A,B,C...

We all want to live with purpose. We all want our lives to count for something. To be close to death and know that our little life made an impact.

“A human life is like a single letter of the alphabet. It can be meaningless. Or it can be a part of a great meaning. God delights to make words, sentences, and paragraphs of grace through the broken and rebellious letters written into the grander narrative”.

We are not the center of the grander narrative. The narrative is not about our life, but about Jesus’. The author of the story is God. We are simply and yet amazingly just a letter comprising the BIG story.

“We are targets for hope who’ll serve as agents of hope, and candidates of mercy who’ll live as conduits of mercy. Jesus is bringing restoration to broken individuals as a means of bringing healing to other individuals, families, communities, and ultimately the whole universe”.

We were created to live in God’s story. For God’s glory. He so graciously enfolded me and you into this story. We can be a part of this amazingly, huge, redemptive love story. What a privilege! 

I am honored to be a letter in the story, not an entire word, paragraph, page or book… but a letter none the less.

**The above quotes are from the book 'restoring broken things' by scotty smith and steven curtis chapman.

tribes of the soul.

i once heard that each soul is comprised of three tribes. so i did some investigating and identified my own tribes. i gave each tribe a name in january and I just recently renamed them to more redemptive names. ((side note: i am not a schizo, this is figurative… not literal. just in case you are questioning my sanity!))  

one tribe speaks about the desire within in the feminine soul. she knows what the heart longs for. her name was "ashamed". she is now called "passion".

one tribe controls the desires. she controls so the desires are not felt. she overbears so they do not run rampant. her name was "drill sergeant". she is now called "healthy organizer”.

one tribe attempts to decipher feelings. this tribe is often the way in which we cope. her name was "librarian". she is now  called "art teacher".

often times the tribes within our soul are out of line. one is dominating the rest. when our tribes live in equilibrium we are restful. when each tribe is aware of the other two, our soul can just “be”. when each tribe respects each other and their individual functions our soul is most alive.

"ashamed" was the quietest, but the most desperate. she was the one who was trying to wake the "drill sergeant" and the "librarian" up to reality: feelings of loneliness, shame, a deep desire to be loved and to love and ingrained feelings of insufficiency and insecurities. "ashamed" did not speak up because she believed that the reality of her state would make far too many waves for the "drill sergeant" to control or the "librarian" to hush. so, she quieted her voice and was lost by her counterparts.

"drill sergeant" used to demand order and productivity. she demanded that outer appearances were stable, in-line and not falling apart. she screamed, yelled, and dictated how life should be: put-together and composed.

"librarian" used to shame and embarrass the soul so the desires fled due to feelings of insufficiency. she ignored what was going on in order to appear orderly and in-production. She also kept things neat, by coming in and quieting the chaos; mostly through the use of hyper-relationships and co-dependence. the librarian allowed for earthly relationships and the distractions they offered to hide the real desires. hyper-religiosity and condemnation also acted as extinguishers of the flames of desire that aroused attention. 

i learned that i must start listening to my desires, “ashamed” is now called “passion”. "passion" feels deeply. i allow “passion” to speak and be heard, no matter how ugly the feelings are. “passion” now has the liberty to express her loneliness, sadness, fear, hurt, excitement or shame freely to the other tribes. they are learning to respect her, to not control and therefore disregard her feelings or hush and belittle her desires. “drill sergeant” is learning to let go and be a mess sometimes. she is allowing me to express my insecurities to sisterfriends and not always look composed. she sometimes has to come in and control emotions in order for the emotions to be understood. she sometimes has to assert herself in order that vulnerability is shared with few and not the world. each tribe has an appropriate function. “the librarian” became the “art teacher” because times when my true desires seemed too hard to handle, i coped with art and journaling. i not only allowed “passion” to be heard and respected, i also coped with those feelings via arts & crafts and "drill sergeant" let me be artistic and deal with my emotions. 

yes. i daily struggle to be aware of what is going on within me and my heart. but, my deep desire is to be in tune with my feminine soul. i challenge you to name your tribes. to see which one is dominating the others and which one is dying to heard.

go, beautiful souls and have courage to identify what is going on within your precious hearts. have courage to listen. to feel.

below are pictures of what i created one night to let "passion" be heard. unashamed, valued, live and be known is what is said.

   ((photos were taken by my wonderful roommate, jessica bennett))

a good listener.

"Listening to your heart can include reliving fearful and painful experiences and examining your strategies to silence your heart so you never have to feel that anguish again"

Sharon Hersh from the book, Brave Hearts 

Do you have a place where you are able to listen to your heart?  

Is there a safe place where you can retreat and sit, listen, speak, weep, wrestle with your inner self and have courage to feel?

We live in a fast-pace culture where spending time reflecting is not appreciated or valued. Courageous hearts sit and listen to the wounds that have marred our souls in order to allow for healing and restoration.

experiencing grace.

Grace is a word that I have grown up with.
Grace is an overused word. A misunderstood word. A word that may be fully inconceivable by mankind. Grace, in all of it’s meaning is a beautiful mystery that is so complex yet so simple.
Grace can be defined as receiving something that you do not deserve. God is a grace-filled God who daily, no momentarily, pours His grace onto His children.
The eyes of my soul have been opened a little wider today. I have seen grace actively being bestowed on me. My flesh is awakened, by bones are nourished.
We, as Americans, and maybe mankind as a whole feel like “we get what we deserve”. But, the Truth is that we don’t get what we deserve. Jesus came to Earth and turned everything upside down, or right side up…
I deserve nothing except death. I am a selfish, fearful, doubting, inconsiderate girl. I do not deserve God’s love. None of us do. Not even Mother Theresa, Eleanor Roosevelt or Oprah. Oprah could not have enough "Give Aways" to earn God's love.
But, the Truth in the Bible is that God is good to His children. He is loving and kind. He is patient and faithful. The only reason He displays such affection on His wayward daughters, like you and me is because of what Jesus did on the cross. It is not because of our “good and acceptable” actions. We do not deserve grace, we deserve death.
Jesus died for my sinful heart ((I already listed a few of my sins above. Just ask me, I could give you a longer list if you would like)) AND when He died He also gave me His righteousness and perfection.
As a result, when God looks at me, He sees Jesus! God sees a forgiven, justified girl who can therefore receive grace.
Like I said, the concept of grace is simple because the Bible told me so. But, practically I cannot fathom it.
Looking back at my recent past, I deserved to be left by a Holy God. I deserved to be abandoned and given over to my worldly desires. But, God in His grace rescued me. And today, I feel so humbled and undeservingly gracious to have again witnessed God pouring His grace on a fearful, prideful girl.
I do not deserve His kindness. I do not deserve His provision. Yet, He has given it to me because of Jesus.

transforming a heart of stone

I feel like a fraud.

I often paint myself as a girl who has it all together. A person who with all her heart is striving to glorify Jesus. I see the depths of my heart. I hear my inner dialogue. I am with myself all day long and throughout the night and I am the most selfish person. Inconsiderate, unloving hypocrite who is incredibly self-rightous. If you ask the ones that are the closest to me, they would quickly agree.

I write this to remind you that I am a sinner. I am not perfect and I do not have everything figured out. I am in desperate need of a Savior and His grace.

I have found that freedom and livelihood comes when I am most honest with myself and others. When I allow people to know the real me. The unkempt me.

I am being restored. I am a work in progress… a major one. But, Jesus loves me too much to leave me the way I am. 

He is faithful to change his child’s heart from that of a stone to one of flesh.

from birth to death

I was home one weekend visiting my family and my precious 80 year-old-grandmother, who is affectionately known as ‘Granny’ called me aside to expose her wounded heart to her granddaughter. She so vulnerably opened her heart to me and I will forever cherish our ten-minute conversation. I saw my Granny’s feminine soul at its most purist.

She began the conversation simply and matter-of-factly. She expressed to me her loneliness and her deep desire for friends. Most of her friends are sick, dying, or have already passed. She is aching for a girl friend to go shopping with, eat lunch with, walk the dogs with, and be known by. She longs to laugh with a friend, cry with her, love her and be loved by her. It brings me to tears to know that my Granny, in all of her tenderness exposed her heart full of longings for a cherished friend. I was a privileged girl to see the depths of her heart. It was messy, yet so beautiful.

Longings for rich relationship never leave a feminine soul. We never grow out of them. We never marry out of them, have kids, buy a house, live a whole life without them. Our feminine heart aches for rich relationships. From birth to death.

This is Granny. She has courage to feel her lonely heart.

strategies

These past few days I have been realizing something about myself. I use a variety of earthly things to grant me value, love and protection. I have been using every strategy to quench my longing for purpose and worth. I know that I will shortly forget that strategies are hopeless and fickle, but at this moment I believe that nothing on this earth has the power to grant me purpose and worth. Only Jesus does. 

Strategy as defined by Webster’s Dictionary is, “a careful plan or method: a clever stratagem. The art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal”. I no longer want to be a strategizer. I do not want to devise a plan. I no longer want to cleverly and carefully search for earthly things to quiet the longings of my soul. 

A strategy may be a job, a boyfriend, an adventure, independence, beauty, success, or good grades. Strategies are ways in which we run towards objects to find purpose. Even if the strategy temporarily works, it will fail to provide what it so deceptively promised. The strategy promises to grant value and worth when it is attained. When the strategy fails us a deep part of the feminine soul feels valueless, worthless, and purposeless.
Therefore, I have no other option than to fall down where I am at, as a weak strategizer and finally rest. I am resting. No adventure, no job, no amount of independence granted by God gives me the status of being loved, valued and protected. Nothing on this earth has that amount of power. Only Jesus does. He claimed me as worthy when he came to earth, died on the cross, and rose again. I am already valued. Therefore a job, a boyfriend, an adventure, independence, beauty, success and good grades are not bad things. They simply cannot grant me the status of “valued”.