New Shoes

I love the confidence I feel in a brand new pair of stylish shoes. I like even more my feet to be comfortably encased in my pretty new shoes.

I’m noticing that change is a lot like a new pair of shoes. Attractive and uncomfortable until the feet and the shoes yield to the other to support a comfortable journey for the shoe-wearer.

In a spiritual direction session I was bemoaning the changes in my life; the laying down of familiar rhythms of job and service. I left my nursing job of seventeen years and yielded to another teacher the Sunday School class I taught for twenty years. I am experiencing changes in relationships as our children are successfully launched and our parents retired. I’m noticing changes in what I am drawn to, as previously fulfilling activities are not appealing to me yet new opportunities are not very productive.

When my director prayed with me, she invited God to steady my trust in Him as He pruned away the old fruit to allow for the growth of new.  These few words lit a candle in my soul.  The discomfort with the way I was wearing change shifted to an understanding of a pruning process.  This new knowing is infusing this season with hope as I wait and grow.

 My season of pruning is uncomfortable, yet I am attracted to new fruitfulness.  Tentative tendrils of growth are unfurling towards what I’m not sure. It is enough to know that the vine of my life is in the Master Gardener’s hands and He is nurturing my fruitfulness.  According to Jesus, this will be for God’s glory and to show that I am His follower. 

 

 

Changing shoes for the next leg of my journey is exciting and scary. Some days I long for a comfortable fit, but mostly I embrace the invitation to surrender to God’s pruning shears and remain in Him.

When Longings Disturb My Soul

Tossing and turning in my bed, I tried to get comfortable and shut off the list of good intentions I ignored the previous day. The same accusations played on the turntable of my mind. You failed at body care, you did not practice your writing, you didn’t work on your vocational goals and you aren’t disciplined enough in your pursuit of God.  You are an imposter.

I counted my blessings.  I redesigned a dream house. Sleep remained elusive.

 

 

I asked God to help me pay attention to my thoughts and feelings. I noticed the accusing thoughts were around commitments I made to care for my health and to explore longings of my heart.  It occurred to me that I was experiencing stress caused by tension between what I believed to be true about how I was living and God’s truth, the riches of His grace lavished on me as His chosen, adopted, forgiven, redeemed and blessed daughter.

My response to my version of truth was instinctual.  I just have to try harder to live according to my vision of what I want my life to be. 

And how has that worked for me? Not well at all.

 

In frustration I wonder why I can’t be content with life as it is, comfortably routine. Why can’t I keep my desires buried? Why do I pay attention to that restless longing for more of God and more for my life?

 

More questions infiltrated my sleepy fog. What if my longings are from a good God who desires good things for his girl? What if I depended on His power to walk in His truth for my life? What if I could extend grace to myself for the mystery in my unanswered questions, trusting my good God for what is around the bend in my future?

When the light of morning woke me, the questions of the night still simmered in my soul. During my morning jog God stirred these practical promptings into the mixture:

 

Could you take a few small steps daily towards growing in these longings I’ve deposited in your heart?

Would you be willing to embrace your desires, that deep thrum in your soul, and trust my goodness to help you satisfy them?

Tackle a hard thing every day.

 

Notice your journey instead of fretting about the speed you are traveling. Or asking when you will get there!

 

Another expanse of grace opened for me. Small daily steps will move me towards satisfying the longings God places in my heart.  I will follow His heart and mine into my day, depending on Him to show me the way.

Whispers In A Photo Album

 

I walked on memory lane a few weeks ago. Following our granddaughter’s birth, her daddy’s baby pictures invited perusal. As I turned the pages of the photo album, I remembered the love in every cell of my body for the babe and the bone-tired exhaustion. 

 

I noticed the twenty-six year old me, brown eyes sparkly with joy and a big smile. A darling brand new mama. I noticed I looked prettier than I remember feeling in those post-partum days. What I recalled seeing reflected in the mirror was my body stretched and saggy with post-partum weight loss and my face pale with sleep deprivation.

My fifty-three year old eyes now see a pretty woman nurturing a healthy baby, loving a hard-working man, and creating a peaceful home. That young woman was good, full of love and dreams. She also had insecurities and self-criticism that kept her from being present to the daily opportunities and gifts in her life. I am sad over what my inner critic took from my twenty-six year old me.

 

As I wandered through the old photos, questions percolate in my heart. What might my someday older self say to me about this current season of my life? What grace would she offer?  What clarity?  What encouragement?

 

I hear God invite me to embrace my uniqueness, my strengths… and my limitations.  He offers me grace to be a learner and offers his presence as I examine my fears and insecurities. He reminds me of my belovedness as His perfectly human daughter.

 

These days I am grateful for my progress in releasing the need to control life. I am learning to accept imperfection when trying new things.  I am learning to move toward my fear rather than deal with the disappointment of lost opportunity.  I am learning to extend grace to myself just as God does for me.

 

 

When I am seventy-five years old and looking at old photos with my granddaughter, I want to see a woman who felt as beloved and beautiful as she was. And still will be.  And am right now… perfectly imperfect.

Dreaming Big, Starting Small

 

Our daughter has a saying about curtailing overeating that goes something like this, "There will always be a last bite, so I decide my last bite will be within healthy eating boundaries."  Stopping something enjoyable or habitual is one kind of hard.

There is another kind of hard that has to do with starting.  Beginning.  Made harder perhaps by my love of quick and instant.  My desires seem unattainable or take too long to realize.

The days, months, or years between making changes and getting the results I want seem dull and long and hard.  And perhaps the result of my work will not be as I imagined. 

So I stay where I am. Where it is safe. And a month from now, a year from now, I will be exactly where I've been.  Longing. Dreaming. Wondering. 

When I was training for a marathon five years ago, I remember how my sweat sisters and I celebrated shaving seconds... yes, seconds... off our time.  We celebrated tiny indicators of growth in speed and endurance.  We did the daily, mundane work of training and our bodies strengthened.  Twenty weeks later we finished a marathon! 

I have begun another adventure following a nudge from God.  The invitation wasn't written in big, bold letters. It feels risky to me.  I am releasing comfortable rhythms of work and life.  I am changing up familiar routines of  prayer in my relationship with God, exploring new-to-me spiritual practices in relating to God.  These practices involve listening and being with Him.  I'm back in a formal learning environment, taking classes in spiritual direction.  I'm a fifty-something wrestling with technology to do it.  I feel awkward.  Clumsy.  Vulnerable.  I wonder what in the world I am doing?

I celebrate small successes.  Things like successfully uploading assignments to Box, an internet site used by our facilitators to gather our homework;  the joy of reading words that show me this journey I'm on is one taken by many before me.  I notice my growth.  I listen better to my people.  I am more aware of my impact on others.  It's slow going, this trail I am on.  And if I hadn't started I'd still be where I was. 

 

I remember the brush tangled creek bank on our property twenty years ago.  I had a paper bag full of daffodil bulbs from my grandfather.  On a hot August Saturday, my husband and I cleared the bank and using a digging iron, made holes for the bulbs, dropped them in the rich soil and waited.  Summer.  Autumn. Winter.  Spring.   Science can explain the biology of daffodils.  We simply placed the bulbs in an environment for growing and trusted the process of growing things. And in the Spring, we had a glorious bank of sunny blooms!  Bountiful beauty!  They reproduce themselves and multiply!  It's called naturalizing.....it happens naturally.

And so I step out in hope of realizing a longing of my own.  I plant myself in an environment for growth.  I trust the Gardener, my beautiful, dangerous, tender God.  And we will see what He does with my seed of faith.  It is risky business, stepping into realizing dreams.  It is also exhilarating, opening an expanse of grace that is refreshingly freeing.

What nudge are you experiencing?  What small beginning are you being invited to?

For those of you interested in what I am up to, in September I began a two year certification process to become a spiritual director.  I quit my nursing job in December of 2011 after months of processing a prompting I sensed from God.  Not sure where I was going next I focused on taking care of our pastor (my husband), homemaking, being intentional about relationships, and growing in intimacy with God.  I started this blog and have been writing in fits and sputters.  In February of 2015 I learned of this training being offered at Kavannah House by Sustainable Faith.  After praying about it with my husband, my spiritual director and a dear friend, I applied and was accepted to the program.  The journey has been rich and scary.  Some weeks I feel as though I am drinking from a fire-hose, the learning coming at me crazy fast.  Other times I am overwhelmed with my own inadequacies.  Mostly I have a sense of being in a wilderness, somewhere between where I was and not sure where I'm headed, in an exhilaratingly liberating way.  It is as mysterious as that last sentence! 

 

I've been invited to contribute to the Kavannah House blog and I am grateful for the opportunity and the vote of confidence in my writing skills.  It will provide some accountability for this procrastinator.  God is working on redeeming my perfectionistic, controlling tendencies.  I am hopeful that as I worry less about getting it "right", whatever "it" happens to be, procrastination will be less a problem for me. 

Thank you for taking time to stop by and check in with me.  I hope I am an encouragement to you to step into all the color God has for your life!

Fixing My Gaze

 

I've been thinking a lot about reflections lately.  I shot this beauty while on a Sunday afternoon run with my man in a nearby park. 

I wonder why my inner commentary is not, "Wow, let me take a picture." when I look at myself in a reflecting surface. 

Instead the conversation with myself goes something like this: 

"Those grays are really starting to show....you better do something....and soon, you are looking old."

"When did my cheeks start sagging below my jaw?"

"Boy, you are getting pudgy around the waist."

"I'm not satisfied with the way I look."

And it doesn't stop with appearance.  I criticize my work, my talent, or what I am not doing, being, or accomplishing.  I wonder where I learned to be so hard on myself. 

It begins with comparing myself to any number of things.  Other women, magazine photos, Pinterest, Facebook posts, television, peers, family.

Perhaps I will choose a different reflective surface.  Perhaps it is not that anything is lacking with me.  Perhaps it is the mirror I am looking into.

Today I will fix my gaze on a pure reflective surface.

I will spend time being still with Jesus.  I will listen for His whisper in my soul.  I will look into the Scriptures. 

I will embrace health, not a number on the bathroom scales.

I will be grateful for every line and sag on my face that gives testimony to lots of laughter and living.

I will be grateful for my mind, my opportunities, my lot in life.

I will be for every woman and her dreams, not threatened or diminished by her being herself.

I will explore, enjoy, twirl, dance, laugh and be free to be me in full color.

Occasionally Daily I will invite the Holy Spirit to blow through my soul with His perspective, unknotting my tangled thoughts and smoothing the old ruts in my soul so I reflect the glory of my God! 

"Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?"
1 Corinthians 3:16

"How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty!"  Psalm 84:1

At the end of the day, I want to look into the only mirror that matters, my relationship with God and His thoughts towards me.

While Waiting

Some days I am so full of anticipation and longing that my soul aches.  My soul brimming with ideas, hopes and dreams.  I look up at a brilliant early autumn sky like this and the beauty intensifies my longings.

I am frustrated with the whole desire thing.  It seems I am invited to be attentive to the longings yet there is the interminable waiting to see them realized.  If I weren't rooted in my relationship with Jesus I'd probably be chasing down willy-nilly ideas to satisfy my desires. 

There is a majestic oak tree on our bank by the Muddy Creek that borders our property.  This tree often distracts me when I am sitting with Jesus.  I wonder how big it was when my maternal grandfather and his brothers wandered along these creek banks.  The Good home place is just upstream from our home.  This tree has witnessed many storms, droughts, and snowstorms.  Yet it stands strong and tall, the many limbs providing shade and shelter to various creatures.  Our campfire circle is under its boughs. 

It reminds me of the scripture in Psalm 1:3 where the man who meditates on God's Word day and night "...is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.  Whatever he does prospers."  I find encouragement in our grand oak tree.  God reminds me through this tree to keep my roots deeply connected to the source of my life, Jesus, and to bear fruit according to my unique person.  Our tree is patient, resting in the soil and growing up and up, branching out over and over again.  The reach of this tree is enormous.  As will my life be as I surrender my desires to God, to be satisfied in Him, and do the next right thing I know to do. That is what the Holy Spirit whispers when my soul is disquieted with longings.  I am invited to trust Him.

I invite you to trust God too.  Lean into His heartbeat and see what whispers you hear.  And look up now and again, at the sky and the trees, the mountains and the hills, and know God is mightier then we can ever grasp.

Counting my Spring Blessings

It is summer.  Officially.  We celebrated the summer solstice three days ago.  But today I choose to hit  "pause" on my summer expectations to savor blessings of the abundant weeks of spring.  Here are a few of my blessings, not to give you cause to compare your life to mine, but to stir your soul with prompts for your own counting.

1. Mother's Day and my birthday were two days apart this year so my daughters planned an evening to spoil me with love, food and a few gifts.  The priceless gifts were seated around the table; our parents, my Aunt Mary, our children.  Family, be it biological, adoptive, or a faith community, is a rich place of belonging.  And I am thankful for mine.  "God sets the lonely in families," Psalm 68:6.

2.  I am thankful for hearts that dream, are willing to take risks, and act to fulfill them.  This is different than wishful thinking.  Jeremy has desired to have a small flock of chickens and this Easter he and Mechelle set this dream to reality.  From peeps to hens, it was delightful to watch their growth.  It was a family project to finish the coop before vacation and move the "chipsters" in.

3.  I am overjoyed for the celebration of baptism as two of my nephews declared their commitment to Jesus publicly;  Joel in the solemn setting of a Sunday morning worship service, Brady in the outdoor chapel of nature and a creek.  Both equally sacred, celebrated and witnessed by family and friends.  I recall a letter written by my maternal grandmother and read at her funeral.  Her words, "I love you all for choosing Jesus as your Savior.  You will never be sorry for this... We prayed for you each day and God answered our prayer.  We felt like John said, I have no greater joy than to see our children walk in truth...May you keep on the narrow road that leads to the eternal city of God the new Jerusalem.  I have prayed for you that your faith fail not." Mabel Good, 1912-2002. I am grateful for the legacy of faith in Jesus Christ passed down through the generations.

 

4.  I savor the books I had opportunity to read this spring.  I devoured another Wendell Berry book, Hannah Coulter, about the reflections of an old woman on her life in the fictional town of Port William.  I discovered Madeleine L' Engle too, enjoying A Wrinkle In Time, The Severed Wasp, both fiction and currently, Walking on Water, a book about faith and art.  Finally, a little book that packed more than I can absorb in one reading, The Way of the Heart by Henri J. M. Nouwan, about solitude, silence and prayers from the heart.  I am grateful for literacy and my education.

5.  I am thankful for courage to try new things.  Our children thought a fun beach vacation activity would be kayaking on the bay.....so we all agreed...and laughed, and got wet and made memories and I faced my fears.  Why are new things so scary for me?  But I am glad I didn't let the fears cripple my sense of adventure.  I would have been robbed of delight. 

6.  I am over-the-top thankful for a week with our children.  It wouldn't matter where we spent it.  It so happens we enjoyed Ocean City, Maryland together.  But any uninterrupted time with our adult children is like rich food for our soul, refreshing and restoring us. 

7.   I am thankful for the godly men in my life.  I know not every woman (or man) can echo that statement.  Both my Martin heritage and the Horning family I married into is blessed with God-fearing, kind, gentle, strong, courageous men.  I'm sure I've broken some kind of writing rule to use so many adjectives but I can't leave one of them out.  And I need to add another one, respectful of woman.  The fathers in our family unit have been faithful men.....and I am filled with gratitude. "It's far easier to raise strong sons than to heal broken men." Frederick D.  I'll post a picture of the men in Kevin's immediate family, three generations.......faithful.  If your heritage isn't this one, be the one to change course and gift the next generation a healthy legacy.

8. I'll end my gratitude list with this one.  The gift of Easter lilies received over the past years from the children or Kevin are now blooming in my gardens.  And their beauty sings, "He is risen!  Jesus Christ is risen, indeed!!"
I am thankful for the life I have in Christ! "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;  the old has gone, the new has come!"  1 Corinthians 5:17.

Do you count blessings?  Or keep a gratitude journal?  What are you savoring today?