, first by learning what that even means. 

And all these questions swirling in my mind has me wondering if you have big questions you're pondering in your mind too — questions about an invitation deeper into some identity or role God's presented to you. 

Are you being invited to develop in some way that feels new to you? What questions are you asking about it?  

Much love,
Christianne

What If You Could Return to the Pure Place?

I started re-reading one of my books on the Enneagram this week, one I had started but never finished a few months ago. I find that one of the benefits of re-reading a book you've read before is that you get to rediscover little notes you left for yourself in the margins as you read along the first time.

This book was no exception. 

A few pages into the first chapter, I found a line I had written at the top of one of the pages that took me back in time to the moment I wrote it. It was a moment of realizing my articulation of the deepest core belief, developed early on in life, that led to the development of my personal brand of defenses and coping mechanisms. The line I wrote was this: 

"The world is not safe and I have to take care of myself."

I remembered the moment I wrote that line, how it had brought tears to my eyes. It wasn't a profound new realization — really, it's a truth I've known as my core belief for a very long time — but distilling it down to that one sentence? It was a powerful moment. 

There. There it is, I thought. That sums all of it up. 

Seeing that line of truth again this past week had a similar impact. This time, it caused a sharp intake of breath, as though the wind got knocked out of me. Then it was as though I could feel myself dropping inward, pulling back and back and back through some inner tunnel that landed at the core of my being in a very dark hole. 

That dark hole was the safe place. My place of escape. The place I could go to flee the unsafe world. The place where no one could find or hurt me. 

How much time I have spent inside that cave.  

—

I took that image of the cave to my monthly session with my spiritual director this week, and together we explored it. What did the black hole look like? she wanted to know. Where was I in the image? Where was God? 

The black hole was like a cave. There was nothing inside it but cold, dark walls and an opening to the tunnel that brought me there. The floor was cold and hard with packed-down dirt.

I was standing at the edge of the cave, looking out toward the tunnel that brought me there, looking out toward the light that faced me. 

The light was God. 

In the image, I appeared to be about five years old. We noticed together that I was not yet inside the cave but standing at the edge of it. I wasn't facing the cave but facing away from it. In fact, I didn't seem interested in the cave at all. I was enthralled with the light. With God.

—

There was a freedom in the self that I saw standing there. It was as though I was seeing who I was before I ever made the decision to turn inside that cave and make a home for myself there. 

Myself as this young girl had not yet been in that cave. 

Myself as this young girl could still be saved from it. 

What I loved most about that image was the freedom. There was such a simplicity in my young self's demeanor. Such trust and openness to the world. Such captivation with God. Such unadorned being. 

No armor. No hiding. No apologies. No shame.

I didn't know yet what those things even were. 

This is who I was made to be. 

—

What if we could experience that openness and readiness and vulnerability all the time? What if we could return to it? 

I think that is the real invitation for us. This is why we do formation work. This is the way of the heart.

Getting in touch with our real story helps us know how it all began — the messages and beliefs, our interpretation of events and happenings, who we chose to become because of all those things. But it also presents an invitation to return to Eden. With God's help, we can examine what happened and learn what God would choose to give to us instead. 

With God's help, we can learn how to trust again.

If you could distill your core belief from a very young age into a single sentence, what would it be?      

Much love,
Christianne

Care to Swap Celebration Stories?

Today is a day that I'm celebrating. I have been working hard — some days and nights literally around the clock — to launch the rebuild of my website on a new platform, and it's now officially launched! 

Check out the new Still Forming.

(Isn't it beautiful?!)

Granted, it has a similar feel to the previous version of my site, but it's been stripped down to a cleaner look and simplified in its offerings to the essentials: the Look at Jesus course, discernment sessions, the Cup of Sunday Quiet, and the popular series collection. 

My hope is for the website to become a real resource for you, wherever you might be in your spiritual journey, while these Sunday Quiet letters remain the primary way we keep in touch. 

On top of this good news, some additional offerings are currently in the works. 

For instance, the "way of the heart" offering that emerged during that prayer-storm I told you about is still very much in development, and I hope to share some updates with you soon on how it's coming together and what I'm learning through the process. (The short version? I am learning tons.) 

I'm also actively exploring creative ways I might offer some additional entry points for the Look at Jesus course, and I'm continuing to research and gather information for the Enneagram audiobook I've mentioned to you before. A bit later in the year, I'm expecting to create a "forgiveness pathway" offering for those who are struggling through the challenges of forgiveness and could use some hope, gentleness, and dignifying guidance along the way. 

A lot going on, to say the least! And all of it makes me happy and thrilled. Like I said, my hope is that Still Forming becomes a resource for ongoing enrichment and invitation into a deepening of the journey for you, wherever that journey may be taking you. 

That's how I'm celebrating today. 

How are you celebrating in ways large or small right now? 

Much love,
Christianne

When God's Answers Surprise Us

Yesterday, I spent pretty much the whole day thinking about the Enneagram — specifically, my place on its spectrum.

I’ve shared with you before that the Enneagram is a type of personality profile often used in spirituality and formation circles to help us understand things like our true self versus our false self, our light and shadow sides, and how we, based on our type, are invited to grow toward health and integration. 

I’ve taken the test several times and always test as a Type 5, which is the perceiver, the observer, the investigator. A Type 5 usually responds to the world by withdrawing and seeking to gather information. This type wants to understand how the world works and is often able to devise whole systems that help the rest of us make sense of things. 

They’re also often loners,very much drawn inside themselves and their own world. They sit on the outside of things, looking in and observing everything. 

I can so relate to all this. 

And yet there are ways it also didn’t seem to fit. 

Yes, I can be fiercely independent and withdrawn — but I also very much move toward people and can even get quite hooked into what they think of me and whether I am helping them enough. (This is characteristic of a Type 2.) 

And then there’s the pretty significant part of my formation journey that’s been all about unlearning my performance and perfection-based ways. This is the part of me that’s been a circumspect rule-follower — and a bit of a Pharisee — who needed to learn God’s grace. (This is a description of a Type 1.) 

Type 2s and 1s are decidedly different than Type 5s, and yet I knew we all embody one core type. How come I could see all three? 

So I spent yesterday opening myself up to this question. I let myself suspend belief in being a 5 and explored the possibility of mistyping — thinking myself one type but actually being another. I pulled out my Enneagram books and read through the long sections again, letting myself feel the truth and possibility of other ways. 

It just confused me more. 

Toward evening, I pulled out my yellow Moleskine journal and set up camp at the kitchen table. There, I started sketching out the first 20 years of my life — significant moments, turns in the journey, messages I received, ways of being in different contexts. 

And I saw there, on the page, all three types. 

The interesting thing for me to notice, though, was how the three types emerged in waves. For the first 10 years of my life or so, it was all about withdrawal. Then there were the years I turned toward caretaking. And then, somewhere along the lines between junior high and high school, I became a Pharisee. 

Growing more confused, I brought my journal into the bedroom and laid down on the bed and just stared at that page of my first 20 years. And I prayed: “God, would you help me understand the truth? What type am I, really?” 

What’s funny is that God actually answered my question. 

The next thing I knew, I was searching Google for information about mistyping, which led me to a website talking about something called TriTypes. This is the theory that we carry a dominant type from each of the three main triads of the Enneagram spectrum (one from the head, one from the heart, and one from the gut) and that while we have a core main type, the other two types show up as secondary ways of coping or responding to the world when our primary type doesn’t work. 

I could actually be a 5-2-1, I learned. And when I read the description of a 5-2-1, it completely fit and seemed to capture the fuller picture of who I am.

—

Now, why I am I telling you this story? 

I’m telling you because I love the way it demonstrates how God answers our prayers beyond our expectation. I went into that prayer feeling polarized, distressed, and confused. To me, there was only one answer to my question about my real type, and I needed God to show me one which it was. 

But God showed me it was all three. 

This kind of unexpected revelation happened recently for me in another context too. Do you remember when I told you about my prayer storm experience? That experience happened on the heels of a week and a half’s fruitless efforts to create something that didn’t seem to want to be created, no matter how much I thought it was supposed to be made. 

When I finally surrendered to God in prayer, asking what God wanted me to do, I had the prayer storm — and what I received was so far beyond what I could have conceived for myself that it could only be inspiration divinely given. 

God’s gifts and responses to us go beyond us. God gives us the unexpected. 

Where do you need to receive God’s unexpected response to your struggle right now? 

Much love,
Christianne 

Oh, How the Truth Brings Freedom

So, perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but I was. After sending you last week’s letter, I experienced such a release and return to what felt like my normal self, and it has carried with me all week.

I’m so incredibly thankful. 

I say that I shouldn’t be surprised because I keep re-learning that the truth sets us free. It clears the blockage that comes from warring against ourselves, trying to force the truth away and make it not be true.

That just doesn’t work. Our hearts know the truth. 

I remember when I first began my journey into the way of the heart, how new it was for me to discover the truths that were living inside there. And then, beyond the discovery of those truths came the process of learning to acknowledge and welcome and live inside of them. 

It was like discovering a whole new land — and it was. 

A scary land, yes. But also a freeing and hopeful land. 

It was also such a dignifying experience. Here, my experiences and truth mattered. Here, my thoughts and feelings were welcome. Here, I was loved in the fullness of it all. 

What an amazing discovery. Discoveries all around!

So, the way of the heart begins with the truth — and then we find the truth brings freedom. 

What truth do you need to acknowledge right now? Might you let yourself discover the freedom that comes from letting it be true? 

Much love,
Christianne 

When Discouragement Sets In

I have wanted to avoid telling you the reality of this — wanted to get past it so I could share with you uplifting, encouraging words instead.

I have not wanted it to be true.

But it is true: I am in the thick of discouragement lately.

This morning I woke early in order to write this letter to you. But as I stared at the screen, attempting to write, no words came. I felt completely blocked. I couldn’t find the entry point to any of the stories I thought I might tell you.

I think a lot of it had to do with the reality of this discouraged spirit in me. I feel so aware that the words that have winged their way to you these last many months have carried dark shadows already: grief and loss, broken hearts and healing, exhaustion and illness.

How could I burden you with more?

But as my husband, Kirk, reminded me today, discouragement is part of the journey. It’s part of the journey of the heart. And as someone who seeks to invite you deeper into the reality of your own heart, I wouldn’t serve you well if I didn’t acknowledge this truth.

Discouragement meets us sometimes. It just does.

What do we do with that discouragement when it comes?

One thing I did was close the computer screen and sit alone on my couch. I picked up a book of conversations with Jorge Bergoglio — the man who would become Pope Francis — and let the solidity and wisdom of his words wash over me.

I went to church. I took a nap. I asked Kirk to give me a hug. I played with our cats. I helped celebrate the eucharist (even though I felt completely unqualified to do so, given how I was feeling!). 

I think one of the hardest things about all the hardest feelings — discouragement, loneliness, sadness, brokenness — is our attempt to fight them. I keep watching myself do this lately. I try to deny the truth. I judge myself for the feelings. I feel embarrassed by them. I want them not to be true, so I try to convince myself they aren’t.

But they are true. The darkness is there.

Last week I shared with you that healing and forgiveness begin with God — with letting him see the broken pieces of our hearts — and that I’m relearning this process right now.

Letting God see the broken pieces of our hearts means this process begins with honesty. When the darkness sets in, though our immediate instinct is to run or avoid or bury or deny, the invitation is actually to face it. To say — not just to ourselves, but also to God — “This is what’s true. This is what’s really here.”

As scary as that sounds, I keep remembering as I practice it how freeing it actually is to do this. We stop fighting with ourselves. We make peace with what is. And that’s where connection and intimacy start between us and God.

So I’m seeking to practice honesty with myself and with God right now about all the darkness right now. I’m seeking to take courage by saying, “This is what’s true: I’m discouraged. And here are the reasons why. Can you acknowledge what I’m telling you?”

I’ve found that acknowledgment from God is so incredibly healing. It’s one of the very best things I’ve ever experienced in my life. And when I receive the gift of it, I wonder why I waited so long to bring the truth to him and seek that validation.

What would it be like for you to tell the truth — to yourself and to God — right now and then to ask God for acknowledgment?

Much love,
Christianne

On Healing and Forgiveness

Last Sunday was a listless day for me. With no plans scheduled for the afternoon, it would normally feel like a blessed day of rest. Instead, I shuffled from one room to the next with feelings of apathy and impatience. I didn’t know why, but nothing — not books, not conversation, not rest, not Netflix — seemed to satisfy.

Have you ever had days like that?

I went to church that evening carrying a question mark with me, hoping an encounter with the stillness of our contemplative-style service and the receiving of the Eucharist would provide a meaningful reconnection to God and my heart. 

It did. 

But the most prominent moment came in the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Specifically, as I recited the line “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” I had to ask — as I always do — if what I said was true.

Had I indeed forgiven those who had trespassed against me? 

Often the saying of those words brings about the forgiveness my heart needs to offer. Petty squabbles or vain imaginings softly fall away, and the saying of the prayer becomes a place of reconciliation. 

But on this particular Sunday, I wasn’t sure what I said was true. There is a place of hurt in my heart that throbs unhealed. A relationship that for nearly 20 years has been one of the most important of my life suffered an unexpected breach about two years ago that sent the two of us reeling. 

We are still picking up the pieces. 

It’s been a difficult and painful journey, one that has at times included months and months of silence as we tended to the wounds and clarification and healing our own hearts needed and then came together for attempts at repair, only to find such attempts often felt like movements of taking one step forward then two steps back.

Last Sunday evening, I held the question: Can I forgive? 

As I drove home from the service, I made a stop at Walgreens to pick up a few items, and as I returned to my car and prepared to head toward home, I sat for a moment in that parking spot, car running, and realized: 

My heart is broken. What happened between us broke my heart. I am — still today — heartbroken.

It’s been nearly two years, and I’ve spent that time in very intentional formation as a result of this situation. I’ve sought to understand and be understood. I’ve worked on what constituted my part in what happened and to cooperate with the invitations toward growth God was presenting to me through it. 

Yet here I was, as though discovering it anew, realizing I still had so very far to go. The recognition of my broken heart took my formation process to a completely different level. 

How do you heal a broken heart? How do you begin to forgive?

These questions actually aren’t new to me. I’ve worked through long seasons of healing and forgiveness for experiences akin to a broken heart before. It took years for me to work through those instances, mainly because I was fumbling in the dark on my own without any signposts or guidance in the process, but I eventually got there and experienced blessed freedom and joy. I am thankful still today for what that work of healing and forgiveness brought about, even though that work was hard. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

And here’s what’s true: The main thing I learned through those experiences — and am learning again right now — is that the process of healing and forgiveness begins with God. 

It begins with bringing the broken pieces of our heart to God and letting him see and tend to us in the reality of that pain and brokenness. It doesn’t, first, have anything to do with the other person. It has everything to do with God being our heart’s healer and restorer first. 

And so that’s what I’m beginning now. I’m bringing the broken pieces of my heart to God. I’m going to spend time — however long it takes — curled up on his lap with those pieces held in my hand between us, showing him the broken pieces and letting him be with me and them as I ask him to heal and mend and repair and make all those pieces new.

Because of what I know of God, I know that he will do this. 

Are there ways in which you are in a place of needing to experience a similar healing? 

Much love,
Christianne

Have You Ever Had a Prayer-Storm?

Have you ever had an experience of being led by God toward an idea you knew was not your own? A spiritual encounter that gave you guidance along your way, a light upon your path? 

That happened for me this past Wednesday night. 

But first, before I tell you about it, let me give you a bit of context. 

For the last month, I’ve been involved in a small-group intensive course with my business mentor and several other women, and one of the main thrusts of the course has been determining something I can create from my heart for you, my readers of the Cup of Sunday Quiet and the broader Still Forming community. 

For several weeks, I have been fleshing out what this creative offering could be, and I had landed on the idea of creating an interactive ebook that would walk you through the journey of your own formation. And while that is an idea I still love and will likely create in some form at some point in the future, when it came time for me to start creating it as part of this course I’m taking, I kept running into walls. 

It felt like I was forcing something that wouldn’t agree to be born. 

So I was being patient with the process, trusting that whatever was meant to be born would emerge at just the right time. 

Then on Wednesday night, I was listening to the Pray as You Go podcast before I went to sleep. The gospel passage for the meditation was taken from Mark 4:1-9, where Jesus is speaking to a crowd of people from a boat on the shore, telling them the parable of the sower.

The first thing I became aware of as I imagined the scene in the gospel passage was how much I loved that image of Jesus in the boat. I wanted to just get nearer and nearer to him! He is so mesmerizing to me, such a magnetic personality.

Another thing that emerged from the meditation was the narrator’s encouragement to pay attention to the first and last words of Jesus in his teaching, which were the word listen. 

So I stood on that shoreline in my mind, near Jesus in the boat, and sought to listen to him. 

And what I continued to hear over and over again as I tuned in to what he was saying to me was this phrase: “the way of the heart.” 

The way of the heart. Yes. 

Earlier that same day, I’d been reflecting on how God has given me an ability to tune into my heart. I have learned a lot of its landscape over the years and have become adept at tapping into its truth and bringing that truth before God. Also, over the last week, I’d received several emails from individuals who shared their struggles in doing this themselves. 

The way of the heart. Yes. This is something to share. 

So I lay there, thinking on this. What would it look like to create something that helped others learn the way of the heart? How would I go about teaching something like this? What had been my own process of learning it these last 15 years? 

As I lay there thinking about this, my mind kept going back to that image of Jesus in the boat. How magnetic he was to me. How much I wanted to be near and listen to him. So I let myself return to the image and just watched him. 

And then something rather strange but incredible happened.

His eyes turned into lights — blue light — and he began to pull away from the shore in his boat, moving south in the sea. The overhead daylight sky turned to night, and I felt myself caught up in what felt like a mythic story, full of deep colors and a deep, abiding current and deep, pulsating truth.

I began to hear words in my head, almost like words of a story that had existed for a long, long time. They told the story of you. 

They told the story of your heart. Its alluring, redemptive truth. Its broken but healing journey. The invitation for it to emerge. 

The way of the heart.

I knew right then this was the thing meant to be born instead: a story-parable with artwork, telling the mythic story of the heart. I could already hear the words of the story, and I could already see its vibrant, deep-colored pages. I pulled out the Notes app on my phone and began pounding out the words that were ruminating in the ether, that long-known story of your heart.

See what I mean about a prayer-storm? It was like a brainstorm that came on suddenly, but it actually happened through prayer. (Jesus has all the best ideas!)

So, this idea is in process. I’ve been in touch with a friend who is an incredible artist, whose artwork already reflects the mood and rich colors of the scenes that kept building in my mind around this story-parable, and we are going to see what a collaborative effort on this project could look like. I will keep you posted!

Have you ever had a prayer-storm experience of your own? What was it like? 

Much love,
Christianne

Do You Struggle With Feeling Less-Than?

I remember when I first began my journey into the intentional process of formation. One of the first things I came to discover about myself — and it felt like such a revelation — was how wrapped up I was in performing and perfectionism.

I had no idea this was true about me, but suddenly there it was. And it was everywhere.

It was also exhausting. I came to realize how much mental and emotional energy I expended every day — every moment, really — trying to do things right, trying to figure out what “right” even was so I could do it, and trying to be exactly what everyone around me, including God, might need me to be. 

In this prison-like existence, the concept of grace became a balm. 

I didn’t know what grace even was. My process of intentional formation began with a very honest prayer in which I told God, “I don’t understand grace, and I don’t know why I need Jesus. Can you please help me understand?” 

It was through the enlightening (but brutal) experience of getting in touch with my relentless performing and perfectionism that grace eventually became like the very best news I could ever imagine receiving in my life. 

Because of grace, there was room for me to not have it all together. Because of grace, I could misstep and the world would not come crashing down around me. Because of grace, God enjoyed me — actually enjoyed me — and didn’t need or even want me to perform. I could just be, and somehow Jesus made up for any ways I might fall short. In fact, because of Jesus, God didn’t see me through a lens of falling short at all. 

It ended up being Jesus who made this new experience of life possible.

—

I needed to be reminded of that truth this past week. 

Re-entry into life back home after a month of travel went as gently as it possibly could, I think, but it also brought with it a whole lot of baggage that carried names like loss, exhaustion, disappointment, illness, and grief. 

My well was dry, and as much as I tried to give myself latitude due to all these things, I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper under a dark cloud of condemnation as the week went on. 

Then on Wednesday night, after midnight, I decided to get up out of bed and try to pray. I came and sat on the couch with all that I was holding from the cumulative effect of the last many months and sought to hold it all up to God. 

What came to mind were the words “No condemnation.” 

It was a reminder of that journey into grace I shared with you above — that in Christ, I have been given freedom from constant judgment of myself. Before God, there is no condemnation. 

That phrase — “No condemnation” — is taken from Romans 8, where we’re told there is “therefore now condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Before my journey into grace, I thought that meant we are simply saved from hell in the afterlife, and I’m not saying it doesn’t include that. But it also includes freedom from judgment in the here and now. 

Freedom from judgment. No condemnation. This is God’s gift to us now. 

As I sat with those words in that midnight hour on the couch, I could feel my spirit lift — literally lift from the pit of gloom to sun-soaked land. It was such an amazing experience! And I’ve noticed in the days since that I’ve had to consciously remember those words, “No condemnation” — and that when I do, God lifts me to that sun-soaked land again. 

Do you struggle with feelings of condemnation and self-judgment, like me? What is it like for you to hear these words?

Much love,
Christianne

Have You Entered the Deeper Journey?

This past week, I had the privilege of serving as a spiritual director to a group of 28 graduate students in the hills of Malibu, California.

They were on residency for the week (and what a glorious, pristine, peaceful location in which to learn!), and each day, one by one, I met with a few more students and held their stories with them, one sacred hour at at time.

I cannot tell you how moving this was. 

After the first day, having met with four different students for an hour each throughout the day, I was struck by the variety of each one. Their place in life, their histories, the questions they’re holding in this present moment, how God is moving and inviting them to grow right now — each person’s hour was totally different from the next. 

It was so clear to me, in these unfolding narratives, how God had been working and weaving and nudging and inviting deeper and deeper growth inside each one. Often I heard about the history that laid the foundation for their life, then a moment of awakening that came — a moment when they “came awake” to themselves and to God in a new way and began a deeper journey of understanding and courage and growth.

Maybe you remember your own “coming awake” moment. 

Some of these students — and maybe you can relate to this — have been on the deeper journey for a very long time. They’re wise and seasoned. They know their center. Spiritual direction provides space for them to hold in their hands some of the pieces of their right-now life and find and notice God in the midst of it.    

Others — and maybe this feels more like you — have only recently begun that deeper journey. It’s all still so very new and unexpected. God is about the work of reorienting vision, in some cases disorienting everything, blowing open wide the doors of understanding in ways unsettling, unexpected, unavoidable, and intriguing. In this place, there’s a lot of looking back and asking questions that feel huge and monumental.

The contrast between these two seasons has got me noticing and thinking on 

Richard Rohr’s teachings on what he calls the “second half of life.” Every one of these students has entered the second half of life — an initiation that has nothing to do with chronological age and everything to do with that moment I’m describing of “waking up” to one’s self and God in a new and deeper way.

Do you know the moment I’m talking about? 

It’s that moment that invites and exposes all the questions suddenly new yet suddenly obvious. It’s the moment everything goes deep and you realize there’s a whole cavern of life inside you, just waiting to be traversed. It’s the moment God becomes much more mysterious and much less containable. It’s the moment of initiation into a more nuanced, complex way of seeing all things.

You say yes and step gingerly into the depths, and maybe you have a hunch life will never be the same again. 

It’s true. Life will never be the same.

Do you know the moment I’m describing here — the moment of “waking up” to a deeper journey? Do you remember when it happened for you? 

Much love,
Christianne

Learning What's True

Do you know Henri Nouwen and Anne Lamott? They’re two of my favorite spiritual writers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you said they’re yours too. 

What I love about their work is how utterly personal it is. 

For instance, I just read Anne Lamott’s latest missive on Facebook. (Which, by the way, do you follow her on Facebook? Because if you don’t, you totally should. She showers us with goodness and light from her daily life every few days, and it’s amazing and delightful and encouraging and real every single time.) 

Anyway, I read her latest Facebook missive today, and she was talking about how sick she’s been since the holidays and how hard it is to let the people in her life love her when she’s down for the count and how much of an issue she has with God for letting the people she loves in her life who are very, very sick get sick and not get better in the first place. 

But, she said, “For me, it’s always about [the poet William] Blake saying we’re here to learn to endure the beams of love. I’m fantastic at giving—but receiving is grad school. … I’ll lie here, with Advil, kleenex, and the greatest medical device in history, the hot cat compress, radiating warmth onto my chest and his furry feng shui. I’ll still hate being sick, and especially hate having sick friends. But I love and sometimes live in God’s perfect care.”

Um, wow. She writes such truth, doesn’t she? And with such beauty, isn’t it?

Henri Nouwen is the same way. I own so many of his books that not all of them even fit lined up on his special shelf on my bookshelf and I have to turn them to the side and pile them in stacks. 

But my favorite books that I own of his are his published journals. Several times in his life, he published journals he kept during special seasons — when he lived at a monastery in New York, for instance, while trying to find a place of unfettered peace from the compulsions that drove his life; or when he lived in Bolivia for six months to discern if he was called to be a priest in a developing nation instead of a professor at Harvard; and when he lived in France for a year so he could participate in the L’Arche community there and discern if he was meant to leave academia and serve the mentally and physically disadvantaged among us; and when he published the “secret journal” he kept for himself while recuperating from a very deep wound he’d received from a friend that sent him into a spiral of darkness. 

His work is so honest and raw and true, and he’s so generous to let us see inside the unvarnished truth of his heart and mind in certain seasons — all his wrestlings, all his struggles, all his longings, all his cloud nines. 

I love this kind of writing. It’s perhaps why memoir is my favorite genre. 

And so I’ve been thinking about this in terms of what I offer you. The truth is, I write these personal letters each week, formed from the grist of my own life’s mill, from a similar vantage point: in the hope that as you read about the experiences of my interior life with God, you’ll gain a glimpse into the possibility and truth of your own life. 

But lately, I’ve been wondering about this. Is what I’m writing helpful? Is it providing that side-view mirror into your own journey that I’m ultimately hoping it does? Does it come across as sheer navel-gazing, too much self-absorbed blathering? Am I being as helpful to you as I really could be?

Earlier this week, I had an epiphany about this. 

I realized that while I will always love the work of Henri Nouwen and Anne Lamott, and while I will always feel at home writing in a similar self-reflective posture that is shared as an open mirror to the world, it is also true that there are ways I’m decidedly different than those two spiritual heroes of mine.

For instance, I’m a teacher. I have an uncanny ability to see inside the way a thing works, or to see at a glance the whole scope of some great, grand design, and to know how to help another person along inside that scope, tiny step by tiny step. 

I’m always the one asking “How?” How are we formed spiritually? How do we grow in our capacity to love? How is this or that thing accomplished in our lives? Questions like these flood the journals I have kept along the years. (I’m serious. The “how” question is everywhere in there.)

And so I’m thinking. Watching. Noticing these things. Wondering how both my willingness to share my journey with you and my ability to understand and create a process for you can be offered in meaningful ways.

I look forward to sharing more about this as I learn more what it means, too.  

Much love,
Christianne

PS: Thank you for your patience with me last week! I don’t think I’ve ever missed a Sunday in the year and a half I’ve been writing these letters — except maybe once, and even then I believe I announced it in advance. But last week, as I was both catching a red-eye flight home from California to Orlando and nursing a cold that had come on with a vengeance at the turn of the new year, every effort to write my weekly letter to you was futile. Thankfully much better now! :) 

Looking Back, Looking Forward

As I thought about the title of this week’s letter — looking back, looking forward — I couldn’t help but realize that I spend most of my time in these letters thinking on the present. On looking here. Now. 

Usually in these letters, we explore what God is up to in the present moment. 

What is God doing in your life right now? What are you learning? Here’s what I’m learning and thinking about.

But today, just a few days out from the turning of the calendar to 2014, perhaps we can, together, spend a little bit of time looking back and looking forward. What do you say? 

I’d like to share with you some questions to hold for this process. Just a few guard rails to guide your entrance into this reflection space. Nothing too intense or flashy. Nothing too exhaustive. Just some rails to guide the path of reflection.

So, let’s start. 

Take some time to enter into your experience of 2013. 

• Where did you experience life and vitality this year?
• Where did you experience life seeming to dwindle away?
• In a word, how would you sum up this 2013 year?

Take some time to enter into an apprehending of 2014. 

• In what areas do you sense you’ll be growing in 2014, given your current growing edges?
• What do you value about these growth areas? 
• What is difficult about them for you?
• In a word, what is your hope for 2014?

I’m going to take some time over the next week to sit with these questions, and I hope you’ll have an opportunity for some reflection on them too. 

And if you’d like to share any of your findings with me, I’d love to hear them!

By the way, the wedding I wrote about in last week’s letter? It was fantastic. My sister was an absolute vision, and she and her now-husband invited all of us into a really fun celebration. I only struggled with self-consciousness for about 30 minutes — just before the ceremony and for about the first 15 minutes of it — until I remembered all those kind words I share with you last week and my decision to believe them. I’m thankful!

Much love,
Christianne

Whose Voice Will You Listen To?

Next Saturday — three days after Christmas — I will be standing beside my sister as she says “I do” to her chosen one. Given the journey she’s taken to this day, I cannot properly express the amount of joy I’m feeling about this occasion. I am so incredibly happy for them. 

But there’s an additional thing. 

I’ve spent the last several years feeling none-too-comfortable inside my body. (In fact, I wrote a whole series earlier this year about this very thing.) And yet on that day, I’ll be standing at the front of a big room, in front of family members and friends I haven’t seen in a very long time, and I’ll be wearing a strapless red satin dress that isn’t particularly flattering on me.

To say I’ve been feeling nervous about the prospect of this experience is an understatement. Terrified would be a more appropriate description.

And so I’ve been starting to face this. 

About a week ago, I turned to Kirk as we were winding down for the night and said, “Do you know what I’m least looking forward to about our trip to California? That dress. Having to wear that dress and stand in front of everyone all day long.”

I thought about the way the dress wouldn’t properly zip when I’d tried it on the previous week. I remembered how I looked when I stood before the seamstress’ mirror the next day as she pinned and marked where to let the dress out, my decidedly untoned arms and upper chest exposed for all to see. 

I told him about the voices I’d been hearing in my head about the prospect of that experience, and I told him what I imagined others might think — and perhaps even say to each other — about how I looked too. 

Oh, how I dread what they might think or say.

Kirk is pretty good about letting me feel what I feel, and that night he certainly let me express my fears and dread. But then he looked at me and said, “When you tried on the dress the other night, you were stunning.” 

Then he said, “The person that you are is so deep and whole and rich — you have so much to offer every single person you’ll see that day. Your very self and presence is a gift.”

I wanted to believe him. 

But I wasn’t sure I could. The negative voices were so loud. 

The next day, I met with my therapist, Debbie, and spent a portion of our time talking about all this. While describing my sense of myself in the dress, I pulled at the skin on my chest and squeezed my shoulders and arms. “They’re so soft!” I said. “No toning. Just flabbiness. Ugh.” 

She looked at me and said, “Christianne, I don’t know a lot about your and Kirk’s decision to not have kids, but I can tell you this: You’re a mother. You’re birthing all the time. You help other people birth their stories and journeys, and you birth so much through your work at Still Forming. You’re a mother.

“And just like mothers’ bodies change when they bear children, your body is reflecting the reality of all those births. That flabbiness you see on your chest? I see it as a place of welcome, of softness, of nurture. When people hug you, they feel themselves enveloped in love — and they are!” 

This was a very new and mind-blowing way to think about all this.

The next day I met with Elaine, my spiritual director, and processed some more of this with her. Her response was emphatic: “Christianne, you’re gorgeous. You just are. I would trade places with you in a heartbeat. You’re gorgeous inside and out.” 

I don’t tell you all these things to toot my own horn about their compliments. (Trust me, it has been very uncomfortable typing out each of Kirk’s and Debbie’s and Elaine’s responses to me to share this story with you!) 

Rather, I tell you all this because maybe you can relate to the body issues or self-consciousness. Maybe you have your own voices inside your head or anticipated voices of others that aren’t too kind. Maybe you, too, know what it’s like to believe you’re not enough because somehow your physical self is the only defining feature of your value.

I tell you this because maybe it’s time to trust the voices of those who know you best and truly see you — all of you.

I know that’s what has happened to me this week. I had a moment of noticing that three of the people who best know the truth and fullness of me in this world and wholeheartedly love and enjoy and celebrate me told me I am beautiful and that my whole self is a gift. 

I am choosing to believe them. And already, by choosing to believe them, I find myself walking with my head held just a little bit higher. 

Can you relate to this struggle at all? Is there anything that helps you through it?  

Much love,
Christianne

On Moving Toward People

I mentioned a couple weeks ago in this Sunday letter that my recent exploration of the Enneagram has been challenging me to grow in a couple concrete ways: 

1. Finishing things

2. Moving toward people

In that letter, I talked about the “finishing things” part of it — how being a 5 on the Enneagram means being tempted toward endless tinkering and a lack of forthright action. And so I’ve been practicing finishing. I launched the Jesus course (finally!), and I’m moving forward with the idea of the discernment sessions that I’ve shared with you in these letters (more on that below). 

Today I’d like to share with you about the “moving toward people” aspect of all this, and then I’d love to hear how you’re being invited to grow in your own journey. 

So, moving toward people. 

Something I’ve learned about being a 5 on the Enneagram is that a 5’s natural propensity is withdrawal. We like our protected spaces, and we like our quiet time. We need a lot of space to think and reflect. 

This natural inclination brings with it a lot of gifts. A 5 offers the gift of contemplation to the world. There’s a need for the still, reflective life a 5 brings to the world. 

It can be good … except when it’s not. 

Through the exploration of my 5-ness lately, I’ve been challenged to look at the ways this tendency toward isolation isn’t actually a gift. And one of the places I’ve been invited to pay attention to this is in the way I offer spiritual direction. 

For the last year and a half or so, I’ve been offering spiritual direction primarily through correspondence — the sending of email letters. This began by way of noticing. A kind of discernment, actually. I noticed digital letters coming my way a lot because of the space I host at Still Forming. Somehow, people would find their way there, discover a bit of resonance, and then reach out. 

I loved this. 

It was always such a marvel and delight when it happened. The chance to hold someone’s story, written out with such care, inspired such a sense of holy awe in me every single time it happened. 

Along about this same time, I took a business course that helped me think about my approach to my work in terms of my most natural and preferred working style. This bolstered my movement toward offering spiritual direction in a formal way through correspondence. As a writer and contemplative, wading into the depths with others through written letters seemed like a natural fit.

In many ways, it has been. And I plan to continue meeting others in this way if that’s their preference. 

But I’ve also noticed its shortcomings. How instead of invitation, it can feel like one more email for a person to attend to, and how that can create resistance and stall movement for them. How writing isn’t a natural or preferred outlet for all.

And even in my own self, how this approach to “letters only” in my spiritual direction approach can become a kind of hiding. A way of keeping things safe and tidy and comfortable for myself, since it’s my preferred way of operating. An avoidance of risking full engagement in the world.

Like I said, a 5’s tendency toward reflection and seclusion can be a great gift … except when it’s not.

So I’ve decided to risk. 

I reached out to each of my directees this last month and asked if they’d be interested in transitioning to a monthly one-on-one video call with me instead. And do you know what? Every single one of them, save one, said yes!

And so these monthly video calls have begun. And do you know what else? It’s been such a beautiful gift. Such a gift to see these beloved souls face to face. Such a gift to learn their personalities. To laugh together. To let them cry. To hold sacred space for them in a lived moment. 

Engaging in this way is so good for my 5 self. I sincerely can’t wait to keep doing it.

How do you continue to be invited to grow in your own self right now? What is the journey of formation like for you these days?

Much love,
Christianne

What I'm Learning From Launching

The last time I launched something substantial through Still Forming was in 2011 and 2012, and it was the first two times I offered the Look at Jesus course — the first time as a group offering and the second time as a chance to walk through the course with just one person.

I learned so much from both experiences, and they’re what set me on my way this last year and a half to reconfigure the course into what it is today: an in-depth personal exploration in a one-on-one format that you can take at your own pace and in as great a depth as you’d like. 

Last Sunday was the launch. 

It happened unexpectedly for me. I finished working on the course, and suddenly there was the question: launch now, or wait until January, once the holidays pass? 

I decided, as you know, to launch now but to give early signups this month a reduced rate. And since the launch, I’ve been learning a few things. 

1. When you launch fast, you make mistakes. This isn’t a criticism of launching fast, but merely an observation. After the email announcement went out to you last Sunday night, I realized I’d sent it with several typos — a typo in the subject line, a font error in the first line, and then an error in my explanation of the reduced rate. 

For me, an editor by trade, these errors and typos bothered me. It was so tempting to go into panic mode. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to acknowledge I’d sent the email in a hurry, due to my excitement, and that such mishaps are bound to happen that way. (It also helped that several people to whom I mentioned the errors said they hadn’t even noticed.) 

2. It’s really vulnerable out here! For the first little while after launching, I coursed on adrenaline. There was certainly the “eeeep!” factor of having launched, but mainly I felt the high of finally doing it — finally putting into the world this experience I’d worked so long and hard to make beautiful, original, and meaningful. I was so glad to have it finally out there, out of my hands and available to share. 

But then came the vulnerability factor. The questions about how much and how often to share about its ongoing development on social media. The decision to put a blog post together that details the history of how the course came to be. The decision to create a 90-second promo video that shares my heart for you in this course. 

All such risks! You never really know if you’re “doing it right.” All you can do is try. Which leads me to my third learning …   

3. This is really so much like faith. I don’t know what will happen from here. I don’t know who will sign up, how they’ll experience the course, or what impact it will have upon their lives. All I know is that I followed the impulse I knew to be true — to pour all I am into creating this and then to set it free for others to receive — and the rest is out of my hands. 

It occurred to me this morning that this is a lot like faith. We gather what we know, acting on what we do have, and then we jump. There’s always something in there we don’t know, and there’s certainly much beyond the jump we don’t know either, but we take what we have and let it be enough to propel us over the edge. 

So I’ll keep jumping. In faith.

How are you experiencing mistakes, vulnerability, or faith in the jumping right now?    

Much love,
Christianne

What Are Your Growing Edges?

Do you have a sense of the growing edges in your life right now?

These are the places of your current formation — the places God is about the “right now” work of forming you, growing you, shaping you, and making you more into the person you really are and are meant to be.

How would you describe your current growing edges?

For me, my growing edges take on two themes right now:

1. Finishing things
2. Moving toward people

A lot of this has to do with what I shared in a previous letter about my new awareness of the Enneagram type indicator and my own place on its spectrum as a 5. Those who are 5s on the Enneagram spectrum are known as investigators, as information gatherers, as people who need to perceive the whole scope of a matter in order to feel secure enough to move forward. 

While this can result in the offering of many gifts to the community, in terms of understanding and knowledge, the downside is that a 5 never feels quite ready to put their work into the real world — there’s always one more book to read or one more thing that needs doing to make it truly fitting and worthy and complete. Because of this tendency, 5s often stay inside the safety of their ideas and struggle to let themselves and their ideas meet with the rough and tumble of reality’s road.

This is so true for me!

The closer I get to finishing a special project or even making a decision about something I feel drawn to do, the more I can put my head in the sand, trying to hide myself from exposure through what I perceive is more preparation or planning.

So I’m trying to challenge myself in this area, to let God draw me beyond the safety of my 5-type’s fallenness.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S., then, I spent significant time pushing through resistance and working on some of the last few components of the Look at Jesus course. Last night, I stayed up until 3:30 a.m. recording the final three audio files for the final module. I’m proud to say that after a bit of polish on those last components, the course will be ready to go. (Can I get a hallelujah?!)

But true to form for a 5, I’ve noticed the closer I get to the finish line on all this, the more scary the whole enterprise feels. For the last two years, this project has been my baby. I’ve held it close, nurtured it, dreamed on its behalf, and poured all my best energies into it. Now that it’s finally ready to make its venture into the world, to do what it was created to do in the first place, I feel scared!

But since finishing things and releasing them into the world is a growing edge for me right now, I keep advancing. Even if there’s one more thing that could be done (and there always will be) and even if it’s not without mistakes (and it never will be), the goal is to launch. To put this precious gift into the world so it can serve its purpose.

Next week, I’ll tell you about my other growing edge of moving toward people — yet another intentional, formational process for me.

How would you describe your own growing edges right now? What does the invitation to grow in those areas feel like?

Much love,
Christianne

Decisions, Decisions

Have I shared with you before how much I love discernment? I absolutely love it.

To me, discernment is amazing because it is so personal. It’s about getting in touch with God’s unique path for us. It’s about exploring what we know to be true about ourselves. It’s about noticing the way God consistently speaks to us and how that voice is speaking now.

And it never ends. We’re continually discerning. Once we determine a particular step forward to take — and then we take it — then there’s the question of what faces us in that new place and how it will eventually invite us to take yet one more step forward.

Life is a continual unfolding. It’s gorgeous. I love that we continue to grow.

But in reality, discernment is hard. It can be so confusing, can’t it? What is God trying to say? Are we hearing God or just ourselves — or even some other force at work inside us or against us?

Over the years, I have loved the opportunities that have cropped up for me to help someone in my life see their way forward — those times when they call me up and say, “Can you help me process something?”

I have loved the chance to “sit on the floor” with them, so to speak, and lay out all the factors in front of us, looking at them together. I have loved noticing with them what their current path of growth might be, and how that speaks to the decision before them. I have loved learning about God’s previous and current movements in their life and how that, too, speaks to their point of decision.

Discernment is just amazing and fun, at least in my experience.

And so I’m exploring the possibility of offering what I call “discernment sessions” — dedicated space for people at a crossroads in their lives or a point of decision to work through some questions and see what we might see together. What could that look like? How might it work? That’s what I’m determining right now.

So I’m offering beta sessions as I develop a real offering for this.

Would you be interested in trying it? 

Right now, I have room for a few more sessions in this beta-testing place and would love to offer you a chance to participate. This will include answering a few preliminary questions about your situation by email, then scheduling time to connect by Skype or phone for the actual discernment session, then doing some post-session reflection to process what you’ve learned from the experience.

If you’re at a life crossroads or point of decision and would appreciate some gentle structure and helpful companionship in discerning the best way forward, perhaps this would be a good option for you. There is no financial charge for the beta sessions I’m offering right now, but I do request your willingness to share feedback on a few key components of the experience at the end.

If this interests you, would you let me know? Just reply to this email, sharing a little bit about your situation, and we can go from there.

And even if you’re not in need of a session like this right now, I’d still love to hear your thoughts on the following:

What has decision-making been like for you in the past? Are you in the process of making any decisions right now? 

Much love,
Christianne

The Discomfort of Vulnerability

I’ve been devouring information on the Enneagram lately. Have you heard of it?

It’s a personality type indicator — similar to the Myers-Briggs — but one that is often used in Christian spirituality and formation circles to help us understand our native disposition toward the world and how that can help or hinder us from becoming the people God created us to be. 

I love it because it isn’t static. 

It’s not like taking the Myers-Briggs test, where you learn what type you are and that’s it, end of story, illumination accomplished. 

Rather, finding out your Enneagram number is just the beginning. It gives you a glimpse into the real state of your soul — your core needs, your key coping mechanisms, your besetting sins, and your great gifts — and then it invites you to grow. It helps you see your fallen state of being and your redeemed state of being. It doesn’t leave you right where you are.

For a spiritual formation practitioner like me, this has been such a revelation.

And I’ve been noticing how my reaction to the kinds of things I’ve been sharing with you here in these letters and on Still Forming lately is typical of the number I am — a 5 — on the Enneagram.

Here’s how I’ve been reacting: pretty much freaked out. I’ve been sharing with you experiences I’ve had with God that I don’t understand and don’t really like and haven’t really settled inside my mind, heart, and soul. Despite not fully understanding them, I’ve been sharing them with you anyway.

This feels like a cardinal sin to a 5 on the Enneagram. 

A 5 on the Enneagram is an information gatherer. They take in information and seek to systematize and understand it fully before “going public” with their thoughts and understanding. They usually refuse to put themselves out there without the full comprehension of a thing in their back pocket. That sense of understanding feels safe and secure to them. 

It’s been helpful to recognize myself in this description for two reasons. 

First, it’s been encouraging to learn how my information-gathering and systematizing ways can be helpful for the betterment of others and the world. I’m meant to put those giftings to a good purpose. 

But it’s also good for me to be challenged by the Enneagram — to learn that these knowledge-gathering ways can also be a besetting sin that keeps me from acting and keeps me shrouded in safety from risk. 

The Enneagram has been teaching me that, as a 5, I need to step out and risk a bit more, that I need to be careful of hiding behind “more research” and “more knowledge” instead of making contributions. I can see the way that temptation to more knowledge and understanding often keeps me from moving forward on ideas I have for the Still Forming community. It’s also why I’m having trouble bringing the Look at Jesus course to completion.  

And so risk. And vulnerability. These are not easy for a 5. 

And yet it feels like where I’ve been living with you of late, as I’ve shared with you some prayer experiences I haven’t understood and some growing edges I haven’t wanted. 

I’ve shared these things with you and have felt super exposed and vulnerable. It’s been mighty uncomfortable to let you see me in these unconfirmed and finalized places. 

But I think there’s purpose in it. 

I think it’s a good exercise for me — not to have it all together and figured out beforehand. It helps take the focus and pressure off me as some kind of wise, all-understanding guru and places the focus on God and what he might be about and trying to say, as we just follow him around and seek to see and hear. 

I hope you’ll bear with me in this risky, uncomfortable place. It isn’t super familiar or comfortable to me, but I think there’s redemption in it. 

Much love,
Christianne

PS: If you want to learn more about the Enneagram, I can’t recommend highly enough a book by Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert calledThe Enneagram: A Christian Perspective . So incredibly helpful, insightful, and grounded. Also, you can take a preliminary online test here (though I’d recommend supplementing the test with the book so you can confirm if the test results are accurate to your experience). 

Why Community Matters in Discernment

One of my most favorite things about our life with God is the process of discernment.

When we’re in those threshold places in our lives, where we’re trying to see our way forward to the next step or simply trying to understand better the step we’re on, I love the process of laying out all the variables and looking at the way God has previously worked in our lives and how God has uniquely made us in order to help gain clarity about the present moment.

It’s seriously the best.

And this past week, I’ve been reminded of the importance of community in that process of discernment.

When I told Kirk about the really intense prayer experience I had a week ago Thursday, which I shared with you in last week’s letter, he didn’t feel any resonance with the idea that what I thought I heard was indeed God’s voice. It just didn’t feel true to him.

He reminded me of a time he’d had recently where he thought he heard God telling him something hard and very similar to what I’d heard (but concerning a different circumstance) and how several people close to him and the situation — myself, his sister, and his best friend — all confirmed they believed it to be true, too. And the way it worked out, it was.

“It’s important to discern in community,” he reminded me in the aftermath of this prayer experience I thought I’d had. And he encouraged me to share what happened with a few other trusted people in my life.

So this past Wednesday evening, I shared what happened with my therapist, Debbie. She’s a woman deeply spiritual and grounded, who knows God and knows me and is always willing to tell me the truth.

She wasn’t so sure it was God’s voice either.

“Look at the fruit,” she said. I’d been unable to talk to God ever since it happened. I felt afraid and confused. I could feel myself putting up walls, growing cold in love, and tempted toward distance. I felt completely unable to enter back into the experience of what had happened, as though my spirit just wouldn’t let me go back there.

It reminded me of other times I’ve had to discern whether something I was going through was from God or some other source and how Elaine, my spiritual director, has helped me discern by reminding me of the heart she’s learned that I have before God.

“You want to follow him,” she’s told me in some of those tough places. “You want to give him what he asks of you. I’ve seen you give him hard things before, in a willingness to surrender. If your spirit is fighting this, you might consider if it’s really God asking it of you.”

It’s one thing to fight what God asks because our flesh wants something else and we’re warring to surrender. It’s another thing to discern if what you thought you heard was really God.

I’m still feeling pretty unsettled by what happened a week ago Thursday. I still have a lot of questions. But I’ve begun to consider that it may not have been God I heard. It may have been just a mimic of his voice.

And that’s where I feel thankful for community — for people who can help me test the spirits and discern.

Is there anything you’re in a process of discerning right now? Do you have people who are helping you listen?

Much love,
Christianne

On Arguing With God

Do you ever argue with God? Does the idea of that feel familiar? Make you uncomfortable? Feel like it’s not allowed?

Lately, it feels like all I’m doing is arguing with God.

I started a series on Still Forming about the new season I’ve been telling you about — of learning to carry stillness inside myself no matter the circumstances.

This has to do with my quiet, fairly contained and orderly life moving out of its structured serenity into a bit more dissembled chaos the last six months or so. As I shared with you several weeks back, God’s helping me see he wants me to start learning how to depend on my external circumstances less and learn to carry stillness no matter what’s going on.

I’ve found this difficult. I feel resistant to it. I keep bobbing and weaving away from it, trying to find a way out of this being the way things are.

As such, every post I’ve written about this process so far has felt like sharing different angles on why this isn’t my idea of a good time and why it’s confusing the heck out of me. It has felt a bit like the book of Lamentations, Part 2, or like scraping sores with the sharp end of a piece of pottery.

And then three nights ago, on top of all that, I had a really strange experience.

I shared a moment with God in prayer where I believed to have heard him say he’s going to take from me one of the most precious aspects of my life. A piece I cannot imagine ever living without.

Now, I may have heard God wrong. It’s happened before. But the impression was so clear, and it was so very much like what I’ve learned God’s voice sounds like in my life.

And it shook me. Really, really bad.

I’m still shaken by it.

I don’t know how to talk to God about what happened that night. I feel resistant to even a conversation with him about it. The times I’ve tried to pray, it’s felt like staring at a blank wall. All I’ve been able to muster so far is, “Why would you say that to me?” — without being able to wait and hear the answer.

Kirk’s been encouraging me to ask God to confirm — or deny — if I heard him right. But I don’t feel able to even do that. The truth is, I don’t feel ready to hear the answer. If he says yes, then my world begins to shatter. If he says no, then my sense of surety in knowing his voice in my life goes suspect.

I don’t know quite what to do with all this yet. I’m in a bit of a holding pattern with him, I guess.

And as I share this truth with you, I can’t help but wonder what it’s like for you to hear me say these things. Does it freak you out? Concern you? Make you feel less alone?

I’m of the firm opinion that God wants the truth from us. Because that’s what real relationship is, right? You can’t have a real conversation with someone who’s not willing to show up and be honest with you. If they are willing to be honest, even if they’re angry or confused or disagree with you, well, that’s something the two of you can work with.

I think God’s more concerned about being in a real relationship like that with us than he is about hearing any cleaned-up, what-we-think-is-the-right-way-to-think-and-feel answers to what he’s offering us. That’s the demonstration Jesus gave us in the Gospels, after all. He hung loose with the questions the disciples asked. He let Mary and Martha question him when Lazarus died. He entered into the charged atmosphere of Peter’s unwillingness to hear of his impending death.

He wants real engagement. And so  I’m being honest. I’m arguing a lot with God right now, and I’m hoping that changes soon — because it’s really not pleasant.

But even if it doesn’t change soon, even if he and I go rounds on some of these things for a really long time, I know he’ll keep showing up. I know he’ll respect my voice. I know he’ll be present to listen and share his own side, if I listen.

I know he’s in this. Even if “this” isn’t so pretty right now.

Do you ever argue with God? 

Much love,
Christianne