I stood there in my very own ordinary life, so taken off guard that I HAD to stop and read right where I was. Lunch was bliss....just me and a peanut butter sandwich and the quiet and this book.
Deep down, I love to be a bookworm, all caught up in a story. I have denied that part of my life lately, in the name of progress and efficiency and ridiculous things that kill your soul a little when you forget yourself on that level. No longer.
This book, the one that caught me in heart and soul and everything, is Found by a woman called Micha Boyett. (Ironic, I know.)
You can tell she is lovely, and her writing is profound. I knew it was going to be holy and noticeable and good because of the book reviews. I have never before underlined something already profound in a book review. But today I had to. See for yourself....
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'Reading 'Found' is like taking a deep breath of grace.'
'She tells the story of her own redemptions.'
'She stands with one foot in what we think God wants - and one foot in the mess we've got. She writes daring questions into that space, that space between the life we're living and the life we long to live.'
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The subheading of this book is 'A Story of Questions, Grace & Everyday Prayer', which is also what I am living.
I have questions.
I am wrapped up in grace.
I am learning again how to pray.
The books speaks of a beautiful call to Benedictine thoughtfulness. Contemplation and life in ritual and order and ordinary things. Monasticism, really. (This is not to say I intend to leave teaching and become a nun.) It's a settling of the spirit, and something both calming and counter cultural. JB and I have talked about this a lot lately, mining through how to live as thoughtful people, steady in the timelessness of our Jesus.
There are things in this I have scoffed at, and things I have loved, which is confusing sometimes. I love the church, but sometimes I struggle to understand it and get past my own frail little careworn heart. I have always felt somewhat liturgical in the books I choose and the friends I linger closest to and the prayers I pray. I have lived it before, but only on the fringes, and loosely.
There's tension there. I say I like order, but I don't want to submit to it. I like to be the teacher, the one with the answers and ideas and control. Let me tell you, in your faith this gets you nowhere. But Jesus loves me in spite of this. And I believe there are many ways to express that you love him. After years of winding through church, I see that liturgy and the slow, steady approach to knowing God is filling up my world.
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You don't expect it, but pride shows up fast here. It's easy for me to carry this, you know, and I think most people probably resonate with that idea, deep down somewhere. But unfortunately I argue that I am more so, and further down the path that way than others. (And not in a good way.) I can be stubborn too.
A well-developed personality flaw goes hand in hand with all of this and over time (almost 30 years now) I have learned the nuanced ways you can hide it. You can keep it all to yourself, and yet, if you play it right, maybe even get applauded for how artfully it can be managed. We Americans thrive on self-sufficiency, no? Again, in all real matters of faith, this has gotten me nowhere.
Big giant understanding of that, let me tell you.
And so this season has been an exciting and painfully stretching time in the story of my life. In theory, I have welcomed the growth. I want see life from more angles, always. But I am realizing in a fresh way that we all grow up with this lens over the world, and if we're not careful we can maintain thoughts or ideas that can get us stuck.
That's where I've been for a while now. Weeks of my life for sure. You can call it January, and I did, but I always knew it was more than that. When a still small voice tapped on me, I turned up the radio. I pretended I was reading the Bible, but I wasn't, at least not in a way that transformed my life in any way. Wasn't I ok with thoughts on my own? (No! The answer is no, I wasn't.)
When I became frustrated with my inner complexities, I looked outward and became distracted. I quit writing and playing music and doing the things I do to have an alive kind of life.
Someone last week said I looked 'muted', and I felt the word completely. Good thing this came from a wonderful friend, and was carried along by a second (and needed) hug.
So I drove to work this morning, turned to my Jesus and said, 'Please take that away from this worried, careworn little heart.'
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Who wants to think of themselves as a worried, careworn little person? No one. But at the crux of that confession was this wild hope that I don't have to accept myself as a perpetual mess. The one in all reality I know I can be. God, who made me, restores me. He restore His church. He's the only one who can. I need this change, and I am longing for it. Fresh winds, please.
Submission of my will was an absolute must, but I was slow to get the memo. And I think people don't say the next part, which is that when they're fragmented in these ways, they suffer. Yet God refines His people for good reasons. That's why you hear that still small voice.
The great relief of my life is grace in Christ and confessing my humanity this weekend helped. It always does. And today, peanut butter sandwich in hand, this book helped. I am happily wrapped up into it, and am terribly fascinated by the 'what next' of this adventurous life.
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