lawless, augustine & God's love

The blurry lines began to take shape. Like when you smudge fog on a car window and the interior is revealed. I was taking it in, continually smudging a little more fog away as I slowly read each line of the excerpt from Augustine’s The Confessions. I knew there was more to be found — so I read it through again. The fourth or fifth time, it hit me. 

The Lord is PASSIONATELY in love with us.

This isn't new. It's not a revelation. But it struck a new chord. A resounding one.

The depths of the ways the Lord calls us and loves us are immeasurable. Once we taste it, we hunger for it and search for the peace that only the Lord offers us.

How often have you searched for that peace?

Augustine wrote, “You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance, I gasped, and now I pant for you; I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

Augustine burned for the peace of the Lord. Oh, how I have burned for that peace. How I have burned to even realize the ways God calls us.

And little I’ve understood just how powerful that call is.

Lawless was released in theatres a month ago. I’m not sure how to describe the genre — perhaps a combination of drama, action and blood. My friend and I gravely underestimated how much more action and blood there would be than drama in the movie when we entered the theatre.  

Telling the story of three brothers who are in the “family business” of moonshining during prohibition, the brothers, believed to be invincible, live into their mythical immortality as they repeatedly escape death. The oldest, Forrest (Tom Hardy), examples this after his neck is sliced from ear to ear and is said to have walked to the doctor in town, saving himself.

Cut to scene (slight spoiler alert): Forrest sits calmly, but swiftly loading his gun, about to enter another blood bath. The girl he loves, Maggie (Jessica Chastain), is asking him not to go.

Eyes on fire and clearly distressed, she finally spills the truth like a waterfall that was holding back.

Breathlessly, stern, desperate and with earnest, Maggie asks, “Are you going to make me drag your body in a pool of your own blood to the doctor again?”

Forrest, a man of few words, replies, “I thought I walked.”

How many times has God breathlessly called our name? Looked at us with eyes on fire, asking or even commanding us in love? And how many times has God carried us to healing in a pool of our own blood?

And we thought we walked.

In his account, Augustine wrote, “You were with me, but I was not with you. They held me back far from you, those things which would have no being were they not in you.”

As our priorities cloud our mind, we lose sight. We lose our ability to hear. Perhaps even our ability to smell or taste or feel.  But as Augustine writes, “Lo, you were within.”

God is within us. He is calling, shouting, blazing. And offering a peace for which we will hunger and thirst.

How is God calling you currently? Is he breaking through your deafness and blindness or does God seem silent? Is there a fog that needs to be smudged away?

And is there a possibility that he is carrying you to healing in your despair?

“You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance, I gasped, and now I pant for you; I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

God is PASSIONATELY in love with us. Let this strike a new chord today.

*Photo taken in Gig Harbor, WA, Summer 2012

perfect timing

Warm lights dotted the sky like fireflies. Popping up as the sun faded past the trees and the blue sky deepened into pink and yellow hues slowly darkening to navy. Porch lights. Lanterns. Cozy living room lamps. Homes.

I looked down over the acreage dotted with light from my perch on the second story cupola and wished I could be invited for after supper tea. Comfort. I was seeking comfort and rest — hospitality. My heart yearned for it. To be with another person. To be in a place of comfort.

A few days later, I made my way into the city for my day off from solitude.

White knuckled and wide eyed, I navigated my car towards the city. Glancing at my iPhone occasionally felt much more like a death dare than usual. I hadn’t driven more than 20 miles per hour or more than 20 minutes a day for two weeks. Now, I was making an hour trek into the city.

People drive fast in the city.

… I did not feel fast. I felt like sludge.

As my car progressed, I continually felt further and further from it, as if my body was watching the car move along the freeway as I sat at the on ramp. I was being forced along like sludge down hill. Exhaustion overcame my body, overwhelmed.

“I should just go home.”

I pulled off my exit for Pike’s Place. An immediate hour drive back did not sound ideal, but neither did a market with crowds and noise.

I really wanted to be invited for tea. To sit with someone I knew. To be able to talk about life or nothing at all. I wanted to be in a home. A cozy home.

That’s when I got her text. Perfect timing.

Relief washed my mind and body.

I had told her I may be in Seattle that day, but had held the idea of seeing her loosely.

She invited me for coffee. In her home. So simple and so perfect.

I couldn’t have cared less about the space needle and experiencing the market. I was going to see someone I knew, someone I know ... someone who knows me. Not a stranger or a neighbor that I waved to on a walk, but my dear friend, Carly.

I was getting my wish and it was better than what I had wanted. I was getting the comfort of a home and the comfort of being known.

Carly invited me in, introduced and handed me her six-week-old son, Jameson, to hold and brought me coffee as I sat on her plush couch. Carly, Jameson, being in her home, and that cup of coffee were the most restful moments of my weekend out of solitude. And a highlight of my time spent in Washington. I've learned that the best hospitality isn't planned nor premeditated.

Carly apologized for not being able to go out, but being invited in to share life for an afternoon was exactly what my heart desired. She provided rest for my soul at the perfect timing.

When has someone offered you hospitality and rest when you needed it most?

Thank you, Carly, for the blessing you were to me on my three-week.

majestic beauty

It stirs my heart, motivates my soul and moves my mind.

beauty.

I could write an entire series on beauty. However, tonight, I am reminded of a postcard my dear friend JoAnna sent me during my three-week.

Writing from Iceland(!!!), she wrote, "Praying you see God's majestic beauty in WA, without analyzing or trying to understand it."

It was a delightful reminder and a needed one. So tonight I leave you with this.

An encouragement to be in and enjoy God's presence. No need to analyze or overthink. Just be.

*Photo taken in Gig Harbor, WA, 2012.

restoration rest

I was in a funk.

My body didn’t want to cooperate and neither did my mind. I couldn’t focus, let alone roll out of bed on time. I seriously would have been okay with rolling too if it would have retrieved my body from the coma-like sleep I was in last week.

I was tired.

My soul was tired.

Shoulds, coulds and woulds overcame my life. My chock-full calendar was scheduled to T-minus minutes. If I wasn’t working at my full time job in PR (no stress there!), then I was prepping for teaching or doing homework for the class I’m taking.

Either way, my soul was tired. It didn’t have room to be, let alone rest. I may have been sleeping 8 hours every night, but my mind was racing, my dreams were processing and I was barely recovering each day. I woke up more tired than when I fell asleep. This needed to change.

Pure exhaustion leads to indulging, not rest. Yes — TV, shopping, over sleeping, cooking for hours or taking a break from cooking can be rejuvenating, needed and a form of rest. But the truth is, real rest felt scary. As if my racing mind would catch up to me — all those monstrous shoulds, coulds, and woulds would come, teeth gnashing, and eat me alive.  

That Thursday in class, Dr. Betsy Barber explained soul care. “Soul is something that needs rest, restoration, and shepherding.”

How were TV, oversleeping or eating out restoring and shepherding my soul? If anything, it was shepherding it point south. And north? Well, that’s where real rest and restoration happen. That’s where we have a shepherd.

Dr. Barber continued. “The soul is the animating principle of the individual, being or life.”

So the thing that gives me life, energy, being — I was neglecting it. No wonder I was so tired.

Finally, Saturday night after studying with a friend and a home cooked meal, I decided to put the books away and type. Type what I was feeling. Morse code my emotions on the keys. And I did. And it felt like relief.

Journaling, writing, expressing. These are ways I care for my soul. These are ways I can be hospitable to my soul. So blogging and writing are now a spiritual discipline. A way to rest with God. A way to tap into Psalm 23. 

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.”

How do you tap into Psalm 23?

*Photo taken on a destination wedding shoot trip in Maui, 2010.

the shire

As soon as I crossed the imaginary line in the parking lot, I knew. The line where I became closer to my destination than from where I had started. My feet quickened with each step and my heart softened. I was coming home. Not to where I eat or sleep, but to a place where I am known. 

I walked into the little pod of portables, sitting like an island of outcasts on the university campus and it was like the shire. The small dusty islands transformed into cottages in green pastures.

No faces were familiar when I crossed that imaginary line or entered the world of fake wood paneling and creaky portable floors, but the classroom carried faces. The memories of friends who had become family. The ones who loved me well and cried with me well — whom knew when everything wasn’t okay.

As I made my way through the classroom door, I paused. I took a deep breath and looked around. The room was bustling with excitement and first day of class summer chatter. I found my chair, the one I will most likely sit in for the remainder of the semester. Like memory foam, I was sinking back into the shape that I had formed over the past four years. More so, the shape that had been formed around me. A place of acceptance.

These were my people. This was my place.

It felt like home. It is home.

Soul care. That is what has happened in this place. A depth of care unknown to a majority of the world is the gift I receive and have learned to receive in this corner of God’s kingdom. I am deeply grateful for it.

Soul care isn’t new. But it’s revolutionary. It transforms and changes perspectives, outlooks and people. It’s not necessary to live in this world, but I’d venture out to say it’s necessary to live fully.

One by one, students shared the last time they felt cared for, particularly in relation to their soul. Tears brimmed my eyes. Their stories dug up emotion, their vulnerability and open spirit dug up vulnerability in the wells of my heart, opening my own soul.

What is soul care? 

Hope amidst tragedy, the perfect parking spot, a chance meeting, having others listen and focus on you, a good cup of coffee, time to journal. The list is unending. The ways God meets each one of us is unending. A class of more than 35 students each had a different response to how they had felt cared for in their lives.

Listening to their stories — stories of goodness, pain, love, grace — was soul care in itself. Being home in that classroom, in “the shire,” meant to be in a place where not only my soul is cared for, but where I may care for others. Sometimes soul care is simply listening to how others receive care.

David Benner writes, “Caring for souls is caring for people in ways that not only acknowledge them as persons but also engage and address them in the deepest and most profoundly human aspects of their lives.”

Soul care cannot be defined absolutely. For if we are to define soul care, we must first acknowledge the soul we are caring for — a person in their humanness, their unique personality, their Christ-likeness, the state they are currently traversing through and how they do life. There is an infinite number of souls to be cared for and therefore, an infinite number of ways to care for them. Let’s start with you.

When was the last time something or someone cared for your soul?

*Photo taken in Gig Harbor, WA — one of the most prominent and profound times I feel that God has cared for my soul