SFDs

 According to Brene Brown, an SFD is the story you tell yourself before you rumble through it enough to get to the edit. Like Hemingway says, write drunk. Edit sober. 

Tend first to your suffering. Your emotions hold wisdom. What are they trying to teach you? In stillness, pause and ask your heart, "What is the fear? Where is the breach of trust? In what way has fear changed me? What's the echo of fear resonating in my heart chamber at this very moment?”

If you can handle the answer without beating yourself up, you'll see it for what it is, a sh*tty first draft, and you'll remember that fear is an illusion. The panic, the torture, the torment, the anxiety you feel are all incongruent with Love. Therefore your thoughts at the moment can't be aligned with Love, so pause. Breathe and allow love to speak. In the pause, listen for how to direct your energies most effectively for a self-edit of your stormy first draft, which is inner change. 

When the truth of your being communes with Love, there you'll find the reckoning. Grace and truth are realized in Jesus. Just follow it through. Don't stop at the SFD. And stop bringing out the lash to crucify yourself every time you have an SFD. We all do it, but the alchemy happens when we acknowledge those voices, the fear, the emotions, the pain and wrestle through the story they are attempting to weave. 

Feel all of that intensity and then pause, listen to Love's voice, receive Love's truth and say yes to it. Give your heart room to take it all in. Learn how to tango through the web of the SFD into the resonance of love that breeds confidence for your heart. There's the resting place. Sometimes rest takes a little bit of hard work. That's the joy of both/and. No dualism or extremes there. Just remember to be kind and patient with yourself in this space. As Jen Hatmaker said, "We don't need to hustle through our story."

A Prayer of Creativity

 Father God, you are the Master Artist. 

With strokes of love, you painted the world and all therein. 

Everything came into being through Jesus and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 

Together, the Trinity danced upon the deep and created the world. 

May we look upon ourselves with kindness and respect for your creative genius. 

May we look upon humanity with awe and reverence as we admire your artistry. 

May we endeavor to pick up our paintbrushes and join you on the canvas of life to paint harmony where there is tension, unity where there is discord, peace where there is turmoil, love where there is fear. 

May each stroke connect our hearts to You and to one another. 

Amen.

Tools Perform. People Commune.

 God has always loved...the Son, you, me, the world, creation. The whole of our existence is based on relationship. And yet, somehow along the way, consciously or unconsciously, we began to exalt consumption and transaction above relationship. This is so evident in our obsession with God "using" someone and our willingness to be "used" by God. God, who delights in you, has no desire to use you. 

God, who is wholly relational, submits in love and defers to us. He delights in participating in our lives with us. He loves it when our eyes are opened to the truth of union that He is not a far off God on a far away throne, that He is in us, with us, alongside us and the joy of living relationally with Him is that we get to receive from Him and He gets to receive from us. And the more we are convinced of His love, the more of ourselves we freely give and entrust to Him. It's a dance, not a transaction. 

We are His people, His dearly loved ones not His tools. This wrong belief is why we so easily and freely use people for their giftings and calling. We attempt to drain every bit of life from them in the name of ...something. This is a false image of God and it causes us to devalue people. His respect, love, honor, value and delight for you as His own is too great for you to reduce yourself or to allow yourself to be reduced to a tool. You can't have a relationship with a tool. 

Tools perform. People commune.

Honor Your Path

 Even the idea of deconstruction is seeing faith from a scarcity mindset. The energy it takes to sustained continued resistance feeds that which we wish to avoid. If I dig my feet in the ground and push my hands out to resist, I end up stagnant while life keeps hurling at a constant pace toward me.

When I alter my perspective and begin and end with abundance, I can honor the Divine Image in myself and in others and allow my faith to evolve while admitting I’ve been slimed by gobs of paint ill fitting of a masterpiece (bad theology, wrong interpretations, un-Christlike behavior, crazy worship songs based on ungodly beliefs and painful lived experiences, unloving/unhealthy spiritual practices, church leaders with character defects, etc.). 

And with that acknowledgment and open hands, I can surrender to the alchemical process, which transforms that which is no longer working or necessary allowing me to receive that which is,  the truth of my essence that has always been true. 

Underneath the pile of wronged experiences and bad teaching lies a masterpiece worthy of restoration, you. You, created in the Divine Image. You, the essence of Love and Light that has always been the very good of all creation. You, whose being resonates with Truth. 

You are a masterpiece. Recognize the ways in which systems, cultural norms, labels, the opinions of others, and the hells of life have heaped gobs of paint on you. You can detach from that which is not healthy or good by simply opening yours hands in surrender, opening your hands to receive. You don’t have to begin transformation from the mindset of scarcity - “I lack something; something was withheld from me; I was lied to” or any other negative.

Honor the trajectory of your lived experienced. You’re here now. Deep breath, it’s just another opportunity to grow. Be kind and generous to yourself. It’s okay to evolve.

Dear Mommas

 Sitting at the gas pump at Sam’s Club, I watch the angry momma, the sullen child. Hear their angry words rise unbidden through the air. My insides twist. I remember being the child...and then, painfully, I remember being the momma. And I write:

For all the days I fussed at my kids 

I’m sorry

For all the times I didn’t remove the scowl from my brow when I looked at you

I’m sorry

For every time I embarrassed you in front of your friends 

I’m sorry

Sometimes the pain leaks

And we don’t know what to do with it

Aren’t equipped to hide it

Or heal it 

All we know to do is transmit it

Unaware of the damage it causes

The distance it creates 

We perpetuate disconnection 

Participating with disillusionment

For the ways I failed to heal you

I’m sorry

For the ways my anger and violence created your brokenness

I’m sorry

If only doesn’t change the past

But I pray acknowledgement of my wrong will be the release you need to heal

To be

For every momma in pain

Your kids see your eyes

They hear your scold

It feels like hate

It makes them question their existence

It sends them running to alternative forms of affirmation and approval

It’s the seedbed of doubt

Heal, Mommas

Love, Mommas

Be honest about your pain, your past, and your wrongs, Mommas

And most of all, Mommas, ask forgiveness for the ways in which we’ve been complicit in fracturing our young

And then return

Return to Love

Return with Love 

Return with an Olive Branch

Return armed with Forgiveness

No more harsh words

Hard brows

Back slaps and Do that’s

Return with Love

And offer the gift of your whole healed self

Is God Enough?

Christa Black Gifford‘s words, “You have no emptiness in you, for you are filled with God. Which also means, you are already filled with everything you could ever need,” evokes a memory of a conversation some years back that left a deep impression on my soul. It was a convo with a dear friend about something they were desiring, a longing they continuously put before God. And in our conversation, I asked, “Is God enough? If that thing never happened, would God be enough?” And my friend told me, “No.” Then the friend told me that as a minister of the gospel, I should never ever ask someone is God enough and not to repeat the question again. I admit, the rebuke sliced me to the core. I had been careless with my friend’s longings, their unfulfilled desires, hope deferred and in my naïveté, I truly believed, you + God = enough. But what if He isn’t? What if God isn’t everything I need? What then? And now, I find myself wondering ...what if I shift my focus from a perspective of separation - God being a part from, God being out there, distant, afar off. What if I shift from the story of separation to the Truth of oneness with God who is Love, and Spirit, the Source Energy of all life? Does that change my ideas on scarcity, on what exactly is enough, on unfulfilled desires? Is there contentment in embracing Union with God? How does our thoughts shift when we move from the story of separation and lack to one of union and abundance?

 “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.” -Eckhart Tolle

Judge No More

 I remember being in my mid-40s sitting with a young woman in her mid 20s going through body issues, dieting to the point of almost starvation, judging herself, hating on her body and I got in my car and almost cried. Her state was like an issue. I turned to my 50 year old friend and said, “When does it ever stop?! Who taught us this? Why do we as women do this to ourselves?” 

The mirror gaze shifted something in me. I went home, stripped down, looked myself in the mirror and said. “I’m not judging you. No longer will I judge you. Thank you for holding my frame, for supporting me. For keeping me alive. I will honor you and listen to you. Forgive me for trashing you and devaluing you. I don’t yet know how to fully love or hold you, but I will.”

In that moment, I made peace with my body. And whenever my mind slips into recrimination and criticism, I return to the mirror and say, “I’m not judging you. I’m not judging you.”

Moments of darkness are an invitation to integrate the things I’m reading and learning with how I’m living. Paul Young would simply call it wholeness, where the truth of our being matches the way of our being and we are fully human and fully alive. I call it integrity in the spiritual practices I adhere to - it’s how we let the Light shine.

The only thing Love doesn’t call good in the Judaic creation story is separation, evening and morning is one day. Learn to live with what is, trusting that Love is good and only good allows me to live with open hands and an open heart, embracing it all that is while looking for the light.

Sit With It:

1. How have you participated with self-judgment?
2. What does the mirror say when you gaze at yourself? 
3. Where is the light shining through in the ordinariness of your everyday life? 
4. How do you integrate what you are reading and learning into your way of being?
5. What spiritual practices do you adhere to?