Unveiling . . .

Hi there, friends.

I wanted to let you know that I've finally taken the plunge and published the website I was working on last year. (You know, the one I agonized over for months and talked about here, here, and here?)

It's called Still Forming, and it will be my new online home.

Since I've been away from blogland, I've been doing a lot of writing in various journals and doing a lot of typing on my new vintage typewriter (which I love dearly and have christened Brother Merton) . . . but there's something about the act of composing words for others that I miss so much. I think it's that writerly process of mentally organizing and framing a story in the just-right way and then using the just-right words and paragraphs to tell it well and make the experience real for others. While working on some projects I needed to get done last week, I suddenly realized how much I miss that process.

I also realized, when I became actively engaged in a conversation on Brett McCracken's blog last week (you can find the specific conversation here and here), that there are some subjects deep in my soul that I have to write and talk about. These subjects will not surprise you. They have to do with how we relate to each other and how we relate to God, how healing happens in the human heart and spirit, and what we are meant to be about in this world. And even though it was somewhat unnerving to sound a counter-voice to Brett's initial post, what happened as a result seemed fruitful for all involved. These are the kind of things I want to think and talk about more, and in a more intentional way.

So, yes. Please join me over at Still Forming.

It might also interest you to know that I'll be writing in the days and months ahead, too, more about my summer of solitude and what I've been continuing to learn and think about on the subjects of nonviolence, peacemaking, and social justice.

Cheers, friends, and much love. Thank you for being a presence and community in this much-beloved Lilies blog of mine over the past three years.

Summer of Solitude

I guess the last thing I have to say after writing my epilogue post is that I'm answering a call this summer into a season of intentional solitude. I'll be spending the next two and a half months with a lot of solitude and silence during the long hours Kirk spends at work. The time will be spent in prayer, worship, study, and reflection. There will be a lot of words written privately between me and God. I will not be posting anything here.

This pull toward a summer of solitude started to emerge right about the time I fell silent here in mid-March, too. Shortly after Kirk got his new job, I started putting together a new writing notebook full of notes, articles, quotes, poems, journal entries, and other scribblings I'd been amassing for about six months on the subject of peacemaking and nonviolence. This was a subject I'd begun to care deeply about exploring during the fall semester at Spring Arbor, when I'd read a book called The Holy Longing by Ronald Rolheiser.

In this book, I encountered an idea that simply would not let me go. It was the idea that love is the only force powerful enough to overcome violence. Now, I've not spent much time in my life thinking about violence or the works of peace. It surprised me just as much as anybody else that I was feeling a pull to explore this subject deeper . . . much deeper, in fact. But there it was. It would not let me go.

In January, when I studied for my residency in Philadelphia, I encountered more ideas that kept stirring something within me. The books I was reading for the residency kept quoting the same people over and over again: Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa. Everything they had to say resonated with a place rooted very deep inside of me. So before I left for Philadelphia, I made a commitment to spend this year studying the works of the great peacemakers of history. I knew I had to learn more about this subject that had its grip on me, and I thought the best place to begin would be to apprentice myself to the masters who had lived it out.

On the plane ride to Philadelphia, I happened to be reading the Jan/Feb issue of Relevant magazine and stumbled upon an article about the femocide taking place right this very moment in the Congo. This article was not for the faint of heart, and I cried deep wracking sobs while reading it on the plane. There was so much deeply disturbing news embedded in that article, and I found myself wondering if Rolheiser was really serious. What could it possibly look like to overcome violence with love in the Congo femocide? Was it really possible to overcome that level of hatred? Where would one even begin?

Then I spent my time at the residency thinking more and more about this subject. Over and over in my journal for that week, I wrote in big block letters these sorts of notes to myself: Cooperation accords human dignity. The primary principle of social justice is the dignity of all human persons. How is the heart changed? How do we help people grow in love? If Jesus is real, then God is for all people.

You might remember that I came home from the residency asking the question, "What is my Calcutta?" I was thinking about something I was beginning to call emotional justice, since my focus for many years has been the journey to emotional and spiritual healing in my own heart and in the hearts of others. But as I continued to think about emotional justice on a personal level, I also began to wonder if the kind of love that I have learned is the key to healing individual hearts is perhaps the same kind of love that has the power to heal the greater magnitude of ills in our big world. It might sound pie in the sky to say so, but it was the best connection I could make between the journey I've taken so far and this new subject that had gripped my heart, showing up quite unpresumingly one day upon the doorstep of my heart and asking me to follow where it leads.

I've been following the path in small increments this first six months of the year. But then, as I assembled all my notes and clippings and other scribblings into my dedicated notebook for this project toward the end of March, I started to notice something new. I noticed a pull toward dedicated time. I looked ahead to the summer and saw that time might indeed present itself in large doses while Kirk is away at work. Most of my usual commitments would not be in place in the summer, and my heart was growing in its need to pray intently and learn intently and think intently and journal intently about all of this. I began to wonder if this summer was indeed the time.

Over the last couple months, as I've been away from here, it has become clear to me that this summer really is meant for this. So today I am beginning. I don't know where this path will ultimately lead . . . and I'm completely okay with that. It has been such a joy-filled delight to watch myself embrace the mystery, trusting God with the outcome, contenting myself with mere obedience inside the process, not having to know what this is all for right now, just knowing I'm supposed to follow.

I won't be writing here this summer. I'm even going into this journey believing this could be my last post ever written on this blog. I just want to be open to wherever God will take me, no strings attached. For now, I'll leave this content open and accessible, until it becomes clear that the time to close it down completely has arrived.

In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy the Irish blessing I've included at the beginning of this post. I found it many months ago and knew that it would be my wish for all of you if and when I ever did leave this space. Be blessed, my friends, and take care.

Much love,
Christianne

An Epilogue, of Sorts

Hello, friends.

It has been such a long while since I've written anything here. I never thought I would encounter the day when three weeks . . . then a month and a half . . . then two months . . . and now almost three months would pass without new words from me in this space. The journey to here has been twisty-turvy and surprising.

I guess I should begin by saying that I had every intention of finishing my series on learning to rest. Even from the time I began the series, I knew there were at least seven or eight installments that could be written at that point about this process for me, not to mention however many more pieces that would fall into place as I continued to walk this path.

The first few months of this year were filled with so many opportunities to lean deeper into the rest I was asking God to teach me to receive. Writing those first four installments that got me up to the point of my January residency in Philadelphia was only the beginning. I was really enjoying the process of chronicling the fullness of all this journey for you here.

But then things happened. Really surprising things.

The first thing that happened is that Kirk got a job. That happened right after I wrote my last post in mid-March. It happened very quickly and quite unexpectedly. One moment we were driving to the beach on a sunny Friday afternoon, enjoying the beauty of the day together, and the next moment he was on a phone call with a friend who wanted to meet for lunch on Monday to talk about working together in a relatively new department at Full Sail. Less than a week later, he was in salary negotiations for the new position. A little over a week after that, he showed up for his first day on the job.

This completely shell-shocked me, but in the best of ways. Really, it shell-shocked both of us. It was kind of like waking up in the middle of a very busy street, all kinds of new and bustling activity happening around you, then scratching your head in a wholly stupefied daze and saying to the person beside you, "How exactly did we end up here?" It happened just that fast and just that unexpectedly.

But it was a complete blessing. For one thing, Kirk was (and continues to be) in love with the opportunity. It gives him the chance to listen to people's stories and hear their dreams and ask them compelling questions while continuing to build the educational institution that has been a part of his personal and professional life for so long. The work is good, the people are like family, and the place feels so much like home.

For another thing, the whole situation humbled me like you wouldn't believe. You may remember that my first and second posts in the series on learning to rest described how utterly self-dependent I had realized myself to be about the future. I had for some reason imposed a heck of a lot of internal pressure on myself to unlock the mysterious puzzle about where God was ultimately taking us in this very unconventional life we lead together. I was crunching my mind on overtime to crack that particular code, and a lot of this season of learning to rest was about releasing the need to do that anymore. It was about coming to believe that God indeed is our heavenly Father, which means that he sees us, knows our needs, and will provide for each and every one of them.

Well.

That's pretty much what Kirk's new job had to teach me, and it totally rocked my world. You see, I had absolutely nothing to do with that opportunity coming along or dropping into his lap. I didn't touch it. All I did, if I did anything, was listen to Kirk process through the decision and ask him good questions about it along the way.

Yet here it was. Something he was thrilled to be given the chance to do. What's more, it was providing for exactly all of our needs at that exact moment in time.

And I had absolutely nothing to do with it. That's the part I couldn't quite shake. God wasn't dependent on my doing all the right things or figuring out all the right answers in order to bring the next good thing into our lives. He did what he wanted to do, and he brought Kirk into that mix, and he let me just sit back and watch. With my jaw hanging down to the ground.

I'm pretty sure it stoked God to do this for us: to bring us around the next bend in our journey, finally, after wondering for so long together what it would be and when it would happen. I'm also pretty sure it gave God no shortage of endless delight to watch my wholly dumbfounded reaction as I made the very obvious connections that were there to be made to my very personal journey into greater and greater rest.

So that's the first thing that happened after I wrote my last post. It kind of distracted me for a while from writing anything here. I was pretty full on the inside just holding the weight of all God was communicating to me through that experience.

That he sees us. That he knows our needs. That he will provide for each and every one of them. That he's a whole heck of a lot more creative than I ever could be. That when he wants something to happen, he sets it in motion and it just flows.

Message received. Thank you, Jesus. I believe you now.

The next thing that happened was yet another marvel, and it was this: I started living completely in the present. For several weeks in a row, I found myself content to be concerned only with what was right in front of me to do. When I reached the end of a task, I was happy to simply ask myself, "What is the next right thing for me to do now?"

These were simple tasks. Things like washing the dishes in the sink. Pulling a load of laundry out of the dryer and folding the clothes in the bedroom. Paying the bills. Running to the post office. Calling the credit card company. Shopping for groceries at Costco and Publix. Working on an assignment for school.

Many of these tasks (especially grocery shopping!) were things I used to hate doing and would put off doing as long as possible. They were things Kirk would often do for the both of us, if I'm to be completely honest. Except now he was working 50 to 60 hours a week to get up to speed on his new job. Clearly, he wouldn't be paying the bills or shopping for us when he got home from those long days. It was up to me to do it now.

And I found myself really enjoying it. I loved the simplicity of all these specific tasks. I loved the feeling of contributing to our household and making Kirk's life that much easier. I loved moving from one thing to another in the quietness of our little home.

What's interesting to me about this is how little I thought of blogging. Every rare once in a while, I would remember I have a blog. I would remember it like I was peering, or straining, through a foggy mist to see that blog in the back reaches of my memory. And I would remember that I'd been in the middle of writing a series that seemed to culminate in the life I now found myself living: a life of peace, of simple joy, of resting contentedly and wholeheartedly in the present, without worry and without fear.

The thought of completing the series felt like forcing myself to go backward, to stuff myself back into shoes that were too small after a giant growth spurt. I had left off the series with events that had happened in January. And here it was: April. So much had occurred in the space of that time, even before Kirk got wind of the new job, to teach me lessons about learning to rest. Connecting the dots with all the stories that had happened between January and April to prepare me to receive the rest I had finally found felt overwhelming and somewhat stifling. It would force me to focus on the past instead of living completely in the present, which is what I most wanted to enjoy doing after the long road it took to get me here.

So that's what kept me from this space for quite so long. There's more to this story and more to where I'm heading from here, but I'm going to share those thoughts in a separate post. For now, know that I have indeed found the rest I was so longing and praying to find. Though it makes me sad to think of all the stories making up that journey that will never get told in this space after all, I'm contenting myself to hold all those untold stories close to my heart, known by me and Jesus, believing that the not-telling of them does not make them any less real or a part of who I am today.

Learning to Rest: Part 4

That night, after the prayer service, a group of my cohort friends and I decided to take a trip to the mini-mart. I, for one, was utterly famished and found myself practically salivating at the mere mention of chocolate chip cookies. So we crowded into one friend's car, cranked the U2 music as high as we could handle it, and headed down to the only establishment open close to midnight in that quiet little town where our retreat center was located.

We decided to each purchase something worth sharing with the rest of the group, and once we made it back to the retreat center, we laid claim to one of the main living areas, scooted several tables together, and then spread our booty of candy and chips along the tables to share.

I don't know that I have ever laughed or giggled that hard or that long in my life. We must have been sitting together for at least a good hour and a half, sharing and joking and telling stories. One friend had worked in a funeral home during one season of his life, and he regaled us -- completely straight-faced -- with stories about some of his most bizarre experiences. Soon people were quoting scenes from The Office. Then someone would pass around the bag of Sour Patch Kids or Doritos. Everything happening around that table of fellowship struck me as insanely silly and insanely good.

Periodically, I would catch myself giggling like a little girl, and I would be thrust back into the memory of that time of play Jesus and I had just shared during the prayer service earlier that night. That experience felt so connected to the purity of fun and laughter I was now sharing with my friends around that table. I felt so safe and so free. It felt like an invitation to more childlike play.

The next morning, I woke in my room about an hour before my alarm went off. I debated getting up or turning on the light to read in bed, but ultimately I decided to go back to sleep. As I cozied back under the covers, my mind returned to the healing experience I'd shared with Jesus the night before. I remembered how I had rested in his arms like an infant after we'd run and danced and played together. So in my bed right then, as I nestled deeper into my pillow and pulled the blankets closer, I pictured myself in Jesus's arms once again, allowing him to hold me as I fell back to sleep.

That last hour of sleep was the deepest I'd had the whole night. I woke feeling incredibly rested and warm and safe and loved. I am not sure I have ever experienced sleep that deep and restful in my entire life. All because I'd let Jesus hold me for that last hour of sleep.

This whole experience fell smack-dab in the middle of the week. Up to that point in the week, my hidden extrovert had come out of hiding and was living on full alert. Whereas I would normally have been heading to bed at a decent hour at a planned retreat, I was finding myself choosing to stay up until one-o-clock in the morning to talk and share and laugh with my friends. Whereas I would normally have used any scheduled free time for a nap, a solitary walk, or a chance to read and journal by myself, I found myself choosing instead to be with others, to go exploring with a group, to linger over the lunchtime meal because we were enthralled in a good conversation.

In other words, I hadn't connected much to my highly introverted nature up to that point in the week.

But that all changed after that healing prayer service, after that night of giggling hard with friends, after that last hour of deep, restful sleep the next morning. As I walked into the first morning session that next day, I found my body moving more slowly and engaging with others less quickly. There was a serenity and lightness to my heart -- a heart that was now captivated by play and laughter and freedom with Jesus -- but there was also an incredible feeling of exhaustion creeping over the rest of my being. I found my brain shutting down about halfway through the sessions. I took more time for myself during the free hours and went to bed much earlier. I felt stripped and in need of naps. I didn't have much to give anymore.

Slowly, I came to realize that I was experiencing something that felt like a deep soul slumber. Who knows how long that hardened piece of my heart that Jesus took from me that night had been in effect in my life, operating as though everything depended on its efforts and alertness, operating as though it was the only living savior around. But however long it was, I know it was a really, really long time. So much so that I don't think it had any concept of rest or play in its experience of my life at all.

These gifts of rest and play, then -- these gifts that then led to its continually deep soul slumber -- were completely new and completely, utterly needed.

Learning to Rest: Part 3

About a week and a half into the new year, I traveled to Philadelphia for a week-long residency with my classmates from Spring Arbor and six other cohort groups enrolled in our spiritual formation program. We were there to learn about social justice from Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne, and we were provided intentional time to connect in our cohort groups about the work God has been doing in each of our lives.

During the cohort sharing time, we were asked to individually share our responses to two questions: "What has God been doing in my life since last we met?" and "What hasn't God been doing?"

Wow. Those two questions pack a lot of punch, and it was beautiful to hear each person in our cohort community share their diverse, heartfelt responses to how these questions meet them in their lives right now. And then it was precious to gather around each person after they shared so we could spend time praying for the concerns and questions and praises they had voiced. In all, it was a time of vulnerability, tears, intense listening, intense caring, and holy lifting up.

Since our cohort group has 21 members, it took several installments of several hours each for us to provide this sharing and prayer time for each person. I was next-to-last in line, which means that my sharing time landed in the middle of the week, just before we were scheduled for an evening lecture in the main meeting room.

I told my group about the invitation to practice active rest with God this year, allowing him to teach me what it means for him to be my heavenly Father who sees me, knows my needs, and will provide for them as I release my grip on the future and simply watch, wait, and learn to receive. I shared that this felt scary and that I didn't really know yet how to trust that God would show up. And when it came to sharing what God isn't doing right now, I wryly joked that God is not providing me with a job. It's hard to wait and trust that all will be revealed in the fullness of time.

After the group gathered around and prayed for me, we headed downstairs for the main session. Along the way, my friend Seth came up to me and asked if he could talk with me later. "When you were sharing," he said, "I felt like God gave me something specific to share with you, but I didn't want to share it in the larger group." Intrigued, I agreed to talk with him a little later about it.

That night during the main session, the director of our program talked about the role social justice has played within the charismatic tradition of our faith. He talked about prophecy and about healing, about spirit baptism and about spiritual warfare, linking each of these to the work of the Holy Spirit on behalf of social justice in the world. And then, after learning about the history and tenets of the charismatic tradition, we were invited to participate in a charismatic-style worship service.

We pushed all the tables and chairs off to the side of the room, creating an open space that would allow people to stand, sit, kneel, lay down, or even dance. We were told that we would be provided an opportunity for prayer later in the evening so that people could receive healing and the reception of their gifts and ministry if they wanted to be prayed over.

Since I have been so focused these days on receiving the work God has for me to do, I had every intention of going up to receive prayer for the reception of my ministry. But all of that changed once Seth came over to talk with me.

It was about halfway through the worship service, and I had moved from kneeling on the floor to sitting in a chair on the side of the room. Since I was now somewhat detached and no longer singing, Seth came over and asked if he could share with me what he felt God impressing upon him earlier that night. I nodded.

He sat down beside me and said, "I feel like God wants you to know that he's inviting you to play."

I looked at Seth and arched my eyebrows, not sure what to make of this.

He continued. "I'm serious. It's like God wants you to come up and sit on his lap, and he wants to cuddle with you, and tickle you, and laugh with you, and run around with you, and chase you. He's inviting you to play with him."

And then, without him having any knowledge of the image I've been carrying around about clutching the hardened pinecone at the core of my heart, he said, "I just feel like you're clutching something in your fist. Like you're holding on to it really hard and can't let it go."

My eyes widened, and I sat there, dumbfounded. How could he possibly have known?

"You're right," I said slowly. "Just before I came up here, God was showing me that there's this last little sliver of my heart -- almost like the last remaining 25 percent of it -- that has never been given over to him. And it's so frustrating because the other 75 percent has learned to trust him and receive healing. But this last 25 percent has never done any of that. It feels exactly like I'm clutching it in my fist, and it feels like this hardened, dark pinecone digging into the palms of my hands."

Seth nodded and listened, and then, with his eyes fixed on me, he said, "Christianne, you can receive healing for that."

"I know," I said. "I believe God is trying to heal me of it. That's what this season of active rest and learning to let him be my heavenly Father is all about."

"Right," he said. "But I mean tonight. You can receive healing from that tonight."

I looked at him skeptically. "I don't know, Seth. God has healed me in many different ways over the years, but my experience is that it always takes a really long time and a lot of intentionality on my part. I'm not sure I believe it can happen immediately, in a moment."

"Well, sometimes it doesn't," he agreed. "And God may choose not to heal you tonight. But he also could do it, if he wanted to. And maybe you could just start by asking him. I would really encourage you to go up for the healing prayer when the prayer time starts."

Seth has been involved in healing ministries for a while, so I trusted that he spoke from experience about God's ability to heal in an instant. But still . . . I didn't know what to make of all this. Like I said, the work of healing is something I've experienced, but it has always taken whole seasons of life and intentionality to enter into and receive it. It has always been something God and I work through together, sometimes with the help of friends or the help of a therapist. I didn't know if I believed God could really heal me in an instant.

I sat in my chair and took all this in, and all these thoughts and questions kept racing through my mind. I kept trying to reconcile, too, what he had shared about God inviting me to play. What did that mean? Why was it important? Why did it even matter?

And then suddenly, I was weeping. Deep, wracking sobs seemed to well up from the depths of my body. Tears began streaming down my face. My shoulders shook from all those heavy tears. And I felt so embarrassed to be crying like this, out in the open surrounded by classmates I'd just met in person for the first time a few days ago, plus a whole bunch of other people I didn't know at all.

For a long time, the tears just kept flowing and I didn't really know why. It felt like a grief that had been a long time coming, so I just let it come. And then, slowly, I began to see an image of myself in my mind. I was about four years old, and I was sitting on a chair in the middle of my living room. Activity swirled around me in the house, but I sat alone in the room.

Except that I wasn't alone. I saw Jesus with me in that room, right next to me as I sat in the chair. And I realized that this was somehow connected to the presence of Jesus I've always known.

My conversion story has always been a little awkward for me to tell because it has always been the case that I have had an awareness of Jesus with me in my life. From my earliest memories, Jesus has been there. I had never asked him to be there; he was just there. And I've never known what to make of that.

And yet here, in the midst of my tears, God was showing me that the presence of Jesus being with me from my earliest memories has been intentional. In all the ways I have ever felt alone in my life, I really wasn't ever alone. Jesus was always with me, because he knew I would need him to be.

This revelation that helped me understand something I'd never understood made me cry even more out of gratitude and wonder. And somewhere in the midst of these tears, I felt someone place their hand on my head, as though they were praying for me. They left a few moments later. As I continued to cry, my eyes closed and myself completely oblivious to the worship service going on around me, another person came up behind me and began to squeeze my shoulders, massaging the tension that must have been evident as I was hunched over in my chair. Slowly, I felt my neck and shoulders relax. This stranger, too, then moved away.

The tears began to subside, and I opened my eyes and sat quietly. They were beginning the prayer time at the front of the room, calling up those who wanted to receive prayer for their gifts and ministry. It was now clear to me that healing prayer -- not this prayer for ministry -- was what I needed to receive, and I felt willing to ask for it.

But how does healing happen, I wondered. How do I let God do it? How do I let myself receive it? My brain kept crunching these questions over and over, trying to open myself to receive healing but not knowing how to make sense of how it happened at all. Having some mental understanding of what I needed to invite and assent to seemed important. I mean, how could I receive healing if I didn't know how to let it happen?

With these mental gymnastics playing over and over in my head, I moved to the front of the room once the invitation came. Our director, Ken, approached me with a small bottle of anointing oil in his hand and asked how he could pray for me. But I didn't know how to tell him what I needed. "I'm holding on to something, and I don't know how to let it go," was all I could say. I shrugged my shoulders and looked at him, probably with no small amount of tears and desperation shining in my eyes.

Ken made the sign of the cross with oil on my forehead and prayed for me. Then he moved away to pray over another person and I found myself standing in that spot at the front of the room by myself. I felt self-conscious, and again I found my brain working its mental gymnastics on how to let this healing thing happen. I could feel myself getting nowhere, and I felt completely helpless and frustrated with the whole thing. I couldn't help wondering if all of this was just a little ridiculous.

After a few minutes, one of the prayer volunteers came up to me. He introduced himself as Austin and asked how he could pray for me. "I don't know," I told him. "There's this part of my heart that I'm holding on to, and I need to let it go. I need to give it to God, but I don't know how. I don't know how to let healing happen. I don't understand how it works."

Austin nodded and looked at me quietly. "Do you think you could name it? If you could give a word or two to what you're holding on to, what do you think it would it be?"

I just stood there, not saying anything. I didn't know. I shook my head in utter helplessness and looked back at him without saying anything.

He looked at me intently for a few moments, as though listening to the words I wasn't saying and listening to the spirit of God at the same time. "It feels to me like it might be a great loneliness," he said. "But I don't want to name it for you. Do you think you could give it a name?"

To the best of my ability and knowledge, all I could say was, "Trying to make life happen. I would name it, 'Trying to make my life happen.'"

Austin asked if he could pray for me, and his prayer took on a similar theme to what Seth had said to me earlier: that God wanted to play with me, that he wanted me to know how much he delights in me, that he wants me to be like a child with him, running around and being chased. I found myself wondering how he could possibly know what he was praying, how it was possible for his words to mirror Seth's so closely when he hadn't been there for our conversation.

After Austin prayed, we both stood there together. Neither of us said anything for a moment. Finally, I said, "I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to give this over to God so he can heal me. It just doesn't make sense to my mind. I feel like I need to understand how it happens in order to let it happen."

As I was talking, Seth came up and stood on the other side of me, placing his hand on my shoulder and praying for me quietly. Austin nodded at what I had said and then continued to stand there with me, as though listening. After a moment, he said, "I'll tell you what. Why don't we both stand here together quietly and see if God speaks to either one of us about this. And then, if either one of us hears him speak, we can tell the other person what he said. Does that sound okay?"

I nodded. We closed our eyes.

And then I saw him.

In my mind, I saw Jesus standing before me. He was smiling and laughing and beckoning me forward to run and frolic and play. His eyes twinkled. And he just kept laughing and inviting me forward, as though playing with me was the best thing he could imagine doing right in that moment.

So I did it. I imagined that four-year-old me that had been sitting in the living room chair entering into the scene with him and letting him chase me. I laughed and shrieked with joy. I let him catch and tickle me. I was having so much fun! And I could feel, as Seth and Austin prayed beside me, that a huge smile was beginning to spread across my face. It felt like it would be totally stuck there forever.

I stood there for a long time, allowing myself to bask in the moment, just watching myself play with Jesus in that image in my mind. And then, as I continued watching, I saw myself crawl up into his arms and rest. Jesus held me in his arms, my four-year-old self laying in his arms like an infant, fastly falling asleep.

A deep sense of rest came over my body, and I felt like I had no muscles at all. It felt like Seth was holding me up, keeping me from falling backward with his hand lightly touching my shoulder as he prayed. I could tell it was happening. The healing was happening. This is what healing felt like.

Soon Seth and Austin walked away, as though they knew I was with Jesus, just resting, just being with him, no longer needing them beside me in prayer, totally content to be with Jesus for a while.

I had the sense of a group of people standing behind me, a band of four or five of them, praying for me. My friend Annie came up and sang a beautiful worship chorus with her hand resting lightly on my shoulder. Her voice sounded like angel's wings in my ears. And then, with Seth's words to me from the beginning, and Ken's anointing oil and prayer, and Austin's inviting me deeper into all of it, and nameless strangers coming to touch my head and massage my shoulders while I cried, and a group of them standing in a circle of prayer behind me, and Annie's beautiful singing, I was struck with the greatest sense of being held up and supported by the literal body of Christ that I have ever known.

And in the midst of it, Jesus. Jesus holding me in his arms.

I'm not sure at what point it happened, but I slowly came to realize that it was gone. The hardened pinecone that was the core of my heart, the dark pit I had been clutching in my fist and didn't know how to let go of, was gone. Somewhere in the midst of all that playing, he had taken it from my hand, like a parent distracts a child to some other kind of activity so they forget what they'd been holding and the parent can pick it up after they've abandoned it.

I hadn't had to do anything to consciously offer it over. I hadn't had to understand how it would happen, or even when it would happen. He had done it all. He had taken it from me completely, and all that I did was play.

Learning to Rest: Part 2

On Christmas morning, Kirk gave me a small, two-sided card on which he’d written several questions. These questions were to be held in prayer by both of us for the duration of the week in preparation for the upcoming year. The idea was to pray separately over these questions for a week and then, when we went to dinner on New Year’s Eve, to break the silence of prayer and share what we discerned God was speaking.

The first question on the card asked of God, "What are you trying to free me from?" It didn't take long for me to sit with this question and discover its conclusion. Given the events of late, it seemed quite clear that God was wanting to free me from the iron grip with which I held the final remnants of my heart. This is the part of my heart that had been pushing itself along as though God did not exist. It was the vigilant sentry, a merciless machine, an isolated, sad, and lonely island.

And yet I'd seen Jesus inviting me closer. He had held out his hand toward my self-sufficiency, as though he wanted me to give it over to him. He seemed to want me to trust that this interior, desolate machine that is my greatest and last attempt at my own salvation could be entrusted entirely into his hands.

But could it be? This part of me didn't know the first thing about trusting anything or anyone other than the efforts of its own highly capable self. It was, quite honestly, a functional atheist.

I turned to the second question on the card: "How do you want me to live?"

At this point I began to see that it was perhaps providential that I'd just spent the past eight weeks learning about the spiritual disciplines for a class at Spring Arbor. In that class, I had learned firsthand about the principle of indirection. This principle states that we cannot, in our own power, make ourselves into the kind of people God wants us to be. In the face of that truth, we commit to little practices that are within our capacity so that God, along the way, can cultivate in us the character and fruits we cannot produce ourselves. We commit to what we can do so that God can grow in us what we cannot do. We do it together: his part, and our part.

I began to wonder how the principle of indirection could apply to this situation. If God wants to grow my trust in him in this deepest of interior places, how could I participate in its coming about? What kind of practices could make room for that trust to grow?

I looked out over the coming year of 2009 and, even in that moment, felt how immediately this part of my heart springs into action upon considering it. It channels all sorts of energy and worry toward answering the question of provision. It conjures up ideas for how that provision could happen. It wonders how people answering a vocational call to ministry go about finding jobs. It considers building a new resume. It speeds along channels concerned with connections, contacts, and networks. And it gets exhausted very quickly, even though it helplessly believes this is the only way it can survive.

But maybe there was another way. Just maybe.

That week I had been reading and re-reading the section in Matthew 6 that talks about worry. During one of those readings, I noticed a little sentence embedded in Jesus's sermon that I'd never paid much attention to before:

"Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? . . . Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' . . . For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you." (Matthew 6:25-33)

All throughout Matthew 6, Jesus keeps emphasizing our relationship with our heavenly Father. He talks about "your Father in heaven who sees you" (vv. 4, 6, 18) and says that "your Father knows the things you have need of" (vv. 8). He talks about how our Father in heaven feeds the birds of the air who don't put an ounce of energy into planting and harvesting the food they eat, and how God clothes the lilies of the field in majestic splendor, even though they are but mere flowers. And here, in the section of Matthew 6 that so carefully speaks to the very same worries of provision for physical needs that are the voice of my own heart in apprehending the future, Jesus says that my heavenly Father knows that I have need of all these things.

What does it mean for me to believe I have a heavenly Father who sees me, knows my needs, and will provide for them? What does it mean for me to allow him to be a heavenly Father who actually provides for those needs, in the same way he provides for the sparrows and the lilies without their lifting a toiling finger or worrying one single day? What does it look like for me to be a child, carefree about how the needs are met but content to simply receive with delight the gifts provided each day, trusting each day that those gifts and provisions will be there? What does it mean not to worry?

In considering the question "How do you want me to live?" and the principle of indirection, I began to ask God if 2009 is meant to be a year of practicing active rest, a year of willfully choosing not to spend time or energy figuring out the possibilities and details of my future life, spending that time and energy instead on attending to Jesus and loving others. I wondered if this is perhaps a year of attending to God's activity in my life, watching and waiting for him to bring his good gifts to me and learning to receive and respond to them when they come. Perhaps by actively watching for what God brings each day, my trust in the reality of him as my heavenly Father will grow.

This seemed like a big step to take: turning aside from a way of existing that was like second nature to me in order to trust an invisible God to provide for an invisible future. Was I crazy? I asked God for his Holy Spirit to confirm this path of active rest.

That's when all sorts of crazy things happened within one 24-hour period.

Later that same day, someone shared with me an image they had of me sitting in a meadow surrounded by butterflies. When I asked what those butterflies were doing, she related the idea of a butterfly coming to rest on somebody's shoulder. The person was sitting in stillness, and the butterfly came to them. Interesting.

Then my self-sufficient boy cat who is never interested in cuddling or receiving my affection took an unusual interest. He sat and stared as I worked on my computer and then jumped into my lap and wouldn't budge. He nestled his head into my arm and fell asleep. For seemingly no reason at all, this masculine cat that never cuddles decided to rest, unbidden, on my lap. Weird.

I happened that same night on a poem about butterflies. It spoke of butterflies eluding us when pursued but coming to alight quietly on our shoulders once we are still. Curiouser and curiouser.

And then, as a final bang, I had a dream that an invitation for guest-blogging showed up, completely out of the blue, in my e-mail inbox. I woke up and knew that all these things were God's ways of speaking to me. He was asking me to sit still, to choose not to make my own life happen this year, and to see what shows up, completely apart from my own making, as gifts he brings to me. He wants me to rest in such a way that allows him to demonstrate the faithfulness of his fathering of me.

I felt scared to make this commitment. The part of me that depends entirely on its own ability was completely and totally freaked out by it. But that is because it has known no other way. And this is where another passage I had been reading that week became incredibly comforting and incredibly instructive:

"I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, by paths they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them." (Isaiah 42:16)

The first few times I read this passage, I connected so much with the parts that spoke of blindness, of darkness, of a path unknown and places that are rough. The part of my heart to which this year is dedicated needs to unlearn self-sufficiency and, at the prospect of such unlearning, feels all these things acutely: blind, in the dark, on a road it does not know, and completely rough and unformed.

And yet as I continued to meditate on the passage through the week, I began to notice something else that completely blew my mind. I began to notice how many times God asserts himself as the agent of this journey along the new road, through the darkness into light, from rough ground into smoother levels. Over and over again, he says in this passage, "I will . . . I will . . . I will."

I could not avoid the truth that God would be the one leading me where I needed to go and bringing me out of the darkness I'd always known. It was just this kind of trust that I needed to cling to and learn to believe in, right that very moment.

Learning to Rest: Part 1

Do you remember when I wrote this post? It was late December, and I was coming to see how little I trust God with the future. Kirk and I had taken a "drive of psalms" that included spontaneous prayer of confession, and I had spilled immediately into a tear-drenched, prayer-filled confession of this distrust in God's real activity, this deeply held belief that my life and what gets made of it is all up to me and what opportunities I find or create. I didn't realize this truth was deep inside of me, but there it was: my belief in myself, my unbelief in God.

It made me sad. I could feel how exhausting it was, all the mental energy expended daily on the potential future, all of the thoughts turned constantly toward planning and hoping and imagining outcomes. It felt almost as though these thought patterns had become part of all the other involuntary, automatic processes of my internal world, something that just happened as my mind flew down its very well-greased tracks, just like my heartbeat happens or my nerve endings work without my having to ask them to. That's how much my mind-schemes about the future and utter dependence on myself had become a part of my waking reality.

A few days after that night of prayer and confession on the drive of psalms, the despondency over the truth of my heart and my inability to yield my trust to God had set in pretty deep. I was carrying the sadness around with me and didn't know what to do with it. That night, Kirk asked what it would look like to bring all of these things into the presence of Jesus.

So I sat and imagined myself doing that. In my mind, I pictured myself approaching the entrance of a garden I've come to know very well, situated on the grounds where we do our monthly Audire training. And as I imagined myself approaching this garden, I saw Jesus standing there at the entryway, waiting for me.


When I reached where he was standing, we stood at the entrance, facing each other. As I looked at him, I could feel all the growth of my long journey that has developed a deep bond of trust between us. It is a trust that allows me to look into his eyes and see deep love and compassion and delight, believing he feels each of those things deeply for me.

But in that moment, standing at the garden gate, I could sense that it wasn't the whole of myself receiving that love and delight and care. I could feel a part of myself being held back, almost off to the side, away from his line of sight. In fact, the deeper I looked into the image of the two of us standing there in my mind, the more I could see that my left hand was indeed clutching something, balled up in a fist over my heart as the entire left side of my body turned away from Jesus in shame.

I could tell that I was clutching in my fist the deepest, most inner core of my heart. I could tell, too, that even though a large part of my heart has experienced the love and life of Christ that I mentioned above, this part of my heart had never experienced it at all. Whereas a large part of me has become comfortable with mystery and ambiguity, alive to the adventure of living in the journey and not having to know all the answers, this part of my heart has been tucked away from all that growth, suffocated from the air and unable to receive the grace of that kind of trust.

I couldn't imagine giving Jesus this last part of my heart. It is the deepest core, functioning like the reserve tank of a car that the car pulls from when it has nothing left to burn. It seemed clear in that moment that my heart, without my knowing it, has been holing away vestiges of its familiar, former life as more and more of me has continued to be transformed by God's grace for these past many years. It has been preserving itself in its inmost reaches.

This inner sanctum has never been given over to Christ and has never experienced his gentle, tender, piercing presence. It cannot imagine the possibility of life outside the power of itself. And I could hardly believe it had been here all this time, functioning as though no transformation and growth had ever occurred in my life at all. Truth be told, that made me kind of mad.

As I stood there clutching this core of my heart, a hardened core that resembled an unopened pinecone dropped from a tree or the dark, hardened pit of a peach fruit, I saw myself attempting to hide this part of my heart from Jesus. And yet, as I watched myself attempting to hide, I experienced his patience. He wasn't trying to wrest this part of my heart away from my grasp, and he wasn't asking me to hurry up and be ready to give it to him already. It was as though he knew this part of my heart could only be given once it had grown to trust him, and that this kind of trust could only grow through an experience of his love and openness and gentle invitation. So he stood there, hand outstretched toward the left side of my body, just waiting with incredible patience.

Quietly, Kirk asked what I thought Jesus might say to me in that moment. I felt the stronger part of me that is more accustomed to receiving Christ's love and living in it everyday look into his eyes and hold his gaze. Slowly, I voiced the question: What would you say to me right now?

As we stood there together, his hand outstretched and my left side turned from him in shame, I heard Jesus say: I understand.

He understands why I am holding back. He understands why I am scared to part with my deepest reserves of self-reliance and all those protective shields. He understands why those shields and responses exist in me in the first place, much better than I do or ever will. He understands all these things, and he is patient. He is committed to waiting with me as my trust in him grows, is nurtured, and blooms. He is committed to me until the day I can hand him my whole heart.

Encouraging Words for the Day

Last night, I stayed up until 6AM and worked on my new website. It was such a great time to enjoy the quiet and focus and reorganize some things and write some new content I've been meaning to write for some time.

Things are getting closer and closer to being ready for all of you to see, which excites (and scares!) me, but more than anything, last night was a treasure because it was a time of pouring nurture into my soul. It has been a busy week, and I've not had a lot of margin. And as tired as I was when I thought I was going to bed at 1AM, it was almost like my heart and soul said, "Hey. We're here, and we want to work. We're tired, but we care more about the time we could spend in quiet creativity. That would actually energize and nurture us. Want to hang out and work?"

It was cool. I loved it. I was in the zone and got a lot accomplished.

So, to celebrate, I'm going to share some words I've found encouraging all week. Jen Gray is one of my favorite creative bloggers, and she never fails to find inspiring words to post along with her gorgeous photographs. Earlier this week, when I was frozen in the fear of taking this step publicly and putting ideas and words out there that are unfamiliar even to myself, I needed to hear this:

"Okay. It's like this. You don't necessarily have to make this gigantic huge step . . . you can do it in your own way, in your own time. Taking one wee little step. . . . Listen, at one time or another, we have all thought we weren't good enough . . . but at some point you have to make the choice ~ either you can stay frozen in this fear for another 40 years, or you can get on with your life and begin to learn that all that matters is you giving your soul a chance to swim in what it is curious about, and what it loves, and there is no grade or rating given to soul work.

Scared? I understand. You feel vulnerable and exposed. What if what you reveal makes others not like you or think differently of you? . . . I'll tell you what is 1000 times worse than feeling vulnerable, it is keeping all of those things sealed up inside you so they never see the light of day, and never giving your beautiful spirit a chance to speak up, and forbidding your life from exploring something."

Full post of these words found here.

If the Fear Could Speak

So, I shared in my last video blog post that I'm creating a new space. And that the process of doing this has been long and slow and somewhat painful. I have struggled with so much shame about this, and your encouragement to continue taking my time for as long as it needs to take was a kindness I needed to receive. Thank you.

The other night I was hitting up against some walls in the creation process again, so I decided to call my dear soul friend Sara to sort some of it out. Sara is the best person I know to call when I need to sort out my thoughts about a particular idea. She has an ability to hear me out entirely, and without any passing of judgment. In fact, I'm usually the one passing judgment on myself in the midst of all I'm sharing, and she's amazing in the way she speaks into my self-shaming by saying, "Just so you know, I don't feel any of those feelings toward you. I feel nothing but excitement to enter into this with you and help sort out what needs sorting out." The affirmation of excitement, total acceptance, and non-judgment helps free me up to share more fully what's going on in me.

Besides being such a great objective listener who knows how to ask the best questions in existence, Sara also has an ability to get underneath all the data we're considering in order to reach my heart. This last part is the most special gift of all because it's like she gives me back to myself. When I get all wound up inside my head and enter into the zone of passing judgment on myself for not reaching a conclusion sooner, she takes the time to sort through those shaming feelings with me. And then she ends all of that by saying, "What's happening inside of you right now is way more important than the ideas or the decision you're trying to make ever could be." It's something I don't always readily remember (or even receive when she says it), so having in her someone who believes it is true so fiercely and speaks it to me with such firmness is a real gift to my heart.

And that's exactly the gift she gave me the other night when I called. After we spent about an hour unpacking the thoughts and questions about the website that had been crowding all the space in my head, she suggested that perhaps the unexpectedly extended journey of creating this new space was due in part to a fear that was yet unvoiced. Perhaps because I've been trying so hard to just get the site ready for launch, feeling frustrated with everything that keeps holding it back, the unvoiced fear has gone subversive. Perhaps all the hemming and hawing and re-creating is partly the subversive manipulation of the fear, its attempt to keep me from the launch until I give it a chance to speak.

This really freaked me out. But it also began to resonate in a very deep place.

What if you honored that fear? Sara asked. What if you listen to what it has to say? What if its voice is more important than the launching of this website? What if the fear has something to say that is important for you to learn about yourself?

When she put it that way, I felt myself shift from being really freaked out to really wanting to know what the fear had to say.

If the fear could speak, Sara asked, what would it say?

So the next morning, when Kirk left for an early meeting, I stayed in the warmth of the bed and decided to enter into a conversation with the fear. I turned on my side and pulled the covers close and warm and said, Hi. I know you're there. I feel you. And I'm sorry I haven't listened to you. I'm sorry I've been beating you back, trying to quelch your feelings and your voice so that I can get where I'm trying to go. I am sorry. But I'm listening now. I want to hear what you have to say. And I will be with you, no matter how long it takes, to sort this through. You are more important than this website. So, I'm listening. What do you have to say?

One part of the new website is an intensely personal space. It is an altar of sorts, a place where I offer to God and to others the work God is doing in me. It is a testimony of my own ongoing formation process, and I regard it as a holy space. Several weeks ago, in fact, I decided it is too holy to receive any feedback on what I share. Criticism is not welcome, and encouragement and affirmation is not necessary. It's an altar, an offering, pure and simple.

But there is a whole other space on the site where I am beginning to articulate some of my convictions about the Christian faith and the ongoing journey of living inside of it. Some of these convictions have been building for many years, and some of them are new, still in the phase of asking questions and exploring their implications. Some of these things have made their way into the living testimony of my everyday life, and some of them are so new inside my head that they're nowhere near a lived experience yet.

I had intended that part of the space to be more like a dialogue, a place to continue generating community and learning from one another in concrete ways. I had looked forward to not only translating the fellowship of this community into that new space but also seeing what new friends might come along to join us.

But the fear has a problem with this. She helped me see that, for now, I need that space, too, to be closed to outside voices. We've lived some of these ideas, I felt the fear saying to me, but we've not written about them yet. We don't know what that will be like. We don't even know what our voice in that context sounds like. We might even discover that we don't agree with some of the things we think we believe once we've explored them more deliberately. Inviting other people into all this newness just feels too scary right now.

I heard in these words a need to grow into my voice and my convictions in that new space. I heard a need to strengthen in concrete form what has been growing intuitively within me for some time now without worrying what others will think or say. I thought of my friend Kirsten and her beautiful journey last year into (and then out of) fundamental Catholicism, how she decided she needed an open space to explore her thoughts out loud but with boundaries that kept exterior voices from speaking into her process until she was ready to receive them.

That's what I need right now. And it's hard to share that with you. Our community is such a safe, loving, and affirming collection of beautiful souls that I treasure beyond words. I don't want to lose that. And I also don't want you to think that I don't value your thoughts and encouraging words. I truly and honestly do. Again, part of what excited me about the new space was the opportunity to dialogue on ideas I care about and gain new perspectives from people I deeply respect and value. I guess I'm just coming to see that the time for that sharing and bantering about of perspectives is just not yet. I need time to strengthen my own legs beneath me, is all.

I will welcome (and need) your ongoing friendship once I make the transition. I will welcome your companionship in that space, your simple presence and witness of what I need to begin articulating. And I will be more than happy to receive your thoughts shared personally with me about those things, either through e-mail, phone calls, or even Facebook. But the open venue of the comment spaces feels too unwieldy, too like an open game for target practice that I can't contain inside myself right now.

Thank you for the grace and patience and friendship you continue to offer me. Much love to all of you, continually.

Hello to You from Me

No Longer Operating at 130 Percent

When I was going into third grade, my mom had me tested for the gifted program at my school. I met with a child psychologist and had to push together and solve a whole slew of different puzzles in a certain amount of time. And at the end of it, I was found to be a young girl of above average intellect who poured everything she had -- and then some -- into everything she did. The psychologist found that I regularly functioned at 130 percent of my capacity.

My mom shared the results of that test with me once I'd grown older, and I wasn't sure what to think when I learned this news. I'd always performed well and stood at or near the top of my classes. I wanted to believe all that effort and all those results meant I was, in fact, a genius. But in truth, I wasn't. I was a smart, capable girl who applied herself wholeheartedly.

Now many years beyond my discovery of those test results, the greater significance of that IQ test continues to demonstrate itself. It amazes me still to realize that seven-year-old girl who took that test had already discovered and readily inhabited her false-self mold. It cannot be clearer than it is for me today that it was my false self that showed up that day and every other day beside it. Only a false self learns to operate above and beyond the actual capacity of a person (or below it, for that matter).

As I shared in my last post, I've been discovering a new rhythm for my life these days. It is slower than I'm used to, and that has been both wonderful and hard. On the one hand, it feels self-honoring to take things slower, to be more intentional about how I move through my day, to let thoughts and impressions sink in deeper, to let my responses come when they're ready, and to know that what is building in me as I do this will, in the end, be more solid and sure and substantive, a more true offering of me.

But it is humbling, as well. When the world is flying past me at 100 miles an hour, when everyone else has something to say, when it takes me longer to ingest the fullness of a thought than time always seems to allow, when witticisms abound and I don't always catch them on the first go-round, it's hard not to feel like some large, lumbering ox slowly moving across a free expanse where gazelles quite naturally frolic.

These days I have to trust that the real me gaining strength as I let it form organically these days is a better, more true, and healthier fit than the me that drives a world running at 130 percent throttle. As enticing a world it seems I would gain if I keep that speed on my radar, my deeper self just can't abide it. My deeper, truer self wants to be simply, unequivocally who she really is.

Embracing Mystery, Despite Fear

So, yet again, I have been absent. I do not have a lot to say. And really, right now, I feel God inviting me into the silence. I sense there is something for me here, some gift on the other side of this mystery.

And yet I struggle in fear. If I do not preside over this space, will I be forgotten? Will I be reduced to what little my latest string of posts have offered? So much growth has happened in this place in two and a half years. This is a place I've poured my the fullness of my journey. A place I've wrestled with questions larger than life. A place I've practiced honesty and risk. A place I've found community and grace.

But always the question: what have I offered here lately? And the answer is: not much. Although much has happened internally, it hasn't been shared here. And if it hasn't been shared here, written out for my own heart to see and for others to receive, did it really happen? Perhaps all writers ask themselves this question.

Kirk and I took a drive the other night. It was a drive along highways, lakesides, and back country roads. We called it "The Drive of Psalms" and made it a time of spontaneous prayer and confession. We talked out loud to God, and then we talked to each other. It was long and meandering and full of questions held openly and gently. Toward the end of our time together in that car, I remarked aloud, "You know this, that we've been doing here? It's got a slowness full of life. It feels like the true rhythm of our life together."

Slow. Rhythmic. Gentle and open. Questions and confession and prayer and shared hearts, with each other and with God.

A few days ago I finished my second class at Spring Arbor. It was a class on the spiritual disciplines, and it was incredibly rich, full of so many gems that I'll be mining for some time yet to come.

The capstone project for this class was a large-scale paper that explored many facets of the class: resources I'd located along the way in order to teach the material to others, meditations on Scripture and a bodily fast I'd conducted for eight weeks, and reflections on how God had been working to transform my life and heart through the practices of the past two months. It was a lengthy and deepening endeavor, and it took the whole of me to complete it.

On the night I completed it, I curled up in our recliner chair in the library nook, a lamplight burning on the table beside me, the kitties resting nearby. I opened a book I hadn't read in some time and simply embraced the quiet. As I read, my mind absorbed the beautiful story but also, from time to time, began wandering into thoughts and territories I hadn't explored for some time. It was responding to quiet, feeling the expanse and beginning to walk around in it.

I watched where it wandered and felt the goodness of doing so. I haven't offered myself much room to breathe and explore and simply turn up questions I don't rush to answer. So much of my time has felt managed, so much of my soul has felt managed, so much of my future has felt managed . . . all by hands that are my own and that feel the fear of the mystery of God.

One of the things I confessed during our drive of psalms was this self-management of my life. I worry and tend to the future and wonder just how much God wants to actively unfold it. I struggle to trust him with too much control because giving up my own worry and management of my life might mean I get left alone and out in the cold. He might not show up. He might do nothing. He might not lift a finger, and then what opportunities might I lose?

I feel something at work deep inside that I can't name or quantify. I don't know what it is. I need to let it happen. And I need to surrender what I cannot do while that work is taking place, which is, partly, keeping the content coming along the way. I simply don't know how to talk about it. Not yet. I wonder if I ever will.

Last night I was reading in Sue Monk Kidd's book When the Heart Waits, where she talks about the deep stillness the soul needs to move forward. Speaking of her own journey to embrace stillness, she says, "Overcoming my resistance to waiting meant coming to terms with the 'still journey.' I would have to give up the compulsion to keep my line moving at the world's pace. I would need to find my own pace, one that flowed with the rhythms of the earth and the Spirit, not with the frenzy of modern life. Our inner clocks tick at a much slower speed than that of society. Slowing our feet, our minds, our desires, our impulses -- stilling those things that drive us into faster and faster patteerns of living -- will help open us to the transforming experience of waiting. . . . Here's the paradox: we achieve our deepest progress standing still."

I guess all this is meant to say that I feel myself getting in touch with the true rhythm of my deep heart. It does indeed move slower than the pace of the world, and that scares me. If I respond to what is needed inside, I risk becoming irrelevant and lapsing into obscurity.

This is the tension that I face today: saying yes to my soul's true rhythm and needs, or keeping to the path that is more outward and more known.

Right now, I'm embracing the mystery of the inner journey. I pray for God to give me the grace to continue into the depths of what He is building and creating and growing inside of me, no matter how long it takes.

Our First Christmas Tree

The first year Kirk and I were married, we lived in a studio garage apartment and decided a Christmas wreath was about the best we could do in that small space. Last year we spent close to two weeks in California for the Christmas holiday, so purchasing a tree in our new home did not make much sense.

This year, though . . . we've gone Christmas!

After a pretty hilarious adventure of strapping a 6-7 foot tree on top of a small white Jetta, Kirk and I hauled home our happy find.

Sollie waits for the Christmas tree elf.

Diva tries to decide what the Christmas hoopla is all about.

We make Christmas ornaments.

We break out the Christmas scent.

We make ready the attendant supplies.

Putting on the lights.

Getting ready the shiny ornaments.

Solomon supervises, of course.

Don't forget the family ornaments.

Pretty tree.

A Year of New Things

Tonight Kirk and I sat at the farm table in our front room, fresh off a competitive game of Phase 10 and contemplating how to spend the rest of our evening together, when I asked him: What happened this year that we didn't know would happen at this time last year?


As of last Thanksgiving, we didn't know we would seriously consider moving our life to California this year. We didn't know we would both apply for graduate school in California, begin the house-hunting process, and then make a concerted, hard, but unanimous decision to stay here in Florida.

This time last year, I hadn't yet met the group of girls who have now become good friends, all because we shared one friend in common and had a similar heart for ministry at our church.

At this time last year, Kirk and I didn't know we would both graduate from Full Sail with valedictorian honors. We didn't know that I would give my first public speech and, in doing so, find a way to share truths from my deep heart with a room full of strangers.

We didn't know that I would decide against birthing Storychange into the world, at least for now.


This time last year, we didn't know that I would find the spiritual formation program at Spring Arbor, and that I would love it so much. We didn't know I would feel like I'd come home.


We didn't know that Kirk would pursue a second master's degree in educational design and media technology, or that it would draw out his natural talent and love for the creative design process and educational theory.


Last Thanksgiving, we didn't know we would, together, embark upon a three-year training program in spiritual direction, or that we would do this with a diverse and loving and joy-filled group of 20 strangers who drive from all over the state of Florida one Saturday each month to learn together about the work of spiritual listening and companioning. We didn't know we would find our own spiritual directors and begin to meet regularly with them.


It amazes me what can happen in one year of life. I'm glad I'm sharing each day of it with this beautiful, talented, creative, strong, loving man.

all photos taken by kirkum and christianne
stone mountain, georgia
january 2006

I Used to Rule the World . . .

My goodness. Have you guys seen this? It is the PS22 Chorus, a group of 60 fifth graders in an underprivileged district of the New York public school system, performing Coldplay's song "Viva la Vida."

I happened upon this clip last night and have probably watched it at least ten times already. The song gets stuck in a loop in my head, and I hum it as I'm walking around the house and sitting at my desk and hanging out with Kirk. I can see the individual kids pop into my mind's eye as I do this, and I can't help but pray for them, wondering about their stories, their futures, what they may be facing in their lives outside this music room. I'm moved by their fire, their full involvement, their voices, their laughter, their innocence, their body language. I feel like I'm watching a church service of sorts, or listening to an angelic choir singing over all of us.

I can't help but give thanks for this kind of music program that is empowering these impressionable young kids, building up their confidence, giving them a place to belong, and drawing out their natural talent and ability. Mr. B. started this chorus to promote the value of music and the arts in the public school system, and, just through this one clip, he's made a believer out of me.

Here are the lyrics to the song they're singing . . . which, by the way, I've heard lots of churches are singing these days. I find this interesting, that Coldplay has made it into the halls of churches, but then I keep thinking about the line, "I used to rule the world . . . " and I think, "Yeah. I know about that. I used to rule the world, too, in my own small way. The way of Christ is teaching me to let my aggrandizement go."

Viva la Vida

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sweep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own
I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing:
"Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!"
One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt, pillars of sand

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
Once, you know, there was never,
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

It was the wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn't believe what I'd become
Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh, who would ever want to be king?

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
Once, you know, there was never,
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
Once, you know, there was never,
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

Spending Time with Her

The main reason Kirk and I went to New England this month was to spend time with Diana. This female warrior in Kirk's life is facing stage 4, metastatic breast cancer. This isn't her first time with breast cancer. Twenty years ago she braved and conquered it into remission. But the cancer recurred last year, and it has now advanced to stage 4, spreading into other regions of her body despite the many treatments she has sought.

Prior to this visit, I had only met Diana once. She came last year with the majority of her family tribe to visit Florida, and we were able to spend one evening with her and the rest of the family at a gathering that Kirk's sister arranged. At the time, I was struck by her sincerity and presence. When Diana sits with you, she asks questions you know she really cares to hear you answer. She laughs a lot and joshes her brother (Kirk's dad) around. She makes you feel so at ease.


One afternoon during our visit with her in New York, she took us on one of her favorite hikes to a place called Huckleberry Point. Snow had reached the region that week, and it was starting to thaw. This made the trail quite mushy with mud and water. There were places we had to step delicately and others that required advance strategy. At one point we even forded a river, the three of us cheering and hooting as, one by one, we crossed several thin and slippery logs, hoping to goodness we didn't fall in.

What amazed me most about Diana was her hardiness. Here is a 70-year-old woman in advanced stages of cancer who could trot through several miles of uneven climbing trails as though breezily riding a bike. Many times, especially on the return hike back, she left Kirk and I in the dust. We were huffing and puffing along, our poorly shod feet very wet and very cold and very sore, yet she was dozens of yards ahead of us, loping along with a hiking stick and rarely stopping for breath.


But the trip to the top was different. On the trip to the top, we walked and talked in tandem. What emerged was a conversation I will never forget.

Soon into the hike, Diana and I discovered we had both struggled in our lives with perfectionism. We talked about the root of this, what this says about our lack of trust in ourselves and other people for grace and room to learn. We talked about how rules and regulations and following what other people tell us to do ultimately prevents us from being responsible for the results of our own lives, and how sometimes there's an uneasy comfort to be found in this kind of escape artistry.

We ventured pretty easily into the corridors of faith and religion. Diana wanted to know what caused the Protestant Reformation and why Christians believe Jesus is the only way to God. She shared her respect for different faith traditions, and how one specific Buddhist teaching has been helpful for her, teaching her that fear and hope are more alike than different: both keep us locked in the potential future while preventing us from living in the actual present. We moved across narcissism several times and discussed the capacity for choosing good or evil that lies inside each one of us. Somehow, we also managed to cover evolution, abortion, and stem cell research before reaching the top of the mountain.


What I loved about this conversation was how easily it flowed between us. I didn't feel any pressure to have answers for every subject she raised, and it was easy for me to say, "You know what? I'm not sure what I think about that." There were times when I could say, "Because of my faith, I believe such and such to be true. But I'd love for you to help me understand the view that differs from mine." Both of us bumped up against the limits of our knowledge and belief in different ways, but there was an easiness that allowed us to acknowledge to the other when this happened and even laugh about it when it did.


It meant so much to me that Diana and I could penetrate such depths with vulnerability, care, and openness so quickly. I think this has a lot to do with the kind of person she is. She is a safe person. She is intellectually curious but intensely caring, which is what I believe enables her to carry a complex conversation with someone who believes different things than she does without it becoming threatening for either person. She has a noble spirit, and she draws out the noble spirit in others.


Diana is precious to me. The time we spent with her is precious to me. The chance to inhabit her home, get to know her family, and talk about things that matter to us both is precious to me.

Last week I was talking with K., my spiritual director, about why Diana moves me. I shared that it's because she is fully herself, at home in her own skin, fully alive to life and people and questions and joy, and that she creates safe space for others. "Perhaps in Diana," K. said, "you see the hope of your own future, the person you're poised to become, the kind of life you want to embody yourself."

She's right. I hope that at age 70, I too will be a person who makes a 29-year-old girl feel right at home, an equal and a peer, and also like a sister.

Aftermath

photo via barackobama.com

There were so many times throughout the campaign season that I tried to set down into words all the reasons I was voting for Barack Obama. I made lists, started typing, and eventually tossed all those lists and words away. I couldn't find a way to share that comprehended all that mattered.

Yesterday I read an article that expressed another conservative Christian's perspective on voting for Barack Obama. I typed up a short little post that said, "Here. Read this. It pretty much encapsulates my view." Except it didn't. It fell short in many ways. Some of my views overlapped with his, but they didn't equate completely. I couldn't let his view represent or replace my own. I deleted the post shortly after I published it.

In the end, it still feels too personal. Not that my reasons are too personal to share, but that it is yet too close to distill into words. And I think this is because my journey to supporting Barack Obama is tied to deep-seated values that have developed in me slowly, subtly, incrementally over the past several years. How do I connect all the dots in a way that makes sense to someone outside my own head? The journey itself is still too large.

I feel disappointed that I couldn't write the essay I'd hoped to write. I would have liked to have it all laid out, a keepsake of sorts for my soul that also shared a greater glimpse into my take on the subject with you. But for now I have to be content with where I am, unable to articulate all that I think, intuit, feel, believe, and value on this subject, knowing that eventually, as I articulate all that I think, intuit, feel, believe, and value on a grander scale in the scope of life and faith, it will all come together, all together much easier to share.

Perhaps someday a fitting reason for writing that essay will present itself. Perhaps it won't, and I'll content myself with carrying it inside, unexpressed to all but me.

But for now, I celebrate. What millions had hoped for and worked for and voted for came to pass. A truly historic moment came to meet us on the road, swifter than most had expected, more declarative than many dared hope. Like so many, I screeched with elation when the announcement came and then immediately began crying tears. Kirk and I held each other with eyes glued to the screen, elated with the millions in the streets that were crying and dancing and hugging and laughing.

A new era has dawned. This fact is inescapable. We will pray for him as we go.

My friend Clayton has written a beautiful short piece on what this has personally meant to him to experience. I invite you to read it here.

Be Mine, New Hampshire

After a day spent driving along Lake George and the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York, we made our way into Burlington, Vermont, where we stayed for the night. It's a college town and, as one would expect, cozy and cute. The next morning, as we drove into the surrounding countryside to make our way across the state, I told Kirk that Vermont looked exactly as I'd always imagined it would. "This is a place I've always wanted to visit, ever since I first heard about it. Like, since I was a little kid," I told him. It was fun to see it looked exactly as I'd imagined it.

Except I'd spoken too soon.

It turns out Burlington and its immediate vicinity are likely the most cute and cozy parts of the entire state. The rest of the state that we saw was more rural than I expected. Yes, there are mountains. Yes, there is likely a beautiful ski scene in the winter. And yes, there are likely parts that are amazing that we didn't see and which may also be very different at a different time of year than right now. But much of what we saw in Vermont, both along the major highway and the more rural country routes, fell squarely in the category of what Kirk and I have come to call "Wiggyville." Unfortunately.

But oh, New Hampshire.


New Hampshire stole my heart. It feels open and hardy. The trees sprout everywhere. They line the streets and cluster all over the hills and mountainsides. There are some gorgeous lakes, namely Squam Lake and Lake Winnipesaukee. The people are friendly and strong. And even though we missed the bountiful turning of the leaves by a couple weeks, we still managed, along our entire route from upstate New York down the central cut of Vermont and across central New Hampshire, to follow the last of the colored leaves that had hung onto the trees. It was almost like they hung on just for us until we got to New Hampshire and stayed for a couple more days, as the crowds had come and gone, many of the tourist trappings had closed for the winter season, and it was mostly us and the road and the remaining glorious color.


Hey, we'll take it. In fact, that is our preference! The less crowds, the better. Just us and some trees, some good roads and some great conversation.


We stayed in a cute bed and breakfast for two nights. The first night we sustained a massive rainstorm, fully expecting to wake to trees that had been shaken bare of their remaining leaves. But, no. Like I said, those leaves seemed hardy for the benefit of our enjoyment. We spent that next day taking a circuitous route along the two major lakes, stopping in the quaint villages along the way, taking lunch and browsing bookshops and even snacking on some local Ben and Jerry's despite the cold. Oh, and stopping at the scenic lookouts.


Unfortunately, the wi-fi access that our bed and breakfast advertised when we booked the room didn't take too kindly to our Mac laptops, and we got booted off the system every time we tried logging on. Then the rest stops that advertised free wi-fi access weren't working, either. And the monastery in New York where we're staying now? You guessed it; those monks aren't too hip on hooking up the residents.


For a vacation, I've kept trying to let this be okay. It's tough, though, especially in the week before such a historic election, one in which I'm deeply invested. And especially because we hadn't planned for this trip to be one intentionally for unplugging. With both of us in online programs right now, internet access is an essential part of our life, and part of the fun of taking online programs is the freedom to take off and go places while keeping up with school anytime and anyplace. We were looking forward to testing this part of the online education experience firsthand with this trip! (Maybe we've learned that though there's the freedom to do this, it needs to be undertaken with greater preparation and contingency plans.)

Now we're back in New York, concurrently working on the new online classes that started this week for both of us and visiting with Diana. More on the specific goings-on of this part of the trip in my next installment!

Hello, New York

Yesterday, Kirk and I headed north for a 10-day visit to the land of ultimate fall foliage. We've come to New York to visit his aunt Diana, who demonstrates what it means to be a true warrior in her fight against breast cancer. I've gotten to meet her once before, and she brings so much light and sincerity everywhere she goes. We're looking forward to seeing her in this upcoming week -- and we've already been warned that she wants to go hiking!

In the meantime, we've been heading north. We flew into Albany, picked up our rental car, and started heading toward Lake George and then the Vermont border. (The photographs in this post were taken at the south tip of Lake George, right where it begins. Kirk's grandpop, one of the foremost influences in his life, spent a lot of time in this very place.)


The drive was gorgeous, and that is an understatement. All of the leaves on the trees have been turning, and the trees are everywhere. There are lots of wooded areas, and the Adirondack mountains are just to the left of the highway we've been climbing along. Today we'll be crossing the width of Vermont (which in such a small, modest state should only take about two hours), and then we'll spend the next two days near Squam Lake in New Hampshire before heading back to New York to visit with Diana.

I've been absent from blogging for a few weeks, and the time away has been good. I've been able to focus on school and finishing my first full class at Spring Arbor. (Wow! I can hardly believe I've already finished one full class!) Kirk and I took a weekend trip to visit his mom up in Georgia. And I've been working on a new secret project.

Through all this time, I've been thinking a lot about what feels like a very new season of life I'm stepping into. I recently wrote about this on the Also Only/Even If blog, describing it as a gentle nudge toward change that feels impending, natural, but also scary. You can read my thoughts and experience of this change here.

Blogging Break

Hey, everybody.

I've decided to take a little hiatus on blogging here. A lot is swirling around in my heart and brain these days, but I haven't found the ability to put these things into words yet. I'm going to take a little breather from this blog so that my insides can have greater freedom to roam around and sort things out.

Most of this has to do with school and how I'm growing professionally. There's a lot to think on and share about there, but I can't find the words to express that here.

In the meantime, I'm still part of the beautiful collaboration over at Also Only / Even If. I'll still be reading and commenting on your blogs as usual. And you'll still find me playing around over on Facebook, my latest indulgence. (If I haven't found you over there yet, feel free to look me up!)

Thanks for your patience with me as I mull things around over here.

Love,
Christianne