Unravelling Space

January 12, 2018

Unravelling Striving: Routine

Today marks the first real Friday of January. Why do I say “real” Friday? Well, I don’t know about you, but for our family Christmas vacation was a wonderful escape from our normal realities and a much needed break from all obligations other than spending time together. On Monday the boys headed back to school and we all re-engaged with normal life and, therefore, in my mind, it is the first real Friday of January.

And since it is the first real Friday of January, I am here. Because this is something I have committed to do. Listen and process and sit and write and enjoy and experience God through this discipline I am leaning into. (To read more about how I came to this decision you can check out my first couple blog posts over in the Archives of November 2017.)

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Before Christmas, I was living la vida loca. No, not the Ricky Martin kind, the kind which I’m sure we’ve all experienced at one time or another where things are so entirely busy that we are holding on for dear life and doing whatever we can to avoid a head on collision with a million little and big obstacles that pop up every day. I hate that life because it is super stressful and, as it turns out, those little obstacles are often the people in my life who I normally love and care for.

So I was living la vida loca and holding on just praying that I could I survive until Christmas break when I knew I would finally have a breather. And by God’s grace we all made it to Christmas break and had some wonderful days of family-focused time: play and rest and connection. But as we rounded the corner to the last week of Christmas vacay I started to kind of freak out about returning to “normal” life. How would I return to normal life without getting sucked, again, into the vortex of crazy? How could I organize and arrange and micromanage in order to do everything I needed to do while still maintaining enough time to pursue health and wellness and rest? They sound like good goals, and they probably are, but here is where God began to do a bit of unravelling in my heart. (To read more about this idea of unravelling, check out my home page.)

God began showing me about how my desire for routine as I entered a new year, no matter how noble the desire seemed, was really a desire to take control of something that felt out of control. When I have this desire to control I have two options. The road most often travelled, let’s be honest, is that of striving and living out of my own strength (or rather, weakness). The less travelled road is the road of surrender and trust. Surrender to God, to my limitations, to my lack of control – which was only every perceived control in the first place. Trust in the God who is in control and is working everything out in a grand conspiracy of love.

Striving. It’s one of those graveclothes. Something that, in the already/not yet of sanctification, God is gently and persistently untangling from my new life in Him.

So, my question back to God? How do I create healthy rhythms in a way that does not feed into the need for control and all the striving of an un-surrendered life? The word that came to mind: liturgy. Now, for those of you who come from the more liturgical traditions of the Christian faith, I’m not talking liturgy in the “work of the people” sense of corporate worship. I’m referring to the “customary repertoire of ideas, phrases, or observances” sense of the word. Perhaps living a liturgical life and routined life look a lot alike from the outside, but let me tell you the difference that I felt in my spirit as God gave me that word. It is all about where my attention and focus lie. In the routined life I was seeking, I was in control or striving for control – the focus was me. In the liturgical life I felt God calling me to the rhythms and routines of life were a tool for handing over control and continually drawing my gaze away from me and onto Him. It is about living life in a way that draws my attention and affection and worship back to Him. Because I long to live in dependence on Him. I long to live the abiding life that Jesus talked about in John 15, a life of remaining and intimacy and power and fruitfulness. None of that happens very well when I am in control and striving for it.

You might be wondering what this looks like for me now. I’ll share, but don’t think I’m any kind of expert. Okay? Primarily this looks like a morning liturgy and a bed-time liturgy.

Both of these time periods are no-phone times because it usually only distracts and steals my time and attention. This includes putting my phone into do-not-disturb mode. I have already noticed a decrease in the mindless scrolling even throughout the day when I am not specifically going phone-free.

Both of these time periods include focused time of connecting with God though prayer or reading my Bible, or both. I’m currently working on a 90-day challenge (wanna join me?) because it has been a long time since I read straight through the Bible and I usually get bogged down somewhere around the later half of Exodus when I try the Bible in one year plans out there. In prayer I want to listen as much as I talk and occasionally journal or draw as the Holy Spirit speaks to me.

Other than that I also have a couple of alarms set throughout the day to remind me to turn my focus to God in whatever I am doing at the time and I am observing a weekly sabbath on Fridays. Sabbath for me means a day of rest – disengaging from the rush and finding ways to delight (thus writing on Fridays). This practice, as old as creation, is another way to turn my attention to God, remembering that He is the one that holds the world together, not me, and simply enjoying Him and life and community.

What I have found so far is that these practices have been turning my attentions and my affections to God. And when my heart wanders, each time I engage in these liturgies is a chance to return once again to Father. I’ve also noticed a bit of a trickle down effect into other areas of discipline in my life, healthy habits that have often eluded me: namely, going to bed on time and exercising. Because I have my bed-time liturgy, I am in bed without scrolling through Facebook and I am sleeping better. Sleeping better makes it a wee bit easier to get up early in the morning, which gives me time to exercise so that I can be alert and less sleepy while I engage in my morning liturgy.

It is by no means all going perfectly. But that’s not what this is about anyway. Because 2018 is about intimacy and abiding, not perfectionism and striving.

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How about you? Is your control-freak showing as we begin 2018 with all sorts of resolutions? How are you intentionally turning your attention to God?

November 27, 2017

Avoidance ≠Holiness

I like writing. I like the precision of expressing my thoughts in carefully chosen words, how I can weigh words and choose the ones I mean the most in a given moment. Writing in the past has also been a kind of spiritual discipline for me, giving me pause to reflect, gather my thoughts and put form to how God has been speaking to me. But…I’m terrible at journalling, so the accountability of a weekly blog post is appealing.

So I admit it, there is something entirely self-indulgent about this discipline I hope to cultivate, because it is absolutely about my desire to be present to God in my life, to record how He is moving in and around me, and to enjoy and foster one of my only creative outlets. So although I am convinced that being vulnerable with our process of becoming more like Christ is essential to Christian community, and although my hope is that we can create a little of that here in this Unravelling Space, there is an aspect in which I am writing for me. If anyone else reads it and finds something of value in it, well that’s just gravy.

On the other hand, putting pen to paper and publishing thought in word on the internet for all eternity is not a super easy way to avoid my shadow self and the old nature wrapped up in those graveclothes. So I really wrestled with starting a blog, for a long time, wondering if the struggle would be worth it. As I said in my last blog post:

I know my own tendency towards self-promotion, my desire to be seen in a good light, the thirst for influence and approval, as well as the sometimes crushing reactions to criticism and disapproval.

A good way to avoid both of those things is to avoid situations in which you risk experiencing them. If I don’t write, I won’t have to worry about feeding or starving my false identity which places my worth in the approval of others.

But as I prayed about it, God spoke to me about His grace. He reminded me that pretending the graveclothes aren’t there or covering them up with fanciness does not mean they disappear. He encouraged me that if I want to unravel these bits of death that still cling, I need deal with them and not just avoid them. Because I can seem holy when I avoid my triggers, but the truth is, avoidance does not equal holiness. If I want to truly deal with these things in my life, I need to stop avoiding and start stepping out and rehearsing the truth that my identity is found in Christ, and in God’s grace choosing His approval as more important. I need to practice stepping into His grace and wielding the armour He has given to defeat my foe and take back what the enemy has stolen. He reminded me that I will fail, because despite my best efforts I am not perfect; I will mistakenly place my identity in the approval or disapproval of others, and He assured me that His grace is already there, waiting for me in those moments too.

I realize that when I say that avoidance does not equal holiness, some may hear me saying that an alcoholic needs to prove their holiness by hanging out in a bar without taking a drink, or that we ought to purposefully put ourselves in situations of temptation in order to prove that we have overcome a particular struggle in our lives. That is not what I’m trying saying. What I am saying is that, in my case, avoidance came from a fear of imperfection, which comes with its own sense of bondage. Breaking free from that requires stepping out past my own ability to obtain holiness and falling flat into God’s grace.

So here I go, exposing some of that perfectionism and that false identity that places my worth in the approval of others. I’m ready to get a little more untangled from these burdensome things.

November 9, 2017November 10, 2017

The messiness of online platforms…

I look through my Facebook feed and it seems like everyone and their dog is starting a blog or a podcast or creating some kind of online platform. Have we all reached our 30s and finally feel like we have something share or fear that we haven’t impacted our world as we had hoped? Why would I add to the clamour?

Don’t get me wrong – I really appreciate much of the things that my friends are sharing. I’ve been inspired by the journeys they find themselves on and their willingness to share what they are learning on the way. Yet, on the other hand there seems to be quite a lot in the world of online platforms that just seems narcissistic and self-indulgent: I’ll write or talk about me and my opinions and you should enjoy reading me or listening to me talking about me so much that you like, follow and subscribe!

And If I’m being honest, I’m am aware of the parts of me that would lean towards narcissistic and self-indulgent. And throwing myself into this world, makes me nervous about that. I know my own tendency towards self-promotion, my desire to be seen in a good light, the thirst for influence and approval, as well as the sometimes crushing reactions to criticism and disapproval. These are some of the graveclothes I’m working on unravelling from my life, but a few of those pieces are quite long and I’m fairly certain I’ll find I’m pretty tangled up in spots.

So how do I find myself here, despite all that, starting a blog? Well… I’ll unravel that in future posts