I am in a packing rut... as in, I just can't do it.
I sit and stare at my house and wonder how everything will make it's way into boxes....
Is there a real life fairy godmother with a magic wand who could help me out?
Could I just wake up to everything packed, moved and stored?
Only in a fairytale I guess...
On an awesome note... my husband has been an amazing, powerful, connected and happy man lately.
Which means I am happy. :)
So so happy.
Not at all motivated to actually get anything done.... but happy. And happy is good.
Every other time we have moved (which is a lot), I have carried the full emotional burden. The entire job of packing has fallen on me. And it has been crushingly stressful.
I have always entered into a new home with a sense of loneliness and sadness.
Not this time. THIS time my man has opened a new door for me. He hasn't placed a moment of pressure on me. He has instead offered me a new space of rest. He's allowed me to spend my days with my kids at the park (I've packed a FEW boxes in the daytime) and happily practicing Holy Yoga.
Let me just say that I get it that moving should be the work of both spouses. We should work together...
And we are. Every night we pack, we move things into storage, we plan for our new small living space.
But this is time of healing for me. We are facing a giant. A giant giant. But Joe has not flinched once. He keeps humbly leading the way into an ocean deep peace. And that makes me happy.
So happy.
This is the first time in my married life that I have not resented the overwhelming weight of MOVING.
In fact, right now he's making a storage run and I am sitting on the bed writing this post.
How's that for happy? ;)
We're leaping again.
Doesn't it seem like we are always taking leap after leap of faith? There is rarely a long stretch of being settled. Our lives are in a constant state of needing to trust...
I'm not complaining. I'm just calling it what it is. And I don't regret any moment of being poor, desperate, lonely, or lost. Every single second has been used to set us free, to call us deeper, and to create a story made up of heroes and adventurers.
And we've decided that we want to create a good story. We want to live a story that is filled with adventure, trust, hope, healing, and truth.
We want our children to know balance.
We want them to be free to fail, knowing that they are LOVED.
We want them to practice sabbath, in their actions and in their hearts.
We want them to search out ocean deep peace, never settling for surface happiness.
We want them to never have to be afraid of anger, or be controlled by it.
We want them to identify themselves as the Beloved.
We want them to have the freedom to speak and be heard.
And we want their lives to revolve around this and this alone: everything hinges on the love of God.
This is the story we want to create... the story we want to live.
We want to teach them these things by living these things.
And we are getting the opportunity to do it. Wouldn't it be nice if the opportunities to change your life were brought on by comfort and pleasure?
No such luck. We are breathing into the darkness; walking into Nineveh. We are approaching humility and brokenness.
And we are full of peace. Ocean deep peace.
Jesus, keep leading us....
Write our story....
May we live bold and free; overflowing with the adventure of life in this skin; enjoying the experience of the story.And may the story be great...
I've been thinking about forgiveness a LOT.
In my opinion forgiveness is a narrow ledge and one could easily jump off of either side.
The "sides" being either a false, forced response that only generates bitterness and resentment, or a numbed response that is easy to give because you don't feel ANYTHING.
But in the very center of these two cliff dives there rests a very narrow and hard traveled road of the choice of forgiveness.
This is the forgiveness I have been contemplating.
Because I want to forgive some people who have crushed me. I want to make a firm, surrendered choice to be free... and to allow those wounding people freedom.
I can't imagine that forgiveness should only be given when it is asked for. An acknowledgment of wrongdoing certainly makes it EASIER to make the choice of forgiveness, but the choice doesn't hinge on anyone else's actions.
Forgiveness comes from the heart. Only from the heart.
Today I listened to a sermon by Shane Hipps called the God of Nineveh. Shane painted a new, and strikingly beautiful, portrait from the story of Jonah. (I fully recommend finding it on itunes and listening to it yourself! It's THAT good).
God asked Jonah to go to Nineveh, a country that was dark and Godless. And he simply wanted Jonah to name what was happening there.
But instead Jonah tried to travel to Tarshish to escape the Presence of God. Shane points out that Tarshish is in Spain and was considered paradise. It was beautiful and comfortable. If the Presence of God were going to be lacking somewhere... it probably wasn't in Tarshish.
Tarshish is the place we go when we are trying to escape God. It can be anything.... alcohol, a relationship, pornography, drugs, food, entertainment, etc. It could also be something that CAN be a good and fruitful thing... until we try to use it to escape God.
Nineveh is the darkness. It is the poverty of our own souls and of the world we live in. Nineveh is the thing that we do not want to face. We don't want to name it.
And God didn't ask Jonah to go make things better in Nineveh. He didn't ask him to fix anything. He just wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh, to enter the darkness, and name it. He wanted the sadness, the shame, the sickness, the sin to be exposed. That's it.
Because only God can bring light into the darkness. Only God can set the prisoners free.
Shane suggests that we all ask ourselves two questions...
What is your Tarshish?
and...
Are you aware of your Nineveh?
He also says this...
"We've learned to settle for surface pleasure instead of ocean deep peace. We've learned to accept and settle for the wispy cliche of happiness instead of this immovable, indestructible joy. We've done this because we don't know there is a difference between the two. And the difference is vast."
The difference is vast.
To know the difference between what is a surface pleasure and what is an ocean deep peace we MUST travel through the darkness. We must face Nineveh and we must name it.
And then we must shut up. Rather than try to organize a way out, we must let grief and repentance swell to the very top. Because only God can bring light into the darkness. Only God.
In all of my reflections I can say that my joy lacks depth because I keep expecting the surface pleasure, the band aids slapped on my soul, to sink deep. And they wont.
Because the difference is vast.
And my journey through the darkness over the last few years has been exposing one single thing.
God is in Nineveh. God is in the dark, despised corners of my heart. He is in the very center of my sorrow.
And as Shane says, behind the locked doors of our lives...
There nestled in among the shame, sin, sickness and sorrow is the Creator of the Universe relaxed and at home. Not the least bit offended, surprised or fearful.
Because freedom comes, not by traveling around the darkness, but by traveling through it.
And God is in Nineveh, unsurprised. Unoffended. Just waiting for us to name the sadness. Just waiting for us to stop trying to run to other things. Just waiting for us to make the choice.
And sometimes the first footprint we make in the dust of Nineveh is forgiveness.
Yes, I've been abused and forgotten. But rather than run from it.... I must face it. I must name it. And then I must shut up...
Donald Miller wrote, "You get a feeling when you look back on life that that's all God really wants from us, to live inside a body he made and enjoy the story and bond with us through the experience."
He's right. It's simple really.
It's all a story. Every single one of us is just living out a long, intricate, fascinating story. Yet we spend most of our time trying to make sense of the story. We keep trying to get to the point.
But the story isn't over yet. Everyone knows that you don't wrap up a story in the middle of a book. We all know that each sentence sets the groundwork for the moving, powerful last page. That's the whole point of a story.
I've been living my life trying to read the last page. I guess it's only human of me.... but I keep forgetting to enjoy the page I'm on. I keep forgetting to find God in THESE pages.
The last few months have been very quieting. I've been repeatedly reminded to stop where I'm at, to read the signs around me. Because God is here, in this fragile, broken moment.
Tonight on our Holy Yoga Masters Program call Rachel taught on the eight limbs of yoga. Maybe you don't have a clue what that means....
So here's a quick background: somewhere between 220 B.C and 200 A.D. a sage named Patanjali wrote what we call the Yoga Sutras as a moral code to live by. The eight limbs stem from these Sutras.
They might sound somewhat familiar to you...
Nonviolence, nonstealing, moderation, noncovetouness, purity, contentment, self discipline, devotion to God.
Rachel bound these to scripture (which isn't hard to do since the Bible overflows with them all). This wasn't an attempt to say that these eight limbs were based on biblical truth. This is more of a yoking of truth. We find what is truth, wherever it lies, and we take it as our's. Jesus IS the truth. So all truth is his. Simple.
So, while listening to Rachel teach, the point was made that these limbs follow one another.
When we foster violence within and towards ourselves it creates a lie. The lie begins to steal from our lives, our joy.
We are then drawn into excessive behavior; too much of anything and everything.
And then we become greedy. We begin to live only for self.
Our lives begin to overflow with things that defile us. We become desensitized and forget the relief of purity.
Which means we can never be content. We have lost the ability to posses self discipline.
We are so consumed with self devotion that we can no longer even touch devotion to God.
But what if, the moment an act of violence presents itself within us, we resist it? What if we refuse to be marked by the injustice that swells within us?
Truth remains seated on the throne. Lies fall swiftly at our feet.
We are protected by truth and nothing can be stolen. We remain bolstered and safe under the wings of God.
It is then easy to live in moderation, in balance. We receive what we need and reject the pull to overindulge to satisfy the flesh.
We learn to love others more than ourselves because our eyes are clear. We covet nothing because we know that we are lovingly provided for.
We rejoice in a purity of heart and action.
We are content. Self disciplined.
The result is a life devoted to God.
The result is a story that is enjoyed. We just live life in a body God created and we bond with him through the experience.
There is something remarkable about our God.
I've been heading down the wrong path off and on my entire life. Haven't we all? I am so drawn to the violence of my own flesh. Someone wounds me and I allow that violence, that anger, to fester and burn inside of me. And it ALWAYS produces a lie.
The last three years I have been fighting for air. The lie that came through an act of emotional violence has been suffocating me.
But, let me tell you, I gave it root. I let it sink into me and speak soft and fierce words into my soul. Tonight I saw the path I was on. It became clear to me where I was headed. All because of this lie that has been stealing from me and birthing excessive, gluttonous behavior in me.
This is why our God is so remarkable: He has been bonding with me through the EXPERIENCE. He isn't just looking to partake in the good experience. Just the experience.
He has been faithfully involved in every moment of my struggle. And he's been so willing to engage in the conversation of my life.
So I'm going to bed tonight with a fresh life view. Look at me. I've been heading one way. One pebble has created a tsunami of loss in me.
I've been turned another way. A way of life. Life.
Thank you Jesus for the story. Thank you for every single moment. Thank you for the striking, vibrant splattering of your love on every single page.
Keep reminding me to read patiently.
