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

letting go

hello, world.

i have an announcement.

ahem..deep breath in. twist of my neck. consider not typing any further. deep breath out. my heart settles into my chest. here it is:

I'M LETTING GO. Yes, I'm letting go.

my hands are open. my heart a flutter ... so ready for rest. wide eyed and attempting to filter my ears from my mind. because really, my mind keeps telling me to stop this madness, stop thinking i can let go of my perfectionism.

that's right. i'm letting go of perfection. now, a really deep breath. 

Freedom. I'm seeking freedom. Because really, I've been enslaved to perfection for too long. I need to play and love and learn to love imperfectly. Perfectionism has driven me forward or so I've thought. It pushed me and forced me to say yes to things. It's kind of been a bully. But I have SO embraced it and loved it and even taken pride in it. I've thought it was motivation and in some cases, it probably has been. But here I am, calling perfectionism out. Because you, perfectionism, are not so perfect.

And really, I'm calling myself out. Perfectionism has held me back. It makes me stop before I try, thinking I can't do something perfectly or had me work on projects until I probably could have been better off murdering the project in the first place, because I usually murder my heart and soul somewhere in the process. And at times, it's made me crazy (similar to me talking to an ideation as if it was animate).

So here I am...just me. Imperfect, a little rough around the edges and quite unsure if this will stick. But I hope it does. Because this idea of being okay with not being perfect is SO much better than me continually trying to fill a need to be perfect that can't be filled. And if I'm being really honest, I'm quite the needy one. (WOW. I think I just committed social suicide for typing that ONLINE!). The hole in me to be perfect is unfillable. A black hole. And the first step towards absolving some of that neediness is to start accepting who I am. Just me. All of me.

So here's to grammatical errors, truth-telling and grace. Oh and really, to imperfection!

Take that, perfectionism!!

we moved!

It took some time to get here. A blogspot. A tumblr. Some shopping around. And finally, we've arrived here ... to our new home — jennalyndsay.squarespace.com. That makes me smile. Because, like I said, it took some time to get here.

You see, I've been waiting for the right timing, for everything to fall into place, to be in a place where I can blog every day, perfect my photos & have everything just right so that this whole blog thing doesn't seem so...vulnerable. Gulp. But it is. And here I am. Everything isn't perfect, branding isn't in final stages and yet, I find myself excited for this openness and excited to be here "in process."

The best part about it...now, I get to share this process with you! So thanks for moving with us! There will be some post dated entries to catch you up, but from here on out, I'm embracing this new place we're (the mouse in my pocket and I) calling home!