I’ve been reading a fascinating book at the encouragement of a friend. It’s called “Theology of the Body for Beginners“* Very cool. One of the lessons which struck me was the one on gift vs. grasp. It’s our current social epidemic.

In the Garden God had many gifts for Adam and Eve. Instead of trusting Him and waiting for Him to gift them with the things they needed, they decided to grasp for what they wanted – because of the fear that Satan planted in their hearts about God selling them short – and chaos ensued for all of us.

Before we judge them over-harshly, let’s look at our own lives. How often do we go get something on a credit card instead of waiting for God to give it to us in His perfect timing in His perfect way? I sense the panic rising in me when something I really want is on sale and I don’t have the cash in hand or in the bank to purchase it. I rush ahead of God and slap it on my Visa.

But it’s not just in finance. It’s in many areas: I want super fast healing, I want instantaneous success, I want perfect children and a perfect husband – now!

God has many gifts for me, and if I can manage to keep my eyes on Him instead of keeping my eyes on what I perceive to be my need I think I’d find many more miracles, many more opportunites to bless and be blessed by others, many more moments of deep and awesome intimacy with my God.

It’s all about patience and trust. I have very little of both. How about you?

Darlene

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As a social media manager I spend a lot of time researching the trends in today’s marketing. The interesting thing is that we’re moving from marketing that “shouts” to marketing that “engages”. People want to do business with people who know how to connect with them, hear what they have to say, and then respond.

Interestingly enough, as I continue on my journey of “Free Living” and non-religious Christianity, I keep coming up against the same message. People are not looking for behaviour modification. They’re not looking for rules. They’re not looking for systems. They’re looking for relationship. They want relationships with each other, and a relationship with God.

This is easier said than done. After 50 years in the church I can tell you all about the rules. I am, however, clueless about the relationship. I’ve even realized that many of the human relationships I built in that system aren’t really “real” relationships either – they disappeared when I left. So, the search begins.

How do you “get intimate” with a God you can’t see with your eyes, or feel with your hands? In my current journey, I’m finding that this is a huge question. I’m finding some success by just trying to open my spirit to God’s spirit and listening for His promptings. Sometimes this works. I let God wake me in the night for prayer. I listen to great podcasts as I walk.

In most of my religious church upbringing I was always afraid of doing something wrong. I was always striving to do enough. I worked myself into burnout with no visible benefits. Now I’m realizing that – just as with my “real” relationships with family and friends – I’m not as concerned about behaviour as I am about heart direction. We all make mistakes, and that never changes how I feel about my friends and my family. I “get” their hearts, and know where they’re coming from. It’s the same with God. If I can stop worrying about measuring up to some invisible standard, and just focus on being myself and letting Him reveal who He is, things work a little better. It’s about relationship, not rules, and while that’s much more difficult to define, it is so much more freeing to live!

And isn’t it true that in this modern age of hyper communication, what we’re all seeking is just a little more honest intimacy with real people?

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I believe strongly that victory is won or lost in the brain. All day long there’s a kind of “chatter going on inside our heads. That chatter is either confirming who we are in Christ, who we are as our best selves, or it’s going against it. Most people I know have chatter that is constantly condemning, rebuking, or criticizing either ourselves and/or others. Negative, black self-talk that is like a black sludge drawing us deeper and deeper into despair. It doesn’t allow us to live a life of victory or joy, and because of it, most of us never truly live out our potential.

Do you hear yourself every saying to yourself “Great. You screwed up again”, or “I will NEVER get this right”, or “I’m such an idiot”? Those kinds of phrases end up being agreements with Satan, and they give him an every greater foothold in our lives. We need to combat these kinds of thoughts, but you know already from experience that trying to tell yourself something different when you don’t quite believe it (like “I am powerful, successful and wealthy) only seems to confirm what we’re not.

I believe there is a much more powerful way to change our thought patterns – replace them with a focus on Christ – not necessarily by combating them with the word of God when they arise – i.e. you are angry so you quote Ephesians 4:26 over and over again, hoping you’ll calm down – but you often don’t.

I think there’s a better way – just simply fill your mind with good stuff so there isn’t room for negative self-talk. This will slowly allow us to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds”

We’ve talked before about the habit of attaching prayer to various activities. There is such a wealth of deep prayer circulating in Christian literature, that it’s not hard to find one that does exactly the right thing.

In our N.A.V.Y adventures a couple of weeks ago I suggested that as you drink your daily lemon tea (2x/day) you pray the wonderful prayer from Sarah Young: “Jesus, open my eyes that I might see you everywhere”. Here’s another of my favourite prayers that I like to use throughout the day (it’s a version of the “Anima Chrsiti”)

“Jesus, may all that is you flow into me.
May your body and blood be my food and drink.
May your passion and death be my strength and life.
Jesus, with you by my side enough has been given.
May the shelter I seek be the shadow of your cross.
Let me not run from the love which you offer,
but hold me safe from the forces of evil.
On each of my dyings shed your light and your love.
Keep calling to me until that day comes,
when, with your saints, I may praise you forever. Amen.”

Try memorizing that beautiful prayer, and then reciting it to yourself throughout the day either at specific times, with specific activities, or simply as you think of it. It will go a long way to cleaning up the sludge of negative back talk!

This post is part of our ongoing “N.A.V.Y. Challenge” on Facebook. Why not pop over and take a look? If you like what you see, join us, and invite your friends along as well! We’d love to have you!

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So it’s been a long journey from religious habit to heart-relationship with God. We’re certainly not at our final destination yet, but I imagine that will only happen when I’m no longer here on planet earth!

But good things are happening. I find myself now able to turn to God more naturally, in conversation. I am starting to hunger for His word, and I’m listening to the Bible as I sleep (with my funky new SleepPhones!) I’ve also been reading a daily devotional most mornings called “Joy and Strength” which I love. It’s not the frothy, superficial “cup of coffee for a woman’s soul” kind of devotional. It has real meat in it. For example, this is what I read the other day:

“As soon as I woke in the morning I threw myself into the arms of Divine Love as a child does into its father’s arms. I rose to serve Him, and to perform my daily labor simply that I might please Him. If I had time for prayer, I fell on my knees in His divine presence, consecrated myself to Him, and begged Him that He would accomplish His holy will perfectly in me, and through me, and that He would not permit me to offend Him in the least thing all through the day,. I occupied myself with Him and His praise as long as my duties permitted. Very often, I had not leisure to say even so much as the Lord’s Prayer during the day, but that did not trouble me. I thought it as much my duty to work for Him as to pray to Him, for He, Himself had taught me, that all that I should do for love of Him would be a true prayer. I loved Him and rejoiced in Him. If my occupations required all my attention, I had nevertheless my heart turned towards Him; and, as soon as they were finished, I ran to Him again, as to my dearest Friend. When evening came, and every one went to rest, I found mine only in the Divine Love, and fell asleep, still loving and adoring Him.” (Armelle Nicolas)

Ahhh. This is what my heart longs for, and this is what my stone heart is beginning to experience. Just a small beginning, but a beginning, nonetheless!

Strange. As we enter the dark, dormant Winter season, my heart is celebrating Spring!

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My own ethnic heritage is Welsh/English. My maternal Grandparents were immigrants from Wales, met here in Canada, married, and raised their family here.   My paternal Grandparents were from the Birmingham area in England and came to Canada several generations ago.

I never thought much about my heritage until I married my Belfast boy.  I became fascinated with the whole Celtic heritage that I’d inherited through my ancestors, and again through marriage and started to explore it a little.

Fascinating stories of old saints and amazing hardships.

The part that really appealed to me is their Christian heritage.  St Patrick – who hailed from Britain – was captured as a slave when he was a young boy.  He escaped, became a Christian, and returned to Ireland as a Bishop, and is almost single-handedly credited with converting them to the Christian faith.  He was beloved by all, and became Ireland’s patron saint.

In exploring Celtic faith and Christianity I discovered something that became really meaningful to me.  As the “Spiritual Directions” site states,

Every aspect of Celtic life was approached as an opportunity for union with the divine….their entire day was entwined with prayer. No part of life was too ordinary, mundane or routine for the Holy One to be present in it. The Celts had blessings for everything from house to hearth, animals and land, birth and death, waking and sleeping and travel.

I think this is wonderful!  My contemplative heart loves the idea of having every day bathed in prayer.  Yes, you can make it a chore and a mundane, thoughtless habit, or you can use it as a way to constantly connect to God.

I grew up in a very traditional Baptist church – choir robes, pipe organ, “Holy, Holy, Holy” and the whole nine yards.  It was a great church with loving, caring  people, but my young heart desired something much richer and deeper.  Because of that, I was always drawn to the Catholic Church with its pomp and circumstance, its icons, robes, incense and ceremony.  Being a Baptist, I struggled with their doctrine, but I loved their worship.

This longing has created quite a bit of confusion in my heart.  There was a time – not that long ago – when the desire to live as a nun in a convent spending my day in prayer was a tangible, living  thing in my soul.  Being married to a staunch Northern Irish presbyterian made that somewhat awkward although my husband is such a great man, he gave me freedom to explore.

When this whole journey reached a critical pitch, I was able to see that my longing was not for the Catholic Church, or for a particular form of worship, but it was more for a relationship with  God that allowed free expression of emotion, quiet times of togetherness, and deep intimacy.  For some reason the Catholic system embodied that for me.

When I looked deeper into the Celtic traditions, I realized I could take that longing and make it part of my everyday by using simple prayers as a tool to remind myself to simply connect and enter in.

When I hit my “religious crisis” that I’ve posted about recently, I put all of that aside, but it’s now calling to me from a healthier place.  I want any tool I can get to reach out to God regularly, so I’m slowly bringing those prayers back in to my everyday life.  I am slowly attaching prayer to mundane activities like drinking my water, washing my dishes, waking up in the morning and going to bed at night.  Mostly I use memorized prayers as a tool to enter in, and then I let the relationship take over.

I’m back to taking baby steps here, but as long as I’m moving forward, I’m in a good and happy place!

What do you think?  How do you connect with God in your day?  How do you live out a meaningful spirituality?  Post in the comments below!

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Want a great movie for your next movie night?  Try Julie and Julia.  Here are two women, feeling a little lost, and finding their way ahead through food.  Brilliantly done, deliciously filmed, funny, a little sad, challenging, triumphant.  It’s about love, life, discovering, and mattering.

Mattering.  That”s a big theme for me these days.

A few weeks back I wrote a post about validation.  It still holds very true.  To realize that you’ve pushed, strived, driven, given, and sweated blood for things that were important to you to find that really, in the end, it was “vanity, vanity“.

As I work through my journey to un-box my life, I find myself feeling that same kind of lostness the the women in this film went through.  I have tried to fill that void with different attempts to reach out and help people, but in the end, I’m not really good at intimacy or at friendship.  In fact, I’m not really good a caring about something over a long period of time.  I suffer not only from regular ADD, but “compassionate ADD” as well.

I’m trying to figure out how to move forward.  With no religious structure, no real business structure (yet, though I pray that’s coming) no real daily structure -in fact, very little structure at all, I find myself feeling a bit like jello that hasn’t quite set.  I feel like I need a project to define me.

The truth is, I need to be defined by who I was created to be.  For that, I need to understand the heart of my Creator as it applies to me, and yet that Creator is so firmly bound with religious ties, that I find it hard to know him without that structure – and with that structure He isn’t real either.

Not sure how to move forward.

Perhaps I should take up cooking…

Darlene

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Way back in the 80′s Amy Grant wrote a song called “I’m Gonna Fly”  I loved that song – it touched my heart somehow, and has sort of become my anthem.  Sometimes it’s gotten lost in the detritus of life, but it always re-emerges.  Take a listen:

Now, if you’ve been reading my blog even sporadically, you have to know that I’m a passionate reader.  Probably the understatement of the century!  :D  Anyway, I’m currently reading (among other books) Walking in the Will of God: Discovering the Grace and Freedom of His Plan for You where Steve McVey basically says “If you’re serious about following God, and there’s a passion in your heart to do something, do it”  and (thankfully) it doesn’t always mean some kind of missionary/charity project.  Basically, if something makes you fire on all cylinders, and you are serious about following God, you can generally assume that that passion comes from God – even if it’s for something like flying planes, or painting, or whatever, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be “Christianed up” to be acceptable.

Shortly after writing last Friday’s post I was poking through some book titles to add to my iPod Kindle app (as if I actually needed new books to read!) and came across the updated version of  Tim Ferriss’  The 4-Hour Workweek.  I had eagerly and enthusiastically devoured the first version, and decided to read the expanded version, but this time, instead of just reading it, I was going to do each exercise in the book, and create that life.  Tom and I have known for a long time now that we’re not designed to live ordinary lives.  We’ve tried hard to fit in anyway, and it’s just not working.

So here goes something new.  In addition to letting go of the ritual of church life and  the duties of spiritual disciplines (having already released the family from the stranglehold of standard education!) I am now finally going to throw off the restraints of any remaining normalcy in my life (there’s truly very little left, LOL!) and I’m going to learn to live life in a way that makes me fly – literally and figuratively.

Just in case there’s anyone out there who’s interested in following along, I’m going to be posting about that life and the journey it takes me on, here on this blog on Fridays, so you can peek in and see how it works in real life.  If you have always wanted to try letting go and living a truly free life, let me encourage you to grab a copy of the book and follow along.  As I type this, I’m just starting the exercises at the end of Chapter 4, so set aside some time to read, and catch up to me.  I’ll update you on the results of those exercises next week.

Woohoo!  Yes, baby, I’m Gonna Fly!!!

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Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about who I really am. I’ve spent my whole life trying to be “seen” as if I was afraid of being nobody if I weren’t seen in a big way by somebody. Many of the truly poor decisions of my life have been made as a result of my need to be recognized, affirmed, and validated.

My platform for most of my life has been the church – or some branch of the church – and I have lived a pretty “visible” life as a teacher, leader, mentor, facilitator, and musician. As I’ve been working through the results of my “religion-free” lifestyle, and letting go of all the “tasks” that involves, I’ve been coming to terms with this huge fear that if I’m not on stage leading/teaching something, not advising someone where they’re struggling, not creating something that will outlast me, I will disappear into the shadows of existence, and my life will have counted for nothing. Don’t get me wrong – I have a wonderful family that supports me, puts up with my foibles, and enables me to understand what it is to be loved, but there’s a deep, visceral need inside me to be validated by a much larger audience.

The crazy thing is that as I’ve released all those things that have always made me somebody – all the platform stuff, the leadership stuff, the helping hand stuff – no one’s really even noticed that I’ve left the room. With that knowledge, I must come to terms with the fact that all the striving, trying, struggling, driving, pushing and forcing that I’ve done have amounted to nothing. In the end, there’s just me and Jesus. The truly frightening thing about that, is that after 50 years in the church, I’m not even sure what that means. I have lived my whole faith-life as a ritual and duty, not as a relationship. 50 years of bad habits and wrong thinking is hard to overcome.

In the silence of my current obscurity I find my biggest battle is that constant attempt to validate myself. Finding ways to prove to myself that I am worthy, that I am important, that I do count. However, all the things I do to create that validation in my life are as ashes. The Bible does say that, but this is the first time in my life that there’s enough silence to hear it.

So here I am, me and Jesus, and there’s a lot of awkward silence in the room. I’m not quite sure how to start the conversation, so I think I’ll just sit here a while and see what happens.

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Those of you who have been tracking with this blog know that our family is walking through some challenging times with regards to our faith.  If you want to see the rest of the conversation, you can read these posts in this order:

1. Living Free – Doing Life Differently
2. He Loves Me!
3. In His Steps

This morning I was listening to anotther of the podcasts from “The God Journey” called “Openly, Honestly, Freely” and I want to quote something Brad said that was transformational for me:

“God came into the world as a little baby, and then took the time to grow up. And the world was all going wrong, and things needed to be fixed, and God was living normal, everyday life, in one locale. I’ve never heard one single sermon validating that that’s beautiful, and part of God’s plan”

I found that so freeing – it encourages me to not panic about what’s going on around me, but to continue to try and tune in to what God is wanting me to do right now. Sometimes, the most important thing in my day is going to be cooking a nutritious dinner for my family. Other times, He may call me to change the world. I will never miss an opportunity if I’m walking with him. By striving, pushing, driving, and living out of guilt and struggle, I will miss MANY opportunities that God has set up for me.

We’re still in a bit of a lost place, and Tom’s business is going through a rough place, as well, so we really are in a situation where we must rely on God.  And I’m peaceful.  I’m working to fulfill what I know is my responsibility, and giving up what I know has to be His.

I trust that will be a much better scenario than my usual one of having to have control over everything.

I have loved walking to these podcasts.  I’ve listened to a year’s worth over the past few months, and they are feeding my soul in deep places.  Makes it worth facing the nasty weather we’ve been having!

Happy Walking!

Darlene

PS – Friday is my birthday, and I have a gift for all of you reading my blog.  Stop by Friday morning, and check it out!

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Tom and I are continuing our journey in learning to “Live Free”.  It’s been challenging, scary, tearful, and exhausting, but we’ve also seen where it’s going to bring freedom and truth to our faith.

I remember when I first started homeschooling, I wondered if I was “qualified” enough to do it. I had partial teacher training (I quit as soon as I realized someone was going to die in that grade one classroom with 47 children…) but I was assured that if I could teach my kids to walk and talk, I could teach them to read and write.

Later, I got all the questions about “socialization”, and after researching I discovered that kids who are well-socialized within their families are better socialized than kids who are socialized in a classroom of 30 unsocialized kids with one poor teacher trying to train them all how to behave and interact, all by herself/himself.

Next, I let go of formalized curriculum, and let the kids have free reign to pursue their passions. Through that my kids have taught themselves reading, writing and math, with very little interference from their mother, and they are both in the process of setting up their first business.

My Christian walk seems to be taking a similar path.

Through reading the book “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore“  Tom and I, after much prayer, and careful thought, are stepping back from organized church, to pursue God’s heart on our own for a while.  The first reaction was, “But how will you stay ‘true’? How will you keep from backsliding?”  The truth is, our hearts are desperate for a deeper experience of Jesus.  I believe HE is big enough and true enough and faithful enough to keep us straight.

Then came the question of fellowship.  The truth is my best fellowship moments happen outside of church.  I’m usually too busy at the actual church to fellowship with people – or they are too busy to fellowship with me.  Just because I’m not attending service doesn’t mean I can’t have coffee.

Thirdly is the question of growth – can I do that on my own?  Yes.  Between God and my friends, I can walk forward in confidence.  On my weekend away with Tom we were walking along a hiking path by a waterfall.  It was a little treacherous and slippery, but I found that if I placed my feet directly in Tom’s footprints, I was OK.  God showed me then that this is how He wants me to walk with Him.  Just look for His leading, and walk that path behind Him, knowing He has prepared the way.   Instead of having everything filtered through experts, I’m going to listen to God myself, seek His heart, and place my feet directly in his footprints.  Not having so much church “activity” also means I’m free to pursue people who can help me move forward where I am, and whom I can help where they are, instead of being on the pastor’s schedule for what he’s being led to teach the whole church, which, lately, is not where I am in my own walk.

This weekend I led worship for the last time in what might be a very long time.  I was so blessed by God through it that I was in tears afterwards.  Deep, deep reassurance that He was delighted in my choice, and anxious to take me further.  It will be hard to let go – I have a great church – but the call to freedom is so loud in my ears that I am having trouble hearing anything else.

Darlene

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