Tag Archives: spirit

Holy Homemakers

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for taking up residence in me.
I don’t think You are an implant,
sewn to the tissues of my brain, or heart.
You must live in that part of me
we humans fail to define,
the spirit or soul,
breath of life first passed
from Your lips to Adam’s
all those years ago.

Blessed are You for co-signing
on the mortgage
for these bones and flesh,
and putting Your name
next to mine
on the mailbox.

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for showing me how to belong
here in myself,
trusting what Your presence indicates—
that this is home—
my spirit, my body, and Your divinity
as homemakers.

Invisible Inspiration

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Invisible Inspiration

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for wind,
invisible.

It chases leaves
across empty lots,
or dances with them in trees.
It bends branches,
teaching them to be flexible.
It tangles long hair
and balloon strings,
carries smell
and sound and mist.

Blessed are You
for wind that stirs up water,
plays with grasses in the fields,
and entices flowers to bob and weave.
It inspires me though I have never seen it
and never will.

So may I be inspired
by Your Spirit
dancing with me,
tangling me,
teaching me to be flexible,
and bringing all manner of things
to my attention.
May I feel it—feel You—
everywhere,
for You in Your invisibility
touch more than I ever will
with my flesh and bones.

What Is God up To?

Reflections – week 8

It’s the final week of reflections inspired by my current small groups. We’ve been exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. I have a feeling I’ll be going through these books again in years to come. They invite me to occupy my own wholeness, to live in my Spirit center. I’m honored to read the words of folks who are truly alive, and to offer my own words into the great expanse.

Many thanks to the authors of these books—to Karen McAdams, Rachel Faulkner Brown, and Gregory Boyle. You are Spirit wind blowing in my life.

I have long been certain that God is crazy. Here’s proof, from the mouth of Jesus: “Whoever believes in Me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). I could write pages on what I think this means, but I honestly have no idea. Regardless, it blows the doors off my measured world and invites me to a wild curiosity.

Gregory Boyle writes, “I hired a homie named Julio once who was in possession of the worst attitude to ever walk through our doors. Julio was not the first homie who told me where to go and requested I do things with myself that I don’t believe can be physically done. I do remember, as I hired him, that I deliberately chose to be intrigued by him rather than get defensive. Instead of dreading his arrival and the implications of his belligerence, I opted for curiosity. Way better. It worked out.”¹

I find myself in a place where I’m liable to get defensive with God, so I’m opting for curiosity. Curiosity keeps me from “furiosity” and fear. Father’s House Session Seven is about how we were “made for more,”² and that “more” may look like healing people and exercising power over spirits of darkness and oppression. Exercising spiritual power feels like one more chance for me to mess things up, in a very public way. If I pray over someone for healing of a physical malady or for the removal of a spirit of fear or depression, it’s no longer private. And I probably need an answer for when it doesn’t “work.” I don’t have one, and I hate all the usual ones about whatever God’s will is and maybe I misunderstood what to pray for, or maybe I needed to pray longer or with more people or with more faith, blah, blah, blah. I’ll pass on looking like an idiot and I’ll pass on making excuses for God not showing up.

So obviously I have some things to work through. In the meantime, curiosity keeps me present. Curiosity holds open the possibility for things to happen that I don’t expect or understand. Curiosity invites an awareness that God may be up to something of which I am totally unaware. Curiosity lets God out of the box, to see what He’s going to do. I’m not sure why God lets me keep a lid on Him. But I’m kinda ready to take the lid off. Or at least open it a crack and see what comes out. Curiosity allows me to wonder instead of worry. What is God up to?

In the early chapters of the book of Acts, Peter is beginning to inhabit his spiritual boldness. One day when he walks with John to the temple for prayer, they encounter a man begging for money. The man was lame at birth, and presumably made money to help his family care for him by begging at the temple. He asks Peter and John for money, and instead they heal him in the name of Jesus. He gets up on those legs that didn’t even work in utero, and runs around praising God.

So God’s house can be a place for beggars to come, and to receive something different than what they’re asking for. Through His Spirit, God gives us good things we don’t ask for. This is why I want to be curious. What is God up to?

I suppose I was made for this. It’s not like flying to the moon so much as it’s like walking or eating. I am naturally supernatural. The adventurously expectant life is not my posture toward God, nor His posture toward me, but something we experience together. I am a trusted daughter in this partnership.

* * *

As I look back on Father’s House, having now journaled through it twice in small groups, I recall the story I shared at our final meeting last fall. I journaled it that morning, just a couple hours before we gathered for our Father’s House finale.

November 1, 2022

Saturday our family spent the day around the fire pit in our back yard. The freestanding metal fire pit and all the chairs are still out in the lawn now, on a Tuesday morning. Yesterday it sprinkled a bit and I thought about moving the fire pit, but I didn’t make it a priority. As I fell asleep in the evening I could hear it raining more, and each time I awoke in the night it was raining. I wanted to enjoy the sound of rainfall, but I couldn’t help thinking about the fire pit out there and how easily it rusts. When I got up this morning and it was still raining, I remembered that our two favorite lounge chairs rust also, and I started feeling anxious and frustrated with myself.

Then Papa reminded me, “no condemnation.” And I thought, “but doesn’t letting that stuff rust mean I’m a bad daughter? Doesn’t it make me careless, wasteful … and just really really wrong?” And the answer was, “no. Leaving stuff out to rust has nothing to do with who I am.” I faltered as I tried to say that in my spirit. It was uncomfortable, to say the least, but with some effort I said it. I wonderingly turned it over in my mind and as I accepted it to be true I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. I felt light. Amazed. Loved. Free. Then, as is my custom on Tuesday mornings, I weighed myself. 114.6 pounds. As I entered it on my smart phone I felt good about keeping my weight in the 113-117 range for several years now. And then I knew in my spirit that weight management says nothing about who I am. If I weighed 200 pounds I would be just as beloved. And I knew it in my heart. And then I just felt spoiled.

I am spoiled by knowing I don’t have to get life right, and I don’t even have to get spirituality right. There is no “right” incantation or posture or actions. There is no deserving. He is the one doing—the Giver, the Filler, the Inviter. My role is to receive (and there is no “right” way to receive) whatever extravagance He extends to me. He elevates me to where He is, and invites me to a life of amazement. In living that life, I extend the same invitation to the people around me who are still trying to get it “right,” or who have settled miserably into the mire of getting it “wrong.”

“God stands with the powerless not to console them in their powerlessness, but to always remind them of their power. … Jesus invites us to this anarchy.”³

Endnotes:
¹The Whole Language, page 130
²Father’s House, page 136
³The Whole Language, page 135

Mess to Meadow

Reflections – week 6

Welcome to week six of reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. This is week six of eight.
I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

“Messy.” This word resonated with me as a descriptor of my inner world for most of the past ten years. Also, “Complicated” and “Untrustworthy.” Being at home with a newborn baby introduced me to my inner world, and brought to light a toxic relationship with myself that had been flying under the radar most of my life. Twenty-one months after quitting work to stay at home, my second daughter was born, and in between cuddling warm, squishy babies and washing loads of laundry that left only pink lint in the dryer screen, I learned to hate myself.

Self-hate is like having the world’s worst roommate, and reading only bad news in the paper. On some level it feels normal, but there is always the hope that things will improve. I had no idea what would be involved in learning kindness to myself. Mercifully, it was not a journey I took alone, but in the company of my husband, favorite authors, music, and God.

I didn’t know it, but I needed to learn what parts of my inner world are truest. What parts can influence or control other parts? Why did I feel powerless so much of the time, and why did I increasingly try to control myself, my children, and my husband to combat those feelings of powerlessness?

One aspect of learning to be friends with myself was practicing acceptance of all the parts. This has been a vital key in finding peace. But I still want to know, when different parts are at war, what is the most real part? In a broader sense, who am I?

Gregory Boyle writes, “When the homies arrive, they have not been properly introduced to themselves.”¹ I can relate. While caring for two little ones, I was introduced to myself, but it wasn’t a proper introduction. I got acquainted with what Father’s House calls my soul—made up of mind, will and emotions.² These always seemed at war with one another. I thought my will was the control center, the part of me that could call the shots for everything else. But it didn’t work. My emotions jumped into control, my mind spent most of its time cowering in fear, and my will unceremoniously shoved me through the duties of each day. After a few years of getting to know myself, I was thoroughly done with being me, and I was madder than hell at whoever said my will was supposed to control my mind and emotions. I was also angry with myself. So angry, from trying to control my emotions with my will, and my will with my mind, and failing. Always failing. Defeated, lying on the ground, exhausted, dirty.

In the video teaching for Father’s House Session Six, Rachel Faulkner Brown introduces the idea of a spirit center.³ The soul (mind, will, emotions) is around the spirit center, and is informed by the spirit center. In other words, everything moves outward from my spirit center. This means I don’t rule myself with willpower. I cannot tell you what a relief this is. Willpower is an unfaithful partner, an accident waiting to happen. I either wield it to the detriment of the soft parts of myself and my children, or I don’t use it, also to the detriment of our most tender parts.

A spirit center changes everything. There is a whole and holy part of me, a quiet place, a finished place. After being properly introduced to myself, the haggling between my will, mind, and emotions took its proper place outside my spirit. The authors of Father’s House write, “In the Kingdom, who you are releases what you do. The enemy tries to convince you what you do determines who you are. That’s why Satan attacks what you believe about yourself the hardest.”⁴I have been caught in a vortex of doing, not knowing that being comes first. Spirit is my center, and my center is Spirit. I don’t need to control my spirit.

So, the truest—by which I mean the most unwavering—part of me is my spirit center, around which all the other parts find their places, and the whole becomes a residence of freedom and meaning.

Rachel Faulkner Brown suggests that I ask God, “What do You call me?”⁵This is Papa’s response: “Meadow. You are now a place of beauty, stillness, rest, wonder, creative activity. Seasons may change the blooms or the flow of water, but you will always be these things.”

Mess to Meadow.

Wrestling to resting.

Despicable to divine.

The coming hours of this day are not a treacherous trudge over land mines, but an adventurous afternoon in a meadow.

Endnotes:
¹The Whole Language, page 94
²Father’s House, page 100
³Father’s House, Session Six video teaching
⁴Father’s House, page 99
⁵Father’s House, Session Six video teaching

Receiving Joy

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“Expect suffering. I want to receive this teaching,” I wrote in my prayer journal. Five days later I came down with the worst cold I’d had in years. Perhaps God in His great grace had prepared me by putting suffering on my mind beforehand. Whatever the case, He blessed me with a spirit of acceptance. I had one angry tantrum (in my head and on my face) for a couple of hours, followed by a good cry, some pats on the cheek from my seven-year-old, and a slightly scared inquiry from my husband as to whether I needed anything.

It’s frustrating being sick and knowing no one else is going to cook or clean or help the kids with piano practice and pet care and chores. It’s frustrating to cancel the play date and the sleepover and the dinner with friends and the meal delivery to other friends.

But it’s also nice to rest in bed, to watch my children try some new things I usually do for them, to have more time for prayer, and to practice gratitude.

By God’s grace I had an attitude of receiving instead of fighting, and somehow—honestly, I find it rather mysterious—the sickness was a blessing. And it was followed by the biggest surprise of all. On the fourth day I woke up full of joy. As I drifted between sleep and wakefulness I felt that both were bliss. When I looked outside, the world seemed more beautiful. My energy was coming back, and where usually I would feel a sense of guilty relief—I can finally catch up on days of neglected tasks—I felt alive, vibrant. It all seemed very silly, like an overreaction. But there it was, that intangible we call joy.

Suffering (which admittedly is a strong word to describe a cold) has a tremendous capacity to grow me, to introduce me to my mature and whole self. This post-cold joy was a treasured moment in which I caught a glimpse of Spirit-fruit in my life. I was awed. I was grateful.

Papa God, I have opened my hands (literally, daily) and I have received Your abundance. There is a sweet moment of contentment here, releasing the past and not knowing the future, tasting the pleasure of this moment, that I have received a blessing from You.

My Favorite Subject

Thoughts from an impertinent christian, mom, wife, and writer

Tag Archives: spirit

Holy Homemakers

Holy Homemakers

Invisible Inspiration

Invisible Inspiration

What Is God up To?

What Is God up To?

Reflections – week 8

Mess to Meadow

Mess to Meadow

Reflections – week 6

Receiving Joy

Alive