And Every Breath Was Hallelujah...

God is a God of surprises and He is the orchestrator of wonderful coincidences.  Without putting much thought of my own into it, I started training for the Free Them 5K last week.  I didn't realize until yesterday that I started this training on the first day of Lent.

I was deeply moved by a few different posts and blogs about Lent.  Honestly, we don't really do much for Lent now that I attend a non-denominational church.  I grew up in a Catholic and Episcopalian background, so there are some elements of liturgy that I miss.  Some of the symbolism is so sacred and sublime, it answers questions your soul didn't realize it was asking.  I miss going down to the alter for communion, dipping my stamped wafers in the wine from the golden chalet, and being blessed by Father Taylor.  I miss the reverence of the stained glass windows and tall arches.  I miss lighting candles to symbolize a prayer.  Religion can  be stifling, but it can also help a person understand a facet about God's character that was a mystery to them before.

Back to Lent.  Usually, there is something a person gives up for Lent to honor the sacrifice we celebrate every Good Friday.  I felt that I wasn't supposed to give anything up.  I read a post by a woman in a forum I follow, and instead of giving something up for Lent, she adds a prayer time for those around her.  She opened up her schedule to ask for prayer requests for strangers in a forum of over 3000 women.  That is a beautiful, intentional sacrifice.  Another blog I follow approaches Lent as a time similar to Advent.  It is a time to prepare your heart, to make room for God to speak, and to really meditate on what Easter means.

So as I have been running, I have been doing a lot of meditating.  It clears my mind, and I become aware of almost every breath I breathe.  I am clearing out time in my busy life to quiet my heart, train my body, and I am doing it so that others might be freed.  It is my sacrifice, however small.  It occurred to me yesterday that running is what God added to my life to help me recognize Lent.  This is my way of laying down a portion of my life to help others.

As Jesus has been connecting the dots for me, I have a song called Hallelujah that won't seem to leave my head.  It has been redone several times, but the original is by Leonard Cohen.  The one line that is on repeat inside my brain is:

And every breath we drew was hallelujah...

If I had just one sentence to describe it, I think that is what Lent means to me.  To live a life where every breath I draw is hallelujah.  Every breath in success, every breath in joy, every breath in sorrow, every breath in pain, every breath in confusion, every breath in doubt.  Let every breath be hallelujah.

I have been running in a forested area, and so I decided to make a little print of a photo I took a while back to commemorate this season.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD HALLELUJAH PRINTABLE

Running Outside My Comfort Zone

Funny story.  I'll start with just stating that I am not a 'runner.'  Really.  My one concern with the whole need to run is whether or not I could outrun a zombie apocalypse, if it indeed came to it.  My mind was put to ease when I saw a picture of a house surrounded in treadmills.  Zombie proof, and no need to run.  Perfect.

I don't mind walking, I love dancing, hiking is wonderful, and pilates is surprisingly my thing.  I will even use free weights and a kettle bell.  I'm just not a runner.  If you know me, you know that I have said this to you at least a hundred times.

So why, you might ask, did you sign up for a 5K in May?  Not only did you sign up, but you created a team and signed your family up.  And you might be kind of pressuring encouraging people to sign up with you.  That is weird.  And, yes, dear reader, I agree.  It is weird.  Though not as weird as I would like to think.  Because here is the thing.  God has been asking me to do an inventory of what He's given me.  But there is more.  He's been gently reminding me that I need to be willing to sacrifice those gifts and talents that for His purposes.  Turns out that some of that is a lot of fun.  I've been getting back to doing activities and hobbies that I really enjoy.  If you read my post about  where your gifts and your burdens collide, you'll know that some of my paradigm has been shifted...in a good way.  All that to say, while it is a little scary to hand over my talents and the things I already excel at, what if I need to be doing more?  What if I need to be doing something completely out of my comfort zone?  Like running?  Yes, like running.

My burdens have long been wrapped up in helping the vulnerable and marginalized.  My eyes roam and seek out the invisible, and my heart breaks for the injustice that leaves so many of them suffering.  I love seeing people freed from oppression - of all kinds.  I first learned about human trafficking while studying to complete my major six years ago.  I had to write a fifteen page paper on human trafficking in Italy, and in my research my eyes were opened to a world of suffering and captivity that I knew nothing about previously.  I cried every day I went to class.  I cried reading academic papers, even though they were full of academic jargon and so far removed from the people suffering.  I care about these men, women, and children with a depth that sometimes surprises me.  

Then I received an email from World Concern about their Free Them 5K in May.  All proceeds go to help those enslaved.

I heard a whisper, "Do all you can with what you have been given."

I have been given body healthy enough to run, despite my lack of enthusiasm about the idea in the past.  I've been given a burden to help people who are victims of human trafficking.  So my burden is colliding with running because it is something I can do right now to help.  I'm not an expert runner.  I may end up walking with my 5 year-old.  But I am willing to risk looking like a bit of a fool and jumping outside of my comfort zone because that is where miracles occur.

So if you are in the Seattle area on May 10th, and you'd like to come and run so others can LIVE FREE (Click Here for FREE THEM 5K information)- please join me!  No, really.  Please, do join me.  If this girl who runs only when something is chasing her (think zombie) can do it, I am pretty sure you have a great shot at it.  Our team is named Live Free, not just in honor of what I've been feeling is a theme for me this year, but also a word of faith that the people who are being held captive will be able to one day LIVE FREE, too.  If you feel a burden for those caught in this web of human trafficking, you can donate to help us reach our $5000 goal.  A few friends and I are already planning some great fundraisers, and I am so excited to see what God does with our gifts and talents as we lay them down to help others.  Together, when we do small actions in great love, who knows the greatness of the outcome?

I designed a little graphic because I definitely need the reminder from time to time.  Or everyday.  Whichever.

CLICK HERE FOR COMFORT ZONE PRINTABLE

Live Free - A Year of Release

A handful of years ago, I began to ask for a word that would help me navigate the season I was in.  The first word God gave me was renaissance or rebirth.  After a few years of living in a dessert spiritually, I can't tell you how much that word filled me with hope.  It was a process, but Jesus began restoring my faith that year.

The following year was joy.  Oh, what a simple word.  Three letters.  But with my heart, newly restored, joy was everywhere.  Even in the mundane, everyday, ordinary life.  Joy is everywhere.  And I learned joy usually began with a choice, and a submission of expectations.

Last year my word was embrace.  It was a year full of the unknown, full of trial, full of new beginnings, full of endings.  And I was being asked to embrace it all.  Not argue with it, not analyze it, not fear it, not control it.  I was being asked to embrace what Jesus had in store for our family, not question it.  And I won't lie, it was hard.  Looking back now, I realize that without clinging to Him, I probably would've floundered or given up or given in to bitterness or anger.  I needed that embrace.

In December, I was sitting at the same bluff I have been going to for so many years and for so many seasons.  It overlooks the beach where Aaron asked me to be his wife.  It is the place where friends and family have had wedding photos taken.  I was there out of obedience because it was the week of rest for the bible study we were going through.  I was in the car, with my sweet son in the back screaming to leave, when I heard the word release.  This is the definition I found when I came home:

Full Definition of RELEASE

transitive verb

1:  to set free from restraint, confinement, or servitude; also :  to let go :  dismiss 

2:  to relieve from something that confines, burdens, or oppresses 

3:  to give up in favor of another :  relinquish 

4:  to give permission for publication, performance, exhibition, or sale of; also :  to make available to the public 

intransitive verb

:  to move from one's normal position in order to assume another position or to perform a second assignment

So much of what I have been hearing in my spirit is that we need to live in freedom.  Chris Cain says that so many of us are enjoying our deliverance, but we have yet to step into freedom.  I think Jesus is releasing us to be free to be exactly who He created us to be.  To live free from what others think, what the world prescribes, what we fear, what we expect.  To live a life that has not just been rescued, but a life that has been set FREE.

I'm not exactly sure what this year has in store.  I do know that I am spending time and purposing in my heart to release those things that so easily entangle me - fear, expectations, opinions, obligations.  I'm trading it in for freedom.  I'm relinquishing my selfishness so I can be used to help others.  

I don't know where you are today - living captive, living delivered, or living free.  I am praying that maybe reading these words will stir something inside your heart to step one step closer to freedom.  To nudge your heart towards release.  I have a feeling what awaits us is so much better than all we have held onto.

I designed this little image to help me remember that this is a year of release and to LIVE FREE!

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When Your Gifts and Burdens Collide

If you are in a church setting long enough, someone at some point has probably mentioned receiving a calling.  People feel called to all sorts of amazing things...I have friends who are pastors, teachers, missionaries, artists, mothers, fathers, firemen, soldiers.  The list goes on and on.

Can I tell you something?  I have struggled with the concept of a calling for a while now.  Not because I don't believe in it, because I really do.  I've just had a hard time reconciling the idea after becoming a wife and mother.  Everything I do now is filtered through the lens of being a wife and a mother.  My heart walks around daily OUTSIDE of my body because that is the only way I can describe how much I love my family.  So, then, what does a wife and mother do with the places in her heart that God has reserved for something outside her family?  When I was young and single it was a lot less complicated to run after what I believed God was calling me to do because the cost was relatively simple.  Now it's a little more complicated because reckless abandon isn't as appealing if it puts my loved ones at risk.  If I am completely honest, I've used that seemingly difficult complication as an excuse.  But I am tired of excuses.

I heard this sentence a couple of weeks ago, and it has taken my 'complicated' excuse and dismantled it.

Your calling is simply where your burdens and your gifts collide.

Your calling isn't this ethereal voice in the sky directing you to this or that (though sometimes it can be).  Your calling is laying down your God-given gifts, fully and completely in the places your heart ALREADY dwells.  God did not knit a single one of us the same.  My heart's burdens will always be unique to me, and your heart's burdens will be unique to you.  God placed gifts and talents inside of each one of us that are completely our own.  And it is that beautiful mess of a combination that makes each one of our purposes or callings so wonderfully multi-faceted and diverse.

I'm done believing that a calling is limited to a vocation.  I want God to use my gifts and my burdens together to change this world.  A beautiful part of that is being a wife and mother, in a way that only I can be a wife and mother to my family, but God has made room in my heart for more.  I won't ever be any good at being someone else or at emulating someone else's gifts.  But I can celebrate how God has knit me together and pray He uses that for the benefit of my family and others.  Not everyone's heart rends for the poor and marginalized the way mine does, and that is okay.  I don't have to apologize for what stirs my heart, and neither do you.  There is an entire world out there waiting for us to move toward what burdens us exactly where we are and being exactly who we are.

I don't know what it is that God has placed in your heart or what talents He has hidden in you.  I'm just beginning to figure some of mine out, and dust off others that have laid dormant.  I believe with my whole heart that God is raising up people to live boldly in who He created them to be in new ways.  I believe He is calling a lot of us to influence our communities, our culture, and our nation with the gifts He has placed within us.  I believe the time has come for us to stop saying yes out of obligation and start living in the freedom of what He has placed within us.  Your calling is where your burdens and your gifts collide.  I am longing to see what that collision will look like in my own life, but what a pleasure it is to watch it unfold in the lives around me.  Let's be dare to be adventurers.

Here is a little printout I made to help remind me that sometimes it isn't as complicated as I like to make it. =)

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Because I Have Loved You with an Unfailing Love

Valentine's Day has never been easy for my family.  It has always been bittersweet.  Celebrating love that is here and loved that has passed.  My grandmother was found dead on Valentine's Day when my mom was just a little girl.  So as much as it has been hearts and flowers, it has always been a somber reminder that love can leave, even before we are ready to say goodbye.

God has been whispering this phrase to me over and over this week:

I have loved you with an unfailing love.

I am blessed to have my best friend, husband, and champion as my Valentine this year.  I wake up at 3 a.m. to my son pitter-pattering in our room to come and snuggle just for a while before he returns to his own bed.  I watch my daughter dump out her Valentine's Day bag, with excited eyes and a full heart.  I know I have a lot of love to celebrate today.

And then I remember that life has not always been this full.  There were countless Valentine's Days that I spent alone.  I remember being the girl in seventh grade who received no friend grams, and the girl in high school who never got a rose.  I was the "kind of girl a guy brings home to meet his mom," which is kind of a non-pliment to a lonely young woman.  

I have loved you with an unfailing love.

I remember my mom.  Every Valentine's Day marks another year she has lived without her mom.

I have loved you with an unfailing love.

I think of all the people who feel more emptiness than happiness today.  The ones who have lost a love, the ones who have yet to find one, those who have been hurt by a love,  and those who are hanging onto a love that feels like it is slipping between their fingers.

I have loved you with an unfailing love.

So while our earthly vessels love imperfectly, we can celebrate today because He has loved us with an unfailing love.  My hope, dear soul, is that today you will take a deep breath and bask in the extravagant love God pours out over you.

In Which I Ponder Social Media

I know I am not alone when I say I have a love/hate relationship with social media.  I love reading other people's stories, I love seeing pictures of friends who are near and far, and I love that twitter allows you to legally stalk  follow famous people you wouldn't otherwise get to meet.  There is a lot of great stuff that goes on in social media from fund-raisers to prayer chains to amazing perspectives on blogs.

But I have been more aware as of late that people also use all of these outlets to judge, criticize, and compare.  Social media has made relationships so one-dimensional, that sometimes if we aren't careful it could cause us to struggle with our real life relationships.  Because in a world where we can "unfriend" or "unfollow" with click of a button, how do we navigate real problems and real conflict?  I've never been good at conflict.  Like ever.  So this idea that I can avoid it by simply clicking a button does not serve me well because it feeds into my flight response to perceived danger (i.e. any conflict whatsoever).  I'm afraid that I can already see a shift in society - in the way we leave jobs, the way we leave spouses, the way we leave churches...and it really saddens me.  In the real world, where relationships are two-sided, it is rarely the loving choice for either party to just "unfriend" a person or job or... 

Then there is the other side of it, the space that is opened up for conflict to become judgment and criticism.  Instead of the flight response, people take up with the fight response, and I have been left with my jaw agape at the comments that people write...to strangers.  Not that ugly words are any better when typed to someone you know, but I can't wrap my mind around the brashness of the way people unload anger, bitterness, and hatred all over the internet.  It's as though they forget that there is a real person behind that profile picture or avatar.  Or maybe they don't.  But there is a real person, with a story. And their story is sacred, just like ours.

Maybe the one that I feel the most burdened over is the comparison.  Why are we wasting away our God-given uniqueness by constantly measuring ourselves against others?  Social media is a great, one-dimensional highlight reel, and if we spend too long lingering there the tendency to compare our multi-dimensional lives to those highlight reels will overcome.  And our real life will lose every time.  Ann Voskamp just spoke at a conference recently, and in her talk she said that any mother knows that a measuring stick picked up will always be used as a weapon - in a 5 year-old boys' hand, it becomes a sword.  In the hands of a woman, when used to measure herself against another woman, it is no less a weapon.  Used as a weapon, it cuts both parties and no one ever really wins.  We were never made to be compared to one another, but to complement one another.

A few months ago, I was reading in Ephesians out of The Message.  There is a lot of good stuff in chapter 4, but the following verse is what caught my attention:

29 Watch the way you talk.  Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth.  Say only what helps, each word is a gift.

Say only what helps.  Each word is a gift.  I already love words, but to think of each word as a gift has taken my reverence for words to an entirely different level.  To think that the words we speak can either help or hurt, give life or destroy, give or steal hope, to encourage or dampen dreams... I've been praying to become a better steward of what I say and type.  Because words are like breaths, we only have so many before our time here is done.  I want to invest mine wisely.  I've been asking for words that breathe life, and not destruction.  I have determined to compliment instead of criticize, complement instead of compare, and love instead of judge to the best of my ability.  And when my best has been done, I pray God gives me strength to persevere.  I'd love for some company, care to join me?

In Which I Share About Our Love Story

On this day, nine years ago Aaron asked me to marry him.  Look at us up there.  Aren't we so cute?  And young.  Saying yes was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Our love story is probably one of the most tangible evidences of God's fingerprints in my life.  He rerouted my future, brought me down to Mexico, and blew my mind as He guided me to my future husband.  He took this cynical, pragmatic, guarded girl and made her believe that sometimes the kind of love that fairy tales are made of does exist.  I didn't deserve to find this kind of love and happiness, but I am eternally grateful for a God who is full of mercy and grace who doesn't look at our worthiness.

When I think about today, I realize that every meaningful decision we made comes with risk.  Sometimes the risk is so great that we stand to lose everything.  Those decisions are usually the hardest and most rewarding.   Sometimes the decisions that seem easy at the time because they are less risky end up being the decisions that trap us in the illusion of comfort and control.  I don't know about you, but I am tired of living inside my own limitations.  If there is one thing I have learned about God, it is that He wants to surprise us.  He will always outdo our best efforts, out-imagine our best dreams, and always out-design our best laid plans.

I knew I could marry Aaron from the first day I met him.  That was not what made the decision to say yes an easy one.  There is such a huge risk when you entrust your heart to another human.  But I said yes because I trusted that God was faithful, He loved me, and even though I didn't deserve it, He wanted to bless me.  He answered my prayers, guided me, promised me...and that gave me the courage to choose a better life than I had imagined for myself.

This date for me is like an alter.  I go to remember God's faithfulness.  I go to remember His extravagant love for me.  I go to restore hope that some of the riskiest decisions that have yet to be made will be the greatest adventures of my life.

I wonder how different life would look if we remembered every moment that God wants to surprise us with better than we can imagine.  Looking back in all the ways He has orchestrated such beautiful blessings thus far, how can we step into living a life marked more and more by His glory?  What would happen if we consistently and intentionally yielded our lives to all that God has in store for each of us?   I believe we would change the world.

I made a little Valentine's Day printable for fun.  It is one of my favorite sayings, and it still surprises me.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD VALENTINE'S PRINTABLE