All of life is in the interim, and if we‘re honest and tender with ourselves, if the armor is off and the castle has crumpled, we feel the ache of the meantime. Our permanent records are a mess of marks and offenses, and we are laid bare to the ache of what‘s coming.
When it comes right down to it, of course, it‘s always been in the interim. We‘ve always been in the middle space, the yearning and the groaning.
It seeps in like smoke or vapor even when we‘ve barred the door against any last minute changes, and it moves us to different countries and different emotional territories and different ways of living. Life with God is a daring dream, full of flashes and last minute exits and generally all the things we‘ve said we‘ll never do. And with the surprises comes great hope.
Everything is interim. Everything is a path or preparation for the next thing, and we never know what the next thing is. Life is like that, of course, twisty and surprising. But life with God is like that exponentially. We can dig in, make plans, write in stone, pretend we‘re not listening, but the voice of God has a way of being heard.
We won‘t arrive. But we can become. And that‘s the most hopeful thing I can think of.
Life with God at its core is about giving your life up to something bigger and more powerful. It‘s about saying at every turn that God knows better than we know, and that His spirit will lead us in ways that we couldn‘t have predicted.
"Things I wish to never lose:
my passion, my dreams, my childish spirit;
the little things that keep me going,
my curiosity to keep wondering and questioning,
my ability to get up again even when I wish not to,
the art within my soul,
the power to love against all the hatred around,
and most of all my capability to adapt, accept, change
and my will to learn and heal...”
Tagged book is mine!! Happy Thanksgiving, Littens!!
We tell Gods story as we live and discover our own. We know that God is a storyteller. And I don‘t know if there‘s anything better in the world than when we lay ourselves wide open and let His story become our story, when we screw up our fist and our courage and start to tell the truest, best stories we know, which are always God‘s stories.
Every life tells a story, through words and actions and choices, through our homes and our children, through our clothes and dishes and perfume. We each play a character in a grand drama, and every stage direction matters. We tell our stories, and we let God‘s story be told through our stories, we hide and we seek, and we lose ourselves in the best possible way, and find things around us and inside ourselves that we never expected.
The riskiest things always yield the best, most beautiful things.
What gives me hope is the belief that God will be faithful, because he has been faithful before, to me and the people around me. I need the reminders. Just because I have forgotten how to see doesn‘t mean it isn‘t there. His goodness is there. His promises have been kept. All I need to do is see.
Because once you start seeing the faithfulness and the hope, you see it everywhere, like pennies. And little by little, here and there, you realize that all of life is littered with bright copper coins, that all of life is woven with bits and stories of God‘s goodness.
Each one of our lives is shot through, threaded in and out with God‘s provision, his grace, his protection, but on the average day, we notice it about as much as we really notice gravity.
"The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”
Staying committed to this while I figure out where else my time and energy should go as a result of current events going on in the world over the last week.
💜
When you travel, and when you read, you are not actually alone, but rather surrounded by other worlds entirely, the footsteps and phrases of whole other lives keeping you company as you go.
Friendship is about risk. Love is about risk. If we can control it and manage it and manufacture it, then it‘s something else, but if it‘s really love, really friendship, it‘s a little scary around the edges.
We have to give something up in order to get friendship like that. We have to give up our need to be perceived as perfect. We have to give up our ability to control what people think of us. We have to overcome the fear that when they see the depths of who we are, they‘ll leave. But what we give up is nothing in comparison to what this kind of friendship gives to us.
True friendship is a sacred, important thing, and it happens when we drop down into that deeper level of who we are, when we cross over into the broken, fragile parts of ourselves.
Here‘s something I‘ve learned the hard way: what we do everyday matters far more than what we do once in a while. The daily routines and rhythms that we build to scaffold our days do more to shape who we become than the grand gestures of once-in-a-while ever could.
Especially when we‘re in the middle of transformation of any kind, it‘s the things we do every day that build a meaningful support along the way.
We‘re nearly at the end of the year and I‘m just diving into my first book….
And while I would and sort of do feel shame over that, it‘s appropriate that the book came from Shauna.
Her words have always been deeply meaningful to me & met me right where I‘m at when I needed them.
I‘m expecting that this little book of bite sized thoughts will be no different & leave their mark just as Shauna‘s other books have done for me at the perfect time.
If you love reading and/or writing and you‘re voting blue, this might be an event you want to tune into tonight at 7PM ET!!
https://events.democrats.org/event/725958/?force_banner=true&share_context=event...
It is a grey day where I am, which always puts me in a blah mood, but book mail makes it better!!
I have done more book collecting than I have actually reading this year, but nonetheless excited for these to have arrived today!!
Anyone feeling stifled by life and/or other people lately or is it just me?
They finally made it!!
The books in my box this month were as blue and white as the box they come in!!
Do I have any box twins?!?
😍💙📚🤍🤩
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in. except the one to which you belong.
Inquiring minds would like to know, do you think a person can find this in a friend/platonic soulmate?
September is Suicide Prevention Month. This felt appropriate for the feelings behind a loss like that.
Do you agree? Why or why not?
Kind of loving the blue and white covers theme coming in Septembers box!! 💙🤍
And there‘s an author whose first name is Chelsea, so that‘s pretty fitting to be getting as well!!
Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.
~Thich Nhat Hanh~
The healing journey isn‘t for the faint of heart, but it‘s worth it.
Didn‘t get a full box this month, but I have high hopes for these!! 📚
Where are my box twins at?!?
“One of the risks of being quiet is that the other people can fill your silence with their own interpretation: You‘re bored. You‘re depressed. You‘re shy. You‘re stuck up. You‘re judgmental. When others can‘t read us, they write their own story—not always one we choose or that‘s true to who we are.”
What else can you come up with?!?
