Beginning the Work Again :: I'm Not God

One of many.

—

When I first started blogging in 2006, I chose the name “Lilies Have Dreams” for my personal blog.

It was a reference to Matthew 6:28-34, which compares us to the lilies of the field and says we need not worry — that we are important to God and that God will take care of us, even as he takes care of the lilies that line the earth. It was a reference, too, to dreaming — to living out loud, to taking risks, to standing on the precipice of my own life, which I had been slowly learning how to do (and was about to do in great measure, as I packed up my belongings and moved across the country to marry Kirk the following month).

Ultimately, it was the idea that I could be small yet valuable to God and that even in my smallness, I could dream big dreams and then, because my value was rooted in God, I could take risks. 

Learning to be a small yet beautiful and fully beloved lily of the field … that was a big part of my formation journey my first time around the formation spiral. It’s something that took many years as I identified and then began unlearning key beliefs and behaviors that showed up in my life as perfectionism, over-responsibility, scruples, phantom guilt, and what I came to call the superhuman tendency. 

It was about unlearning my need to be God.

It was one of the best things to ever happen to me.

I don’t say “unlearning my need to be God” from a place of pride but rather fear. I believed with every cell in my body that I needed to hold the world aright. I carried the responsibility for things that went wrong, even if I had nothing to do with what happened. I believed myself to be other people’s saviors, needing to know what they needed and supplying it. I wasn’t allowed to have needs myself.

Again, this wasn’t a prideful thing. It was what happened when a whole lot of mixed-up, messed-up messages tumbled around in my head and my heart at a very young age and then were given a mixed-up, messed-up interpretation through my too-young lens. I didn’t realize at the time that I was ingesting these messages or interpreting them the way I was. And I really didn’t realize the impact those messages and interpretations would have on my life as I continued to grow up and live into the world. 

God is merciful and gracious. He took me through a long unlearning.

As he did this, he took the burden of responsibility off my shoulders. I could live free. I could breathe. Even better: I could make mistakes. I felt, truly, like one of those lilies of the field, small and one of many, yet dazzling in her beauty, twirling and dancing and smiling and laughing in her utter freedom and belovedness.

—

I’m relearning this now.

As I continue to grow forward from my healing journey, I’m dealing with the fallout of what happened to me at 15 and 16 years old. I’m looking at the ways it damaged and messed me up. I’m feeling angry. I’m feeling sad. I’m struggling my way toward the place where forgiveness lives. 

And I’m bumping up against that old need-to-be-God proclivity again.

This means I’m struggling to let myself feel what I really feel, as I’m constantly second-guessing whether those feelings are right, correct, and perfect (since everything God does is right, correct, and perfect). It means I’m afraid to tell people they hurt and failed me, as I’m not allowed to be someone who gets hurt or needs people to hold up their end of the relationship. It means I’m afraid to take steps in any direction, for fear they’ll be the wrong steps, since I’m not allowed to do anything wrong or make mistakes.

It’s about learning to be human again. 

Just human.

Human. The thing I previously came to see as one of God’s greatest gifts to us. The not-God-ness. The imperfections in us that are so heart-achingly beautiful. The vulnerability of it all. The permission to stumble, to mess up, to learn. The ability to grow, which means the reality of not-yet-developed-ness. Not having to have all the answers. Not having to be the expert authority. 

Just human. Walking alongside. 

I’m relearning this right now.

Do you ever live inside this struggle?

Beginning the Work Again :: Relearning Things

It reads, “Stir into flame the gift which is you.”

—

Ask anyone who’s circling the formation spiral for another go-round, and they’ll tell you the worst part about this whole thing is that feeling of, “But I already learned this!” 

It’s the worst. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said this myself and heard other people say it. It’s the most flabbergasting thing. You know that you sincerely learned things in previous seasons of growth — really learned them, really set your heart toward them and incorporated them into your lived reality — and yet here you find yourself, re-learning them again as though from the beginning. 

It can really throw you for a loop. 

One of the things that’s even worse in this place — like rubbing salt in the wound — is not being taken seriously when you express that you’ve already learned the thing you’re re-learning now. I’ve found it’s really important to me that the truth of the jouney I’ve already walked be validated as real. 

And so let me do that for you.

If you are walking a path that feels like déjà vu, learning things you’ve invested real heart and time and energy learning at previous points in your journey, know that it really happened. You did learn those things. You know this thing you’re re-learning right now, at least in certain places inside your soul. What you’ve learned before is real. 

I was talking with a friend on Friday night about this re-learning thing. We were talking about the oft-related image of formation as a spiral — something that circles around and around, hitting up against well-known refrains as it comes back around again. She was saying, “It makes sense that when you hit a new pocket of growth, you revert back to old ways of being. It feels like starting over.” 

My question to her was, “When does the thing you’ve previously spent time learning become so ingrained that it’s the new default position, even when you hit new pockets of growth?”

I don’t know the answer to this yet. Maybe that happens once it’s been learned and re-learned a number of times and builds up enough power to overtake the instinctive response we learned early on in our lives. 

So here I sit, relearning some things right now. This week, I’ll share some of those growing edges I’m re-learning with you. 

Have you ever had to re-learn something you already spent time and care learning before?

Beginning the Work Again :: What's the Difference Between Formation and Healing?

Sun spots. 

—

In this series, I’ve used the words healing and formation quite frequently, and it occurs to me that I ought to clarify what I mean by each in case it’s assumed I use them interchangeably.

I don’t.  

In short, I believe the process of healing always includes formation but the process of formation does not always include healing.

Now, let’s unpack that a bit. 

In my exprience, healing work is tied to specific events and circumstances — ways in which we were wounded in precise moments or series of moments or chain of events. Those events formed us in certain ways, and perhaps a better way to say it is that they usually de-formed us away from the intended image of God in us. We were harmed, and in our need for protection, we often grabbed coping mechanisms that helped get us through. We often, too, picked up new beliefs that implanted themselves on our souls as a result of what we experienced.

In a process of healing, we need two things, then. We need healing at the place of our wounding, and we need God to walk with us through an intentional process of re-formation. (This is where I am in my current journey.) 

Formation, on the other hand, is always happening in our lives.

There’s the general formation that’s always at work — ways in which our daily habits and choices and circumstances continually form us for good or ill, even without our conscious involvement. If you are a human being, you are always in the process of being formed in some direction or way.

And then there’s the formation God is about in us.

This is the place of invitation, where God is seeking, continually, to form us more and more into the image marked out for us from the beginning, which is the unique imprint of God in us in the world. All throughout our being, all throughout our lives, there are places God wants to touch, invite, re-teach, re-form. This process, too, never ends. (This can be cause for rejoicing sometimes and cause for frustration at others!)

Now, here’s what I mean when I say the formation process doesn’t always include healing: These places God pricks and invites into our awareness for continued formation aren’t always called out because of wounds. Sometimes it’s because of the Fall. Our mere humanity. Our need for growth. Sometimes it’s time for shedding. For refinement. For maturing. 

When we become aware of the invitation, then we get to say yes or no. And if we say yes, then we get to step into a process of intentional formation in partnership with God.

I hope this clarification is helpful. Is there anything you would add or further clarify? Any questions you’d like me to address?

Beginning the Work Again :: Tears for What I See

Looking at the brokenness.

—

I mentioned in my last post that I experienced tenderness in the aftermath of my healing experience and that I came to see it as what emerged when my heart, fresh and new, became exposed to the elements. 

But it’s also because of what I can see now.

I was in the long-ingrained habit of looking away from some things, and one memory in particular. It was a scene from which I averted my eyes whenever it came into my awareness. I just couldn’t look at it. To do so was to wince and shudder. To do so was to relive it all over again.

But now, because of Jesus, I can see it. 

And not only can I see it, but I also see it for what it is. 

I’m seeing truth — the truth of what happened, and the truth of its injustice. And that, too, is a reason for the tears.

One thing I didn’t mention in the entry about my healing experience is how much I cried. When I met Jesus in that memory and experienced him with me inside of it, I put my head on the desk and just sobbed. It’s probably the first time I’ve ever done that for this particular memory, and it felt good to release the tears and honor the pain of what had happened after all these years.

Then, when I was driving to my therapy session last Thursday, I connected with the truth of the experience in a different way. It was crazy-stormy in Florida that day. The clouds were dark and hovering, the rain like sheets. Everyone crept along the roads the best they could.

And inside my car, I played one song over and over again on the stereo. It was written by a girl who struggled to face the truth of her own difficult experience. The song charts her progression into that truth with a growing strength. “It’s not right … it’s not right,” she begins to repeat about halfway through the song. And then, harmonies tight and strong, she proclaims, “No.”

As I let this song companion me on my drive, I began to realize that another part of the emotion I’m carrying is the acknowledgment of injustice. That what happened was wrong. That it breaks God’s heart, too, even as he offered me his calmness and strength and peace and love in that moment of healing. 

There’s something amazing about God’s ability to see truth while extending mercy. It’s a profound duality I’m holding in my heart a lot right now. It’s something I’m seeking to learn.

Beginning the Work Again :: Jesus There

How lovely are you.

—

“Be watchful—the grace of God appears suddenly. It comes without warning to an open heart. Sweep out the stable of your existence and the King will gladly enter.” 

—Rumi

—

I’m sitting cross-legged on my couch. It’s this past Saturday morning, around 8 a.m. 

I take a deep breath in. Let a deep breath out. I close my eyes, then breathe in, then out. I find a still place in the center of myself where I know God lives. 

Thinking of this still place inside of me, I turn my eyes to the right, where sits a used copy of Joyce Rupp’s The Cup of Our Life that arrived a few days ago. On the cover is the drawing of a cup held between two hands. I pick up the book. Read the first few pages again — the story of Joyce’s encounter of cup as spiritual metaphor.

I set the book down and return to that still place. Eyes closed. Breathing in. Breathing out. The image of a cup in the center of my being, filled with God. 

—

A few moments later, overcome with stories of my life, seen as a panorama, I get up off the couch. Walk over to my desk. Pull my vintage typewriter off the small side chair and onto the surface of the desk. I sit down and scroll a sheet of paper into its feed. 

I reach for my earbuds, folded up in the corner of my desk. I untangle them. Plug them into my iPhone and place them in my ears. Pull up the music app and scroll to Eustace the Dragon, then tap “White as Snow” and make sure it’s set to play on repeat. 

Turning my attention to the typewriter, I type the date. Hit return. Then indent. Start typing the first paragraph of the panoramic view I saw inside my head. 

—

After one paragraph typed, I stop. Cross my arms, folded, on the desk and listen to the song playing on repeat in my ears. Eyes closed.

I become aware of his presence. Jesus. He’s just behind my shoulder. 

I’m inside my memory — that memory, the one that feels like running full-out into a thick black wall and then wrenching myself away, black and blue, bruised. 

And there Jesus is. Right behind my shoulder in that memory. 

Inside the memory, I turn my head back a bit to look at him. The memory is still happening, like a video playing inside my mind, every moment of it happening right there in front of me — in front of us — and what I notice is him. 

Jesus. 

This. This is my moment of deepest shame and humiliation. This. Right here. 

And there Jesus is, with me. Calm. Strong. Radiating peace. 

—

The first thing I notice is his presence with me. Solid. Fully there and attentive. With-ness. 

The next thing I notice is that while he is fully present to me and my consciousness of him, he is also fully aware of what is happening inside that memory. He sees it happening, and he doesn’t flinch.

He sees it happening. And he doesn’t flinch.

What grace washes over me. In the moment of my deepest shame and humiliation, he sees it and doesn’t flinch. He sees it and doesn’t flinch.

For the first time in 19 years, I see it, too, and do not flinch. 

It’s a miracle. Happening inside me and before my very eyes. 

—

I become aware of the truth: Who I am, the reality of me in the eyes of Jesus, is deeper than this memory. I am more than this moment of shame. 

This? This is healing. 

This? I’m reminded of what I’ve learned so viscerally before: This is how forgiveness becomes possible.

And I realize in that moment that if I can find this truth in the place of my deepest shame, then so can others. Hope floods me.

—

This is not the first time I have experienced Jesus with me inside my memories. It is not the first time he has healed me in such a way. 

At other times, I have asked him the question we all long to ask: Why did you let this happen? You were there. Why didn’t you intervene? Sometimes I’ve asked this question in anger. In hurt. 

He has always answered.

The answers, too, are a healing.

I notice that I don’t feel angry this time, seeing him there with me, not moving to stop the events. The feeling of his presence was so strong and peaceful and full of his attentiveness to me that I could feel no anger. Only gratitude. 

I did ask the question, though. Quietly.

I don’t know if he’s done answering the question yet — why he let it happen, why he didn’t intervene, why he allowed aspects of my story to collect the way they did. But here’s one impression I had that is feeling very true: If that memory happened for the sole reason that I would land here, experiencing the potent presence of Jesus in the way I did right then, that maybe is enough. 

He is my greatest treasure. He is the most beautiful one of all.

“How lovely … how lovely are you.

“How lovely … how lovely your voice, your face.”

—Eustace the Dragon, “A Song for Sparrows”

Beginning the Work Again :: What I Didn't Know Then

My life now. 

—

Dear Christianne,

When you started your formation journey at age 19, you had no idea that’s what you were doing. All you knew was that you suddenly saw things — about yourself, the world around you, and even God — you couldn’t see before and that the vista of your whole world was changing. 

You had blow-your-mind, whoa-dang moments about all this for quite a while. And you often felt like the ground was being pulled out from underneath your feet. You had no idea what you were doing, and you didn’t have any guidebooks or teachers to help you.

But you were also quite stubborn and stuck to what you knew: that you needed to walk this path.

I’m proud of you for that stubbornness. 

What you didn’t know then was that it would take so long. This is one reason your stubbornness was a good thing. It took you two years into the journey to find Jesus. It took another four years beyond that to really settle into your sense of belovedness. It took you nearly a decade to forgive some things.

If you knew it would take so long, would you still have walked the path? We’ll never know, and it doesn’t really matter. Because you did walk the path. And now you wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

That’s another thing you didn’t know then. You didn’t know that “yes” you uttered would lead to what would become the most precious thing in your life. Now you wouldn’t change the journey for anything. Wrapped up inside the whole of it — the difficult truths, the healing moments, the growth, and of course Jesus — is everything you are today. 

You didn’t know it would change your life. Because of that journey you took, you began to care about other people’s journeys. You wanted them to experience grace and belovedness too. You wanted them to meet the Jesus you’d met. You wanted them to take the formation journey, even though it’s one of the most messy, complicated things a person can try to do. You wanted to walk beside them while they struck out on the path.

And so you eventually left your full-time job as an editor — the work you thought was the end-all, be-all of a career life when you were 19 years old! — in order to be trained to do this work responsibly and well. You took four formal years to get trained, and you’re still equipping yourself every day. You eventually started this website as an invitation and a safe place to begin. You now write and teach and offer spiritual direction, undergirded by a life of prayer; these things are your vocation.

The formation journey that you didn’t even know was a formation journey at the time you began it changed your whole entire future. 

Right now, you’re facing some hard truths and revisiting the process again. And more than anything, I want to remind you about what I just said about your formation journey having become the most precious thing in your life. I want you to remember that. Because right now, you can’t imagine ever feeling that way about what you’re walking through.

You will. Someday you will hold it close, just like you hold all the other parts of this journey close, and say you can’t imagine life without it.

Love,

Me 

Beginning the Work Again :: A Letter to Myself

Paws. And softness.

—

Dear Christianne,

You’re having a hard time today, and I want you to know that I see you. I see your confusion. Your frustration. Your loneliness in this journey.

Remember the first time you stepped into this formation journey, how you kept bumping up against that phrase “figure it out”? How you began to realize how crazily common that phrase was in your mind and even your conversations? How you began to learn so much about yourself through that single observation — that this was you, the person you’d become at 19 and 20 years old, constantly trying to figure things out?

It was a defense mechanism, and you didn’t even know it was there. It was your way of anticipating problems and staying one step ahead of them. It was your way of protecting against error. It was your way of “number-crunching” everything about the world around you. You were always trying to figure something out.

It was a defense mechanism. 

Do you remember when you noticed it? When you saw that phrase cropping up in your mind and conversations? When you realized it was everywhere for you? When you saw how quickly you went there with every single thing — just trying to “figure it out”? 

It confounded you to notice it. How it permeated everything. You were so surprised to see it everywhere. Then, for a while, you laughed every time you noticed it. There it was again!

But eventually, you got mad. Why did you have to figure everything out? Why did you have to live with the unending contingency plans and the watchful eye on constant duty? 

And then you realized you were exhausted. You were just so tired of figuring things out. Your mind wanted rest.

And so you took it. 

—

You’re in a similar place now.

Instead of bumping up against that constant refrain of “figuring things out,” now you’re in a place where you keep bumping up against a thick black wall of hard truth and then turning sharply away. You keep banging up against it, and you keep wrenching yourself away. 

You’re getting kind of bruised, actually. Have you noticed? It just keeps happening: Bang. Then wrench. Bang. Then wrench.

Can you feel the tenderness of your skin? Can you see the redness? The black-and-blue marks?

I hate seeing you hurt yourself over and over like this.

And so I’m wondering if you’d be willing to try something new. You know how you let yourself practice going off the clock with figuring things out that earlier time? What if now, you let yourself practice accepting the wall?

What if every time you banged up against the wall of that hard truth, instead of pushing yourself away so fast in order to scramble another direction, you gave yourself a moment to stop, acknowledge the wall, and accept it is there? What if you stood there, let yourself nod at it, believe it is real?

Maybe you could even begin to notice when you’re running hard toward that wall — to notice you’re headed that way, and to help yourself slow down and maybe walk toward it instead. And then to stand in front of it. To see it there. To size it up. To nod your head at it, saying yes to its being there.

—

When you started practicing rest that first time, it started this way. As a noticing — noticing that “figure it out” phrase when it cropped up or the “figuring” behavior once it got whirring. When you noticed, you let yourself stop. This is how you helped yourself learn a new way of being, at least in the beginning. 

I have a hunch this new practice of noticing and accepting will help diminish the wall. Let it soften. Come down. Disintegrate. And then become a permeable part of your story, floating through it all like a million tiny black flecks, no longer a barrier that holds things back or locks them away, letting it all be a part of you.

I hope you agree this acceptance practice is worth trying. At the very least, you’ll stop getting bruised. At the very most, you’ll find greater wholeness of being.

Love,

Me 

Beginning the Work Again :: It Continues Into Truth

Now, begin.

—

I shared yesterday that I’m going to spend the next few posts in this series recalling specific aspects of the formation process that I learned or found helpful the first time I walked through my own process of intentional formation — aspects I am personally needing to remember right now, as I step through yet another curve in my formation “spiral.”

Please know this part of the series isn’t meant to be prescriptive, in the sense of spelling out a “1-2-3” checklist for you to follow or a “Do this, and you’ll get results!” claim. Rather, it’s meant to make the formation process a bit more concrete — to show at least one way it can look, and has looked, for someone else.

I see these posts a little bit like waymakers, like markers on the path or dots upon a map. How we get from one point to the next will look different for everyone, and the kind of terrain we cross to get from one point to another on our personal map also is unique from one story to the next. But the markers at least lay out some territory. They hold, or contain, a scope of journey.

—

With that said, then, let me share this second observation: 

After awareness comes truth. 

This part can take a while. 

This is the part of the formation process that helps us learn what we’re really dealing with here. It’s where we begin to uncover what’s real, and we stare at it. It’s where we examine events and their impact. It’s where we notice what’s true inside ourselves, for real.

It can be scary as all get out.

Because often, we’re looking at things we haven’t allowed ourselves to see before. Sometimes it’s things we experienced, and sometimes it’s things we have done.

Also, this part often includes questioning things we’ve accepted without question until now. Sometimes it’s the case that things went unquestioned for survival’s sake, and they worked and were necessary for a certain length of time. But now they’re ready to be questioned. Now it’s time to reconsider.

And again, it can take a while.

The first time I walked through an intentional formation process, the truth component took years. I don’t say that to scare you away from this process, but rather to acknowledge the importance of this step. This is where we really learn what’s true about ourselves and our stories, at least to the level we’re currently able to understand and see them.

Our first time engaging with God in a process like this also tends to impact the length of time different phases take, since the first time around, everything’s new. Everything’s discovery. 

And sometimes this part of the process takes a while simply because looking at what’s real scares us. I know that, for me, the things I’m working through right now are particularly difficult to look at and acknowledge. I’ve spent just over a month now going back and forth with what I’m holding — moving toward truth and then swerving away, simply because the truths I’m dealing with are difficult and painful to see. 

I expect I’ll be in this truth phase for a while yet. 

And that’s OK. We take the time we need. God is infinitely patient with us in our process. 

In this truth phase, you might find that therapy or counseling is a welcome and necessary companion to you in the process. There is no shame in seeking this kind of help — and it can actually be the most wise thing you do for yourself. We don’t always have the skills in our own toolset to work through certain things, and neither do our friends and family much of the time, either. It can be helpful to have a specific skilled, confidential, and objective place to process some of the truths we see.

So, truth. Such a hard but essential part of the process. But this is where we start to learn what God sees and what God intends to do.

What are your thoughts on this truth component of the formation process? Is there anything you’d add that hasn’t been mentioned? Any questions about this?

Beginning the Work Again :: It Begins With Awareness

Will you enter in?

—

This new season of formation and healing has me thinking a lot about my first time around the spiral, mainly because doing so will help me in this new place as I remember things I learned from the first go-round.

Over the next several posts, I’m going to share some of the things I’m remembering here with you.

If you’re in your first-ever trek into the process of intentional formation, this next series of posts will, I hope, prove helpful — a bit like a beacon of light, illuminating the pathway forward, in a land that feels new and confusing and unknown and with no map. 

If you’re on your second go-round (or third or fourth or more), hopefully these reflections will serve as a helpful reminder and encouragement to you as you keep walking forward. At least, that’s what they’ll be for me.

—

I’m reminded that the journey begins with awareness. 

One day, you’re aware of something new, and you know you must follow it. It’s like Mary Oliver says in her poem “The Journey”: 

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice—

though the whole house

began to tremble 

and you felt the old tug at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers 

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible …

One day, you just know. It’s time, and you must say yes.

In my first intentional formation journey, the awareness moment happened while reading a book. A word — grace — kept popping up on what seemed like every page, inviting my eventual admission that I just didn’t get what that word meant, even though I’d been hearing and saying it my whole life. This time around, it happened in a session with my spiritual director. She asked a question, I began answering it as honestly as I could, and suddenly there it was: something new I couldn’t ignore.

I think the awareness piece comes when we’re ready for it. I think it’s the invitation of God. Our opportunity, at that point, is to say yes and step through the door. 

When have you experienced the awareness of invitation toward deeper formation or healing in your life?

Beginning the Work Again :: When the Student Is Ready, the Teacher Appears

A spiral that listens. 

—

Another helpful thing that came out of my 9 p.m. hotel lobby conversation with Kay was the idea that perhaps the timing for this “re-work” process is just right. 

Or, rather, that perhaps I’m ready for it now, whereas before I wasn’t. 

I was telling Kay how much I hate that all of this new stuff has come up for processing now, how much it feels like going back in time and starting over, how much I feel like it’s derailing my progress forward in areas I’ve been excited to pursue … how much I wish this new work had been incorporated into the process of formation and healing I took the first time around the formation spiral.

“I just wish this had been part of the original process,” I said. 

She nodded. She knew. 

Then, after a few moments, she said, “But maybe you’re more ready to look at this part of your story now than you were before.” Kay is one of the kindest people in my life, and she said these words quietly, with such gentleness. 

I looked at her and held her gaze. I let her words sink in. 

“I think you’re probably right,” I finally said.

Because this part of my story I’m processing now? It’s hard, and it’s dark. It’s something that, every time I have thought of it over the years, I have quickly averted my eyes and my mind from. It’s just one of those really hard and difficult things. 

In truth, I’ve steeled myself against it all these years. That’s 19 years of white-knuckled steeling. You could say I’m quite the professional steeler — that my mind, heart, body, and soul are professional-level gatekeepers when it comes to that particular memory bank stored inside of me. I’ve built up quite the defense against it. I’m very good at squashing it.

And so maybe, in fact, it took that long journey around the formation spiral the first time to bring me to a place, now, that’s better equipped and able to handle this part of my story. On this side of that formation spiral, I’ve learned some things. I can help this new part of story surface in safety. I have some tools at my disposal.

Maybe it’s just like they say: When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

And so maybe I don’t have to feel so antagonistic toward the timing of all this. Maybe I don’t have to resent its emergence in my life. Maybe I don’t have to disdain the truth of its presence. 

Maybe I can, instead, be thankful that those things long hidden count me safe enough to emerge, here and now. Maybe I can be thankful that my faithfulness to the process the first time around has made me someone now worthy of trust. 

Are there ways in which you can see your readiness for the process of formation you’re experiencing right now — ways that the timing may, in fact, be just right?

Beginning the Work Again :: When It Feels Like You're Doing Nothing

Grounded. At rest. 

—

My return to regular life after the travels and conference experience of last week has felt pretty brutal. 

Each day since I’ve been home, around 4:30 in the afternoon, I hit a wall of exhaustion. My mind goes into that crazy-scary mind-meld place where it feels like sections of my mind go fuzzy and then shift on top of each other. (Does that ever happen to you when you’re flat-out tired?) My eyes glass over, and I feel like all I want to do right then is crawl into bed and curl under the covers, fast asleep.

Yesterday was the worst. I felt that way pretty much the whole day long.

This was confusing to me, since I’ve been home three days and have been getting a full night’s sleep each night now that I’m home. Shouldn’t the feeling of each day as I move deeper into this week be getting better, not worse? Kirk tells me it’s common for jet lag to feel worse on the second and third days, though, so hopefully that means I’m just moving through a normal process here. 

Last night I was so tired at dinner that I thought my face was going to fall right into the bowl of soup on the table in front of me. So I took Kirk’s advice and crawled into bed around 7:30. I pulled the covers around me, pushed my earbuds into my ears, then scrolled to a new favorite song, “Out of Reach” by Eustace the Dragon, and let it play on repeat for about two hours, my eyes closed in grateful rest. 

It was in that stillness that the now-familiar image of my 15-year-old self greeted me once I closed my eyes.

There she was, and I’m sorry to say that I immediately wanted to run. 

Part of the reason I wanted to run is that it felt like I was doing nothing. And that’s because the other aspect of being back home so far has been the rush-rush-rush mode of each day.

This is partly to do with the adrenaline of my conference experience — up early each morning for 7:30 a.m. breakfast meetings and then pushing through, without a break, until at least midnight each day (and until 2:30 a.m. one night, when I ducked out of the hotel to enjoy a Eustace the Dragon concert with friends!). After a long travel day on Sunday, I got home around midnight and then was up and out of bed the next morning, ready to plow into my usual work and home responsibilities again.

So, there was the conference adrenaline at work in my body.

But there was also the conference aftermath — that feeling of needing to get caught up on All The Things. A new at-home work schedule that keeps me occupied at my desk from 9 a.m. until about 5 p.m. each day now. That feeling of playing catch-up on social media. Getting reoriented to life at home. Trying (but so far failing) to resume my exercise routine. And then Boston. And Gosnell. And Texas. 

It’s been such a packed — and hard, nationally speaking — week. 

As a result, I feel all out of sorts. My daily commitment to silence, stillness, solitude, and prayer have been lost in the shuffle. I’m trying to discern a new way forward. I’m not there yet. 

And so, when I closed my eyes last night and immediately discovered the invitation to sit and be present with my 15-year-old self, I wanted to flee. It just wasn’t active enough. My body felt the need to keep going-going-going, even though I was so exhausted I could literally drop. 

It felt like doing nothing. 

And then I thought: Isn’t that the point? So often we hear that God just wants to “do nothing” with us — just enjoy hanging out and being together. I think of the formation process as one concerned with our being, rather than our doing. A lot of my personal calling to live my life in this world has to do with such counter-cultural stillness — being a repository of solitude and prayer on behalf of the world. 

In this place of re-entry, my flustered, over-hyped, adrenaline-fueled, post-conference self is seeking such at-rest equilibrium and not finding it yet. It’s hard. I expect I’ll get there again (hopefully) soon. And in the meantime, I’m reminding myself that what feels like doing nothing is actually doing something — something sacred and important.

What is the invitation to what feels like “do-nothing-ness” in the formation process like for you?

Beginning the Work Again :: The Integration of Both Parts

Before I left for the conference, I wrote this post, which detailed the importance of rest in the formation and healing process as well as my general approach to making intentional room in my life for “the work.” 

While I was at the conference, I also came to acknowledge the importance of letting both parts of my journey show up at the same time — even if it feels really messy. 

It started with what felt like an anthem.

Several people in my life, both before and during the conference, said, “This new journey will even further qualify your work as a spiritual director. You’re being with the pain. You’re deepening your empathy and your capacity to be with others in their pain.”

When I mentioned how disappointed I was to be in this new place while attending the conference after having expected to be in a wholly different place for it, others looked at me and encouraged me, in complete sincerity, to be exactly where I am. The message I received from them was, “People wouldn’t want you to be other than who and where you truly are.”

I’m thankful for that.

Then, when I met with my spiritual director, Elaine, on Monday evening, we talked about this concept, too, and she framed it in terms of a thread that’s part of a larger quilt. This new part of my journey is a thread on the quilt of my life, and right now I’m often attending to that piece of thread and working it through the expanse of the tapestry, helping it become a part of the whole. And when I’m attending to that threading work, it has my full attention. 

But sometimes I pull back and look at the whole quilt at once. When I do that, the thread is still there, a part of the whole, but there are other parts there, too — lots of them. The thread would be anemic if existing on its own, and the grander quilt would not be whole if that particular thread weren’t taking its specific place on the tableau. 

As much as it’s important to designate specific times and places for attending to “the work,” it’s also important, I’m learning, to let the “current threading work” be a part of who I am — the whole tableau — when I’m just going about my day. 

This is one way integration happens. By letting it all be present and true.

What is this notion of integration like for you to hear? What part of your own life’s quilt has your attention right now?

Beginning the Work Again :: The Practice of Self-Compassion

Practicing the invitation of self to self.

—

While I was attending that international gathering of spiritual directors last week, I had a chance to spend about an hour one evening with the woman who served as my supervisor while I was an intern spiritual director several years back. 

During that hour, I shared with her my present journey. 

That conversation was such an impactful one for me, as it helped me take a couple steps forward on this current healing journey. And this week, I’d like to unpack those steps — as well as some other observations that came throughout the week and as a result of the conference content — with you here, in the trust, again, that if you’re going through an intentional formation process in your own life, you’ll find these learnings helpful too. 

First, I’ll share that the conference theme was compassion. 

When I first learned this was the case, I was ecstatic. The person in me who has come to care deeply about issues of peace and nonviolence the last four years couldn’t wait to learn some new perspectives on this topic. I signed up for workshops like, “A Spirituality of Welcome: Compassion in a Troubled World,” “Forgiveness as the Restoration of Love, Justice, and Power,” and “From Enemy to Friend: The Inner Work of Peacemaking.” I couldn’t wait to load up my mind and heart with more resources in order to further equip my feet to keep walking this path of compassion, nonviolence, and peace.

But when I registered for the conference, I didn’t know that by the time I reached St. Paul for the gathering several months later, I would primarily need to experience the conference theme through the lens of self-compassion more than anything else. 

Embracing self-compassion in this new place, I’ve been finding, is hard.

And when I met with Kay for that hour-long conversation we shared in the lobby one night, I told her so. “The first time I went through my intentional formation,” I told her, “I was fierce about it. Stubborn. Not one person could talk me out of it. I sat down and determinedly told God I wasn’t going to get up until I learned what I needed to learn.” I walked a journey that has unfolded for 15 years, and the continuous unfolding of this story I’ve lived is precious to me.

I couldn’t seem to access the same kind of fierceness and solidarity toward this new part of my journey. Yes, I am doing the things I know I should be doing. Yes, I am committed to walking the process. But my heart hasn’t been fully in it. 

More than anything, I’ve resented this new turn in my journey. 

I looked at Kay that night in the lobby and said, “I don’t know how to be fierce about this. I don’t know how to muster up the fierceness. I don’t know how to get firmly on the side of this part of my story. I don’t know how to stop pushing it away, just wishing it wasn’t there.” 

And then, through the course of that conversation, I found help in doing so. 

It came about — not surprisingly — through an image. When I look into my mind’s eye at the time in my life I’m revisiting through this new part of my journey, I can see myself so clearly. Fifteen years old. Long, curly brown hair. Thin. Wearing comfortable 26-inch 501 jeans and a scratchy, dark blue fitted blouse. White canvas shoes. A quiet way of inhabiting my life. 

I can see her. Me.

In that moment in time, I see that 15-year-old me walking into my bedroom. It’s the afternoon hours, and I’ve recently returned home from a day of high school. I’m walking into the room as if to put something—my journal, I think—down on my nightstand, or perhaps I’m coming to retrieve it. Whatever the case, I seem to be entering the room with purposefulness, and yet I can see a loneliness there. Like the girl that I was had carefully curled up inside herself but was careful not to let anyone see.

In my conversation with Kay in the conference lobby this past Friday night, I began to wonder: What if I just spent time seeing that 15-year-old me? Really seeing her? What if I sat inside that bedroom, propped up on the bed, back against the wall, waiting quietly for her return every day? Being present to her whenever she was there, even if that presence included no words at all for a really long time?

Perhaps that 15-year-old me could experience the presence of my 34-year-old self being present and a friend to her in a way she’d not yet experienced in her whole life. What might that be like? 

And I saw how the fierceness could, through that process, grow. 

Staring at that 15-year-old image of myself carries the potential to help me fall in love with her. To grow fierce and protective of her. To fight for her. To fight on her behalf.

This is self-compassion, I think. A willingness to be present to ourselves in friendship. A friendship that grows fierce.

Are there ways you might need to receive self-compassion in your own journey? Are there ways you practice self-compassion already in your life?

Beginning the Work Again :: On Visiting the Work and Taking Breathers

Still my adult self.

—

Note: There won’t be new posts at Still Forming next week while I’m away at a conference. (More on this below.)

I’m noticing the importance of treating “the work” as a part of my life I visit at times designated by me. And here’s why. 

If I sit inside it all the time, gnawing at it and working on these things like a dog working a bone, totally preoccupied with sucking the marrow out of its present obsession, not only would it suck me into a huge, black, emotional, scary hole, but it would also exhaust me, and it would additionally render impossible my ability to keep doing what I do with the rest of my adult life. 

Because I am an adult functioning in the world.

I’ve done a great degree of work to become the adult I am today, and the adult I am is real and still gets to show up for the majority of my waking hours. The adult I am has been given a vocation to write and teach and lead people in this space and on the Sunday Quiet and through spiritual direction. The adult I am is in a marriage of equals. The adult I am manages a household. The adult I am runs a freelance editing business. The adult I am takes care of her body. 

The adult I am gets to keep living life. She doesn’t get ignored or erased or swallowed up by “the work.”

But the work must continue, too, and not be banished or repressed.

And so I visit it. I go to therapy appointments, right now once a week. I share some of the things I’m learning in those appointments with Kirk when I’m ready. I share some of them with friends during times of connection. I created a journal just for processing things related to this season, and I visit that journal when things come up and need to come out. I keep tabs on my inner world, especially when watching movies or reading books or online content that cross over the same experiences I’m processing right now, so that I know when I need to make room for feeling my response. I go to spiritual direction. 

I give this work specific places to breathe and be fully welcome. And then I keep going about my business.

It’s like these words that Jan Richardson wrote as part of a Lenten retreat she recently offered, which a friend shared with me: 

There is a time for engaging our story: for contemplating it, praying with it, doing lectio with it. There is a time for talking about our story, telling it, weaving it and unweaving and weaving anew. There is a time for reflecting and remembering. 

And there is a time for rest. 

Particularly when we are working with painful threads of our story, it can grow exhausting to be perpetually present to those threads, to be in the thick and the tangle of them. Sometimes we need to relax our hold on the threads, to lay them down for a time and trust that the Spirit will still be at work in them, and in us. Even as we seek to be present to our story—to be aware and conscious and to know who we are and how we are part of a larger story, and to be engaged with God in the creating of our own story—there may be times we need a Sabbath from our story. 

Holy absence, my spiritual director calls it. 

Not ignoring our story. Not dismissing it. But letting ourselves rest in the knowledge that sometimes there is weaving that God does only when our attention is turned elsewhere—when we give ourselves time and Sabbath and place the threads into God’s hands rather than trying to handle them all ourselves.

There’s such wisdom in her words, isn’t there? 

Speaking of taking a rest, I’ll be taking one such rest next week while attending the SDI annual conference in St. Paul, Minnesota. I’ve been invited to the conference as a guest of SDI, having been named one of their 2013 New Contemplatives. It’s an honor, truly. 

As such, I won’t be posting in this series here next week. (I will, however, continue to host the Cup of Sunday Quiet, if you’d like to sign up to receive those weekly mailings.) I’m excited to give myself the time and opportunity to live inside the profession and training I’ve received over the course of these last many years. 

How might you allow yourself intentional places to visit your own “work” right now? How might you also give yourself room to rest in such a season?

Beginning the Work Again :: The Redemption of Pieces of Ourselves

Pieces of the heart.

—

One of the struggles I faced early on when it came to re-beginning “the work” was giving myself permission to even enter into it. 

It felt like entering into this new process would undo everything I’ve grown into over the course of many years. 

Because here’s the thing. 

When I look out over the scope of my spiritual formation, I see one long, circuitous journey ever building on itself. The first 19 years were the foundation stones of my belief. Then, at age 19, I broke open in a type of second conversion. This led to “sitting in the dark” for two straight years, questioning everything I thought I knew about myself and God and willfully asking God to teach me what love meant.

At the end of those two years, I encountered Jesus in a new way. This fundamentally changed me and ushered me into a couple more years spent getting to know this Jesus and letting myself be known by him. 

This led, very gradually but naturally, into a more tender heart for others. I began to long for others to know their worth and value in an intimate, real way, the same way I had come to learn my own. This opened my heart and life into informal means of ministry. 

After about five or six years of growing into this new and tenderized heart, I received — and then answered — a call to formal ministry, which led to enrolling in graduate studies for spiritual formation and a three-year training program for spiritual direction.

Then, through my graduate studies, I encountered the ideology of nonviolence. 

This gripped and changed my life, too.

Now I found my heart broadened from a love for those who are wounded to a love for those who do the wounding. I noticed a deep well of compassion building up in me for those who are victimizers, perpetrators, hardened, and even murderous.

I didn’t fully understand this growing love in me, but I knew it was important. It seemed the natural and eventual outflow of a life changed and gripped by Christ. I wondered how the love that had transformed me might also transform individuals we instinctively dismiss or repel as being too far gone. I wondered how the love that transformed me might perhaps transform society. 

In stepping into this new healing work, it felt like all of that evolution of growth in me was getting lost.

Because the truth of the matter is, I’m bumping up against violence here in this healing place — violence done against me — and I am nowhere near a nonviolent response to it.

I’m nowhere near forgiveness or peace. I’m nowhere near compassion for the one who harmed me. I’m nowhere near the rooted, peace-and-love proponent I’ve slowly yet steadily become in the last 15 years.

I’m in a reeling, scared, hurt, and angry place. 

Perhaps you can see why I’d be unwilling to give myself permission to enter into this new part of my story that emerged in that fateful session with my spiritual director last month. Perhaps you can see why I’d not want to touch it with a 10-foot-pole once I began to feel some of the feelings tied to it. 

Would this new journey erase those 15 years?

Was I not a real proponent of nonviolence if I couldn’t respond to this revelation with willing charity and forgiveness? 

These are the questions I’d begun asking myself, and this is where the wisdom of Debbie, my therapist, was a God-send.

“What if we thought of it this way?” she said when I met with her last week. “I think of our hearts having been fractured because of the Fall. They’re broken into pieces. And the work of redemption, or our spiritual formation, is the healing and restoration of those pieces to wholeness.”

As she said all this, I nodded vigorously. I believe this to be true.

She continued, “What if pieces of your heart — the pieces you’ve known all these years to be growing into love and a nonviolent response — are pieces that have been restored to wholeness, but this new part over here hasn’t? Could there be room for this new part to go through the process, too?”

Man, she’s wise. 

I guess what I want to say here is that if you’re scared to enter into the process, you’re not alone. I’m scared, too! Nor are you cuckoo for fearing you’ll lose whatever growth you’ve realized already in your life. I’m scared of this, too!

But also hear this, just as I am hearing it: That growth isn’t gone. You haven’t lost it. It’s not irrelevant, and it’s not erased. It really happened. It’s still real. It’s just that there’s another part — a newly discovered part — that needs to experience that same kind of growth. It needs to be given a chance to learn what the other parts of yourself have already learned. 

Is this helpful for you to hear? Can you relate to the fears I’ve been feeling at the outset of this process?

Beginning the Work Again :: A New Series

Fringes.

—

Hi, friends. 

I’m starting a new series here with a bit of fear and trembling, as it marks a decision to dive in deep and live out loud through a process of healing I’m currently living. 

I shared a few weeks ago that some as-yet-unrecognized truths surfaced in a session with my spiritual director last month. It’s wreaked a bit of havoc in my inner and outer world, and I’ve been taking intentional steps ever since to enter more deeply into those truths and surround myself with what I need to begin the difficult (and scary!) healing process. Thankfully, I have a really great support system in place that’s already helped me take several courageous steps forward and is helping me stay with this.

But here’s what I’ve noticed:

As I’ve been taking these steps, it feels so much like starting over. 

Truths I’ve learned and lived into for years now feel so far away. In certain parts of myself, I feel so much like that 19-year-old girl who first discovered she had a heart, she didn’t understand grace, and she’d been living inside some coping mechanisms that left a lot to be desired. 

When it comes to these new revelations and the work of integrating them into my life and story, I feel like I’m starting over. And I’ve been realizing that I need to teach this new and tender part of myself, step by step, the things I learned over the long-haul journey of growth and healing and new life that began for me at age 19. 

Then last night I realized: 

It might be helpful for me to form out loud through this process with you here. 

Perhaps you’ve been in this place of starting over, too — healing a fresh wound, or an old-but-feels-fresh one. Or perhaps you’re at the beginning of the journey and need some help even knowing where to start. 

In this series, I’m going to share with you my process as I’m walking through it. I’m also going to share things I learned when going through this circuitous journey the first time around. Hopefully you’ll find it helpful or encouraging in some way for your own experience. I know that, for me, it will be helpful to have a place to process the journey and “re-teach myself” things I need to re-learn.

Would you like to take this journey with me?

When Healing Leads to Washing His Feet With Oil and Tears

This post is part of the Holy Week 2013 series.

—

John’s gospel tells us that six days before the Passover that would signal the death of Jesus, he ate dinner at Lazarus’ house and that, while there, Mary took a flask of expensive oil and washed his feet with the oil and her hair (John 12:1-7). 

Judas said the oil was worth three hundred denarii. 

In Luke’s account of what happened, we learn that Mary “stood at his feet weeping” and then washed his feet with both the oil and her tears. We also learn she had been forgiven much by Jesus. Luke refers to “what manner of woman this is” and says she was known as “a sinner” (Luke 7:36-50). The people around him were astounded at her actions and wanted him to watch out for a woman of her caliber of sinfulness touching him.

And yet there he was, defending her.

And there she was, weeping at his feet. Wiping them with her tears and her hair. Pouring upon them some very costly oil. 

I think this happens when we experience profound love. At least, I know that’s the response I have. I can’t help but cry at the feet of Jesus for what I’ve received — and continue to receive — from him.

In my life, I’ve been through some intense seasons of pain followed, eventually, by the experience of being healed. Every single instance of healing happened in the presence of Jesus. It came through an encounter with his love, which is infinite. Patient. Full of embrace. There on the floor with us.

When we, in our deepest experiences of brokenness, are loved like that, we fall at his feet in worship. We feel utter amazement, awe, and thankfulness. We want to love him in return. He becomes the most beautiful vision we have ever known. 

And we want to give him everything. 

Even our tears. Even the most costly thing we have.

What I've Learned About Suffering

It’s been a long journey, hasn’t it? 

We embarked on the exploration of suffering on May 1, and I can hardly believe it lasted a month. Who knew the unsuspecting discovery of a poem would lead to such an intensive journey for us here? I hope it has been helpful for you.

As I mentioned yesterday, I know this month-long series has fallen far short of examining all there is to be found and learned about human suffering. I am still contemplating a personal writing exercise where I type out all that I want to say and explore about this subject — all that couldn’t fit on those pink plastic tasting spoons in this space each day — just for my own benefit.

Just to see what I see. 

In the meantime, I want to share a realization I’ve bumped up against over and over again throughout this journey: 

The turns in the suffering have so much to do with Jesus. 

At least for me, this has been true.

Every turn in my own experiences of suffering can be traced, like a single trail of red yarn, directly back to Jesus. What he taught me about myself. Ways he helped me see a bigger picture. Truths he helped me learn in place of lies. Love he showed to me in places of pain. 

So much of human suffering creates a monumental court case against God. How could he let these things happen? How could a good God permit so much pain? Did God make this happen, or just allow it? Why would he let that be? 

I have certainly been there. I’ve wrestled with the problem of pain and God’s responsibility in it a lot the last few years. Sometimes it feels like I bear a particular burden about these things, as I’ve chronicled a bit in another of my online spaces. 

But one thing I’ve noticed, at least for myself, is this:

Any healing and wholeness and strength I’ve ever found has come directly from Jesus. 

Whatever God’s role in the world’s suffering is, I know at least one thing to be true: Jesus heals me in my suffering. 

What have you learned about suffering?

A Turn in the Suffering :: When We Can Consider Forgiveness

It took me a really long time to get to forgiveness. 

I knew forgiveness was pretty important — Jesus makes that really clear in the Gospels. But I also had gone through enough of the process of learning my heart to know what was really in there. I couldn’t fool myself into believing I’d forgiven when I really hadn’t.

Besides, I knew that wasn’t what Jesus wanted, either. He’s the one who taught me the importance of the heart. He’s the one who helped me learn that our hearts are the key players in relationship with God.

I couldn’t just play lip service to forgiveness. Neither Jesus nor I would be fooled. 

So what do you do when you know forgiveness is important but you just aren’t there? 

You ask God to help you get there, and you be with the truth of the mess in the meantime. 

I’m serious. This is what I did. For years — literally, years — I consciously asked God to help me learn forgiveness. And then I would look at the reality of my heart and know that forgiveness wasn’t in there yet. I was still reeling. Still in shock. Still picking up the pieces of brokeness. Still learning what happened because of all that brokenness. 

Still learning what Jesus could do with all that brokenness, too. 

I read so many perspectives on forgiveness over the years, and none of them penetrated me.

Forgiveness is a choice, they said. It’s a choice you keep choosing and choosing and choosing each day. Or they said, Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting what happened or saying that it’s okay. It means wilfully choosing not to hold that against someone anymore. Or here’s another one: Unforgiveness is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the other person to die. 

These things may be true, but none of those declarations or platitudes meant anything to me. They just didn’t compute. And they annoyed me. 

What got me to forgiveness was being with the pain. Examining it. Learning from it. Figuring out how it had formed me. Allowing Jesus to take me on the long journey of reckoning. 

And then getting to a place where I saw new things. 

The thing that helped me the most with forgiveness was having been with Jesus through that long season of darkness and scratches at healing. That long season helped me realize Jesus could handle everything that had happened to me. Even more, he could bring me through it — teach me new things, make something new.

I became more identified with Jesus and what he was making of me and my life than with the broken circumstances that had brought me to him in the first place. 

That’s when I could finally consider forgiveness.

When I didn’t need to hold the wrongdoings so close to my chest anymore. When Jesus had given me something more.

A Turn in the Suffering :: When We Become Less Identified With the Circumstances

Do you know what it’s like to feel so identified with your suffering that you don’t know how to tell your story without it? 

I do. 

I know what it’s like to be so connected to all the ways I’ve been broken that I can’t see anything else anymore.

Living in the anger. Living in the sadness. Chafing against the injustices. 

You feel like your suffering defines you. It’s the only identity you have.

I also know what it’s like to come out on the other side. It feels like slowly waking up, or watching the misty fog clear before your eyes.

Suddenly, there’s more to see.

For me, each time this has happened, it has been akin to realizing God was able to handle all that happened to me. It didn’t surprise him or faze him. He let me come to him with it and said, “Yes. It’s true. I know.” And then he sat down beside me or walked next to me in the aftermath, attending to the process of carving out a new identity, showing how these things would be connected to bigger pictures. 

I became less identified with what had happened and more identified with what God could, would, and was already doing with it. 

It makes for a pretty monumental shift.

I’ve experienced a shift like this a few different times in my life, and each time it has felt like a huge boulder being removed from around my neck, and the connecting rope along with it. Instead of being submerged at the bottom of the ocean anymore by the weight of it, I found that I could stand upright in the water, my feet sure on the sandbar beneath me, feeling the cool water and its buoyancy against my skin, surveying the waves and the horizon and the light … free, now, to play.