A SIGNIFICANT PLACE

This week, I handed in my final paper for the two year Center for Spiritual Formation program. Going through it has been one of the biggest blessings in my life so far.  It began nearly two years ago with an 8-day intensive at Rivendell, a retreat center on Bowen Island.  Tomorrow, I will head to Rivendell again.  This time it will be with just one friend.  And it will only be for two nights. 

I have had a rather hairy and hectic life these past three weeks so I am grateful for some time to slow down and be away from the rigours of daily life.  I look forward to the silence and the solitude.  I look forward to catching up on some sleep and journalling my little heart out.  I'm also bringing a small jigsaw puzzle with me to do there because it will help me to relax.

Going back to Rivendell at this particular time is significant to me.  I like how it bookends my Center for Spiritual Formation experience.  I am praying though that this rain would kindly go somewhere else for the three days ahead.  But even if it doesn't, it's not like I'll be puzzling outside anyway.  ;)

WOMEN AND SELF-CONTEMPT

I know there are both men and women who read this blog, but this post will be particularly about women. (Men, you are more than welcome to read it. It might, in fact, help you understand the mystery called women just a little better.)

I recently finished reading a book called Holy Listening by Margaret Guenther. She is a spiritual director in New York city and in the last chapter of the book, she addressed spiritual direction and women in particular. I appreciated her insights.

Many of the people I know who have walked through burnout have been women. I wonder if this insight from Guenther has something to do with it. She wrote:

The time I have spent listening to women's stories, however, has convinced me that there are distinctly feminine patterns of sinfulness... Women's distinctive sin is self-contempt. ...It is important not to minimize the sin of self-hatred and self-contempt. It is a sin, for at its heart is a denial of God’s love and the goodness of God’s creation. Pride plays a part after all, for the women discounts herself as part of creation and assumes that the rules of divine love do not apply to her. That love is there for everyone else, but not for her (pp. 128, 130; emphasis added).

I can identify this tendency in myself. This basic unbelief that God loves me as much as He loves everyone else in the world. And I know that for me, this unbelief led to some destructive life-patterns that contributed to my burnout. I know I stand guilty of the sin of self-contempt. And it is both embarrassing and freeing to have this called out so clearly.

QUESTION MARKS CAN BE HEAVY THINGS

I have a few important questions these days that God is taking His time in answering.  I feel like each day I'm walking around carrying question marks around.  And with each minute that passes they seem to be growing in weight. 

My spiritual director suggested to me that the act of waiting could perhaps be a form of praying.  If that is so, maybe carrying around these heavy question marks can be my prayer for the time being.

RICHES OF DARKNESS AND THE IDOL OF CERTITUDE

And I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness—
      secret riches.
   I will do this so you may know that I am the Lord,
      the God of Israel, the one who calls you by name.
~ Isaiah 45:3  (emphasis added)

Last night at church, our guest speaker, Stephen Lungu, shared his dramatic story along with four "D"s that God uses to discipline us.  I was encouraged both by his story and his observation of how God hones us toward holiness.

The four "D"s of God's discipline according to Stephen Lungu:

1. Darkness.  God often brings us into times of darkness and possibly chaos and confusion.  But He also promises us that those times contain riches we could not see otherwise (Isaiah 45:3).
2. Delay.  God sometimes purposely makes us wait.  
3. Discrimination.  Sometimes God will seem to bless everyone around us except us.  He does this so that we learn to bless Him even when He blesses others.  And sometimes as He blesses others, their blessings overflow into our lives.
4. Discomfort.  Similar to how God brought Elijah to the brook of Cherith and then dried up the brook so that Elijah would go to the widow's place, He will sometimes bring us discomfort so that we learn to go and bless others.

God also showed me during the service that I had been holding on to the idol of certitude.  I had been wanting so desperately to know the answers to some of the unresolved questions in my life that I had been spending inordinate amounts of physical and mental energy pursuing those answers.  And I did this at the cost of being able to relax into God's love for me.  Somehow, it was knowing that God uses Darkness, Delay, Discrimination and Discomfort that helped me leave the need to be certain on the altar and hold only to Jesus again.

GLIMMERS OF INSPIRATION

There are two women whom I have come to love dearly and who inspire me greatly.  The first is one of my professors at the Center of Spiritual Formation, the second, is my spiritual director. They both have a gentleness and an attentiveness to God that is so rare.  After every conversation with them, I leave with the feeling, "I want to be like her!"  That's probably because they're so like Jesus.

Over the course of last week, I had the pleasure of seeing both of them.  Not surprisingly, they each gave me a piece of inspiration.  These little nuggets of truth and beauty deserve to be shared.  So, my friends, here they are.  I pray that you would be blessed.

Inspirational vignette #1 (original source was from a novel my professor had read):
In the Old Testament, we are told that no one can look at the face of God and live.  Instead, we can only see His back after He has passed us.  Perhaps this refers to the passage of time.  So often, when we are in the midst of a set of circumstances, we cannot see where God is.  But when we look back in time, we are able to say, "There He was." 

Inspirational vignette #2 (original source was from my spiritual director's friend):
This image came to a woman who was in a season of deep darkness.  She imagined herself on the brink of a large and cavernous pit, about to fall in.  She was terrified of falling in and disappearing into the blackness.  As she prayed, she felt God saying to her, "What you see as despair, I see as opportunity.  The larger the hole, the more room there is for me to pour out my love."

How very beautiful.

DAILY BREAD

I once heard a speaker explain the Lord's prayer in context of the passage that followed it.  Jesus continued his message on prayer by going on to tell the story of a neighbour who came knocking at midnight, asking for bread.  And the speaker said our petition for daily bread is not only for us, but so that we can have bread to offer our neighbour as well.

Last weekend, I had a bit of a what I'll call a "daily bread" experience.  Tim and I were incredibly, disgustingly sick with a nasty cold and my brother-in-law was arriving back from his trip to Asia on that Sunday.  On his way over to our place to pick up his car (which we had borrowed), he called us.  He was jetlagged.  And sick.  And his fridge was empty.  Would we have any food to spare?

As I looked around our kitchen, I was overjoyed that I had made a huge pot of stew a few days before, not realizing that I would now be sick and have a sick brother to feed.  I happily (and somewhat groggily) packed him some stew, a couple cans of chicken noodle soup, and half a loaf of bread.  There, I thought, that should last him at least until he was well enough to get his own groceries.

I didn't make it to church that Sunday, but I had my own worship experience in my kitchen.  God had obviously provided my daily bread.  Not just for me, but for my brother-in-law as well.  And in the midst of my poverty, I discovered that I still had enough to give.

RE-THINKING MISSIONS

Working for and being married to someone who works for a missions organization has often felt like a conundrum these last few years.  How can I actively participate in sharing the gospel with others when I need so much time at home, alone?  I have felt the tension of wanting to go on missions trips (and perhaps even being expected to by some people) and not knowing if I have the capacity to do well on one.

In November, we were at a conference in Toronto for Tim's ministry and I began to wonder whether I should try the one-week project being offered this coming March.  The familiar thoughts went through my head, "You need to take a step of faith."  "You won't experience God until you take a risk."  "There are lost souls waiting for you that only you with your particular set of giftings can reach."  I held the question out before the Lord.

A few days later, I found myself breaking down, exhausted and spent from visiting with friends and family.  I certainly was not thriving there - and I was only halfway through the week!  I plucked up the courage to revisit my question about the mission trip.  If I could barely handle spending a week with people I knew, in a familiar city, speaking my first language, why would I think I could thrive on a mission project?  Then I realized that maybe God had other plans for me.  Maybe "missions" for me did not mean going out there.  Maybe God could use me just as much (possibly more?) when I was in the environment where I thrived best - at home. 

It's an exercise in humility for me to admit my limits and open myself to the possibility that God can work within them.  For sure, I still believe God is able to and may possibly call me to move beyond my natural limits.  But that would be an exception. 

For now, I am choosing to be thankful for the relationships I have with my neighbours.  And I'm asking God how I can live His gospel faithfully while I stay put.